The Works By Ron Sanders

Text and Art © 2010 by Ron Sanders

http://ronsandersatwork.com/

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The Depths Rage Elis Royd Faces Savage Glen Common Denominator Snapdragon Gallery A—Rose Signature Bill & Charlie Why I Love Democracy (writing as Enrique Batsnuwa LaCszynevitch McGomez) Sweet Illusion Thelma Horizon Why Did You Kill John Lennon Freak Gallery B—Mad From The Farting Crowd

Lovers Benidickedus Hell’s Outpost earth to Earth The Other Foot Alphanumerica Remembering Jack Empire Gallery C—Harry, Stevie, and Don Carnival The Other Side Norm The Fartian Chronicles A Deeper Cut Elaine The Rabid Angel Gallery D—Go To Hell Now! Boy The Book Of Ron Yogi ScanElite Home Planet

me jurinal Justman! Night Piety C.F.B. Ascent Microcosmia Notes and Bio

“Great writing makes great reading.”

The Depths

“All passengers prepare for emergency landing!” Every nerve in Mason’s body was a live wire. There wasn’t a damned thing left to try, but he couldn’t let go. Even though he knew the jetliner was out of control, even though the ground was rushing at him with all the visual impact of a tsunami, even though he knew he was about to die a death beyond imagination. “Everybody out of the aisles! Seatbelts fastened! Heads down between your knees!” He switched off the cabin speakers. “God in Heaven!” the copilot screamed. “Oh God! Oh God! Oh Jesus Oh God! Oh Jesus oh God oh God oh God oh—” “Ground, this is AAL-7. We are going down. We are going down. Beth I love you, I love you. Kids, I love you I love you I lo—” His throat seized. Blood filled his eyes, his arms locked, his entire body went into shock. To port and starboard, black smoke billowed and wheeled, racing its orphan wisps in dark tendrils that swept the glass like loose wipers. Now the smoke passed as though cleared by a gigantic lung, and the visual window blew out to a rocketing, reeling panorama of fuzzy landscape and crystal clear details—ancient cacti, gutted cars, weeds and rocks so sharply defined they might have been etched into canvas—as his head jerked back, as his mouth shot open, as his airways broke wide for one riveting, endless, mindblowing scream. The smoke and dust were terrific, all but obscuring the crash site. Flames shot through the plane’s corpse, danced and raged overhead, lit the windows and passed. The smell of jet fuel was everywhere. A trough the length of three football fields had been ripped out of the land, ninety feet

The Depths wide at its broadest. Nose, cabin, and tail were in three distinct sections, buried, rather than scattered, due to the dramatic incline of descent. The right wing had detached completely, the left was a black crumpled ruin. And the real-time concussions, the aftershock of impact, still sang in the earth, still sent small stones tumbling. And the rifts in the desert appeared as tiny sand pools. And the dirt spilled round as the hot dusty creatures burst aboveground at full tilt and maniacally charged the wreckage. Their pecking order was evident; the fastest and toughest were the first inside—the first-pickers of cufflinks and fountain pens, of ribbons and bows. Seat belts and oxygen masks were savaged in the rush, the carnage completely ignored. One squealed, and there was a sudden frantic pile-on of hairy bodies. In a minute the victor came up grasping a cheap patent leather billfold. After a short, brutal flurry, this little monster used his teeth to tear out a photograph of a sweetly smiling family. He snatched it with his paw, pressed the treasure to his chest, and threw the billfold, with its cash and traveler’s checks and credit cards, to the losers. Crash investigators have one of the toughest jobs on the planet. You never really adjust to it— ever—though it’s imperative to develop a steely exterior, and to always treat it as just a job. Crash investigators for major airlines have upped that career ante considerably. Analytical and technical aspects aside, it’s not just a matter of noting and recording the dead—angles, impetus, collateral consequences—it’s a matter of cataloguing torsos, mutilated faces, miscellaneous body parts, many burned beyond recognition. A museum display in Hell: the plane’s great black ruptured body, split open like a ripe pomegranate, the horror of charred corpses duly strapped in for the unbelievable, some cut right in half by those very seat belts . . . the nauseating stench of a charnel house, the hundreds of wild fixed expressions that not even death, not even flames, not even formaldehyde can repair. This job description, and the once-sanguine men and women who complement it, provides for a sober on-site experience. Those who try to survive by alleviation—through camaraderie and inappropriate or disrespectful behavior—don’t last. They’re not tolerated by the professionals who have built up the fortitude to take nightmares in stride, to break down only in the womb of family, and to regularly come to work with a set of gonads that would humble a daredevil. Deale got through it with an air of iron efficiency. An amazing man, able to consider the trajectory of a mutilated child with the emotional detachment of a chemist at his microscope—even if that innocent cadaver happened to be a dead ringer for his own beloved blonde daughter. His men were fellow travelers, treated with complete seriousness, no matter how deep or trivial their issues. Deale could get along with almost anybody, in a business sense, so long as that anybody behaved with mutual respect. One person he couldn’t get along with was the by-the-book, automaton type; the type that uses rank and connections as wedges to override authority. So when the tall ponytailed brunet in worker’s protective goggles, black form-fitting jumpsuit, and narrow steel-toed boots flashed her I.D. he automatically became a different creature, the kind of man his crew secretly admired. Deale glanced at her credentials with an air of surly indifference. Marilyn Sharpe. Yeah, pretty sharp all right, and way too good-looking to be taken seriously. Colder than dry ice. Didn’t know her place in a man’s world: started off expecting to be taken seriously, then had to show she wasn’t soft, then had to show she was the baddest bitch in the litter. Lipstick lesbo waxing bull. Eyes deep and cool, mouth soft and wide. But that voice would wilt a satyr: 2

The Depths “You’re Deale? I’ve been assigned to manage this site; those bodies are not to be moved by anyone, not without my okay.” He looked away. “We’re pristine here, Sharpe.” Deale hiked a leg up on a bumper for his watching men’s sake, adding with thinly veiled condescension, “Is there anything we can help you with, agent?” “I want absolutely nothing removed from these victims. Every ounce of personal belongings is to be meticulously accounted for.” Deale stomped over and got right in her face. “Agent Sharpe. If you’re implying . . . if you’re hinting for a nanosecond that one of my men is some sicko stealing off the dead then you’re going to find yourself with real problems here. Meaning, with me.” She met him chin-to-chin. “Inspector Deale. My department isn’t accusing anybody of robbing the dead of cash and valuables. What’s pertinent, and this obviously has nothing to do with you or your men, is property of sentimental value. Relatives of victims of three of Southern Nevada’s last major air disasters have reported articles missing—articles of great personal, rather than monetary, dearness; objects naturally overlooked by investigators, but worth gold to the next of kin.” Deale smirked and backed off. “So old Dickey Riley still gets around, huh?” “Riley?” Deale blew her off. “The Columbia pilot. Don’t play innocent.” “Not familiar.” Deale considered her askance. “Richard Riley was pilot of the 747 that took down three hundred and forty-eight fares and a crew of eleven just shy of Vegas way back in October. The only survivor, if you can call it that. When they put him back together he started raving about ghouls in the desert, stealing spiritual items off the dead.” “Transients? Campers?” Deale smiled wryly. “No, Agent Sharpe. Real ghouls. Things that go bump in the night. None of this is classified; it’s just the stuff that trickles down the airmen’s grapevine.” He bowed for effect. “Maybe I could set you two up.” She pulled on her mask and surgical gloves and made for the plane. “First things first.” Sharpe wasn’t sure what to expect, though she’d been briefed on issues of Riley’s temperament, the urgency of personal sterility, and bedside protocol. She knew Riley had broken virtually every bone, lost copious quantities of vital fluids, been burned over seventy percent of his body, and been pronounced dead at least three times, twice at the scene of the accident. She knew he could communicate only by kazoo, the artificial voicebox implanted in those with irreparable throat trauma, could eat and eliminate only via tubes and traps, and then only with assistance, could neither go outside his protective room or tolerate visitors without their first being scrupulously scrubbed and inspected. Columbia Airways, bound both by contract and public relations, made sure he was well cared for. Richard Riley greeted her in his customized sitting gurney, both arms and four of his seven remaining digits supported by cable casts, the steel half of his skull painted flesh with a waxy veneer. This waxy impression was evinced, too, in the yards of grafted skin covering the man, forehead to ankles. Facial reconstruction: seventy-three total hours of experimental surgery, eleven unbelievably agonizing flirtations with insanity. At this time Riley was suing for no further treatments. It wasn’t a cosmetic matter anyway. The ex-pilot’s countenance was a red and gray patchwork of butt and back grafts, strung together with wire, staples, and tender loving care. Pig hide eyeflaps had to be 3

The Depths extended for sleep, and the removable false lower jaw, clamped in place to encourage basic skull conformity, needed hourly shifting to prevent the tongue’s sliding back into the gullet. He was wrapped in a pair of light sheets for Sharpe’s sake; ordinarily the constantly calving skin grafts, if not permitted to breathe, would drive him to itching madness. The shades were always down in Riley’s room; the least kiss of sunlight was screaming hell—even the fluorescents had to be tempered with special film. Only a pair of small emerald-green reading lights made objects visible, though their surreal cast predictably intensified the viewer’s initial sense of horror and alienation. “I,” Sharpe began, “am here solely for information, Mr. Riley. Please. I promise to be brief. You were coherent in the ambulance, and periodically between surgeries. Corroborated reports have you swearing your downed jet was assaulted by creatures that raided the dead for personal items. Since that accident there have been similar tragedies producing losses of otherwise worthless items that are still unaccounted for. Our computer models demonstrate that these accidents have peculiarities consistent with your crash. The incidents—though not all were aviation-related—took place in a specific desert region of Nevada, miles removed from civic bustle and commerce. The Nevada Triangle, they’re calling it. All incidents involved a human toll exceeding fifty persons; these were genuine disasters. Except for your particular case, there are no eyewitnesses from any scene. “Our agency, Mr. Riley, is interested in satisfactorily addressing the grievances of those relations who are on record as stating their loved ones have been removed of objects of depth. We have to be. These are very serious charges, and the bereaved have garnered very serious legal representation. The FAA is being deemed liable. My agency has partitioned large funds for the purposes of putting this matter to rest. To this end I have been assigned to take whatever steps are necessary. A visit to a recent crash site brought up your name and story. I’m not here to be judgmental; I have to follow whatever leads are made available.” The man in the gurney let his head rock back to view his guest directly. This slight adjustment of angle and additional wedge of green gave Sharpe a cleaner look at something she hadn’t bargained for: only half of Riley’s uppers were dentures; the other side, now grotesquely illuminated, were his own salvaged and replanted teeth, projecting through a partial cheek and serviced by a sanitary white dribble cot. It would have been possible, had she the stomach or inclination, to look straight down his throat at the vibrating mechanism now assaulting her: “I stand by my statement. I was conscious and cogent. I know what I saw. You can take that back to your agency.” The effort cost him. Riley sucked laboriously at the cot while a respirator adjusted for his outburst. Sharpe could see the gurney’s onboard computer calibrating and resolving. “Let me repeat, Mr. Riley, that I am in no way judging your actions or descriptions. You were there; not me. I’ll take whatever you say at face value, but I can’t read your mind.” “Fair enough.” The head fell back on its sponge pillow. “I remember every second up to the crash. I could never forget. My next impression was of being dead, but of still living. It is an odd thing, ma’am, but in catastrophic shock the body does not feel pain—at least not the same animal that has wracked me since—and the mind is clearer than at any other time. I did not hallucinate, nor did I make a deal with my demons. I saw this thing, this hairy little hissing creature, work its way into the cabin and look around. It evidently thought me dead; what other conclusion could there be. I . . . I may have fancied the same at the time. “It went through my copilot’s uniform and wallet, took his crucifix and a family picture. Through the door I saw several more, accosting the dead with equal urgency. When this little monster came to me it stopped abruptly, bent over my face and placed its paw upon my mouth. It must have felt a trace of breath, for it gave a small squeal and scurried back out. 4

The Depths “Ma’am, as I say I was in deep shock. My brain and body were reeling; I know I died a moment later. I came to outside the plane on a makeshift stretcher—a pair of horrified rock climbers had pulled me out. One had encountered a faint pulse. I must have told the ambulance attendants, brave men who somehow beat the helicopters across the desert, the same story I am telling you now. Since then I have remained a prisoner, here, alone save for my nurses and the occasional Columbia representative, in this bleak haunted enclosure.” “You claim they were after personal articles. Were any removed from your person?” “None.” “They feared retaliation, then?” “Ma’am, I was unable to lift a finger or bat a lash. There were at least a dozen within my view. I was no threat. It was not my strength they feared, it was my innermost . . . life-force.” “I don’t follow.” Riley half-lifted himself, his eyes burning green. “Young lady, there are things we are not intended to follow.” His head collapsed back on the pillow. “Not while breath yet fills our bodies.” He stared at the ceiling. “Leave me now. Cling to this precious existence with every fiber of your being.” Sharpe nodded. “Thank you for your time and patience, sir. I’ll make sure my agency and Colombia are apprised of your assistance and hospitality.” “Go.” “So is it gonna be like ‘sir’, or is it gonna be like ‘ma’am’?” She gave the little photographer a dour look, one of many to come. He was shifting back and forth like he had to take a leak, and bad, like he’d been holding it forever. The mussy brown hair, the huge black-rimmed spectacles, the scrawny frame under thrift store combat fatigues—agents are never assigned assistants they’d choose, not in the field. That’s a federal rule, as anticipated as Murphy’s Law, jealously engaged and rigidly enforced. She hadn’t requested a photographer, but didn’t dare object; the fact that her impossible idea was given the go-ahead was enough to keep her passive and happy. “It’s gonna be like Agent Sharpe. If that’s too formal, just ‘Sharpe’ will suffice.” They were sharing the shade of a canvas awning, eleven miles southwest of Boulder City on a desert flat that, except for the blazing sun’s proximity, might have been on Mercury. A staff limo—read: converted school bus—baked twelve feet away, emptied of all forty-nine crew. The photographer was interning; they told her he’d be green. “How old are you, kid?” He bristled. “Please don’t call me ‘kid’. My real name’s Robert, but my official name’s StingMaster.” “How old are you, Robert?” He looked away. “Thirty-six. But like I said, it’s StingMaster.” “Cool. So let me run the skinny by you. Stop me if I don’t make sense.” “Okay, stop.” “Real mature. Now shut up and listen. Accounting has agreed to stage an accident out here, and you’re along to record it. That’s all that’s required of you. A pilot witnessed what he called a lot of little creatures stealing personal items off the dead at a crash site. I didn’t word it quite like that or we wouldn’t be here. The Agency probably thinks there’re sequestered Manson Family-like tribes doing hit-and-run acts in the desert. The fact that trinkets are taken instead of cash supports the concept of drugged-out airheads. They can’t really believe that, but they have to go with something, 5

The Depths so if you can come up with even one verifiable snap of such a lowlife, it’ll be introduced as evidence against all these claims of a shadowy crash investigator looting corpses on-site.” “Man! Little creatures! You mean like elves? Or are you talking about some kinda Delta Force of guerrilla Gollums?” “What’s a Gollums?” Robert’s jaw dropped and he whispered, “Sheesh.” He grudgingly raised his head. “Gollum’s like this psycho fisherman who lives in a cave, man. Bilbo stole his One Ring but he almost got it back from Frodo at the Crack Of Doom.” “Dildo . . . ?” Robert’s face twisted all around “Awww . . . don’t you people keep up? Frodo, dude, is like Bilbo’s adopted nephew. Bilbo left the shire on his eleventy-first birthday, I mean like way after the whole Smaug thing. Y’see, the Dark Lord forged the ring in Mordor, and—” “The Air Force has agreed to airlift a gutted World War Two bomber stocked with gas and a small detonator. They’re going to release it strategically so that it crashes in a cleared area close enough to observe. The bomber’s really a mess; it’s costing more for the lift and drop than the plane, but the Air Force is willing to halve the bill by making this all part of an official exercise, complete with video from the air. You, as our ground cameraman, are going to get in as many shots of that crash and burn as you can, then we’re going to get dirty. We’re not trusting long-range lenses in all this rising heat. As soon as it’s safe to approach, you and I’ll mosey on over for your close-ups.” “And how long’ll that be?” “Forever. There’re no hidden tribes of crazed hippies, Stinkblaster, and no armies of swashbuckling fairy princesses. But there has to be something that makes logical sense, and we’re either going to find it or head home empty-handed. How many megabytes will your equipment handle?” Robert sneered in private offense. “Dude,” he muttered, shaking his head. After a few seconds he held up an old khaki camera case covered with campy Lord Of The Rings stickers. “Hwang-Yu Special Edition, UL. Bangs straight 30mm and digital. Hairtrigger autofocus in whiteline and infrared. Independent shutter and Dynalens. Magnesium instaflash for the life of the battery.” He smirked. “Solar-chargeable nickel-cadmium.” Sharpe nodded appreciatively. “Old school.” An air horn, the kind used at sporting events, barked once behind a little imported trailer. “That’s it,” she said, and swung up her binoculars. Robert began tweaking his camera’s lens. Four cable-suspending Chinooks appeared over a low range, each copter supporting a section of bomber at nose, tail, and wings. At a precise point the cables were released simultaneously, and the derelict, with the payload in its nose, dipped dramatically before gracefully planing two hundred feet into a spectacular explosion and mini-fireball. The fuel burned itself out rapidly and, bearing nothing inside to support a blaze, the hull was a black and blue carcass within minutes. The agent and photographer moved boulder to boulder. The rest of the company waited back. “Now what?” Robert wondered, stepping around the fuselage, still ticking hot in the sun. “I sure don’t see any hippie dudes.” Sharpe joined him under a twisted wing, out of sight of the makeshift command post. “No dildo dudes, either.” She grabbed his shoulder and shook. “Gollums! Look!” A hairy little creature popped out of the ground, then another and another. They stared in all directions before beginning an all-out dash for the plane. “Gollums, Gollums!” Sharpe hissed, pounding the frozen photographer on the back, “Shoot, shoot! Get it! Shoot!” Robert was so nervous he jerked the camera while raising it to his eyes. Sun glinting on the lens appeared to startle the 6

The Depths creatures—they hesitated, looked all around, and scattered. She grabbed his arm and dragged him out into the light, even as several vanished before their eyes. They ran in a crouch in pursuit of the slowest, Sharpe noting where it submerged. She hit the spot feet-first. The pool was firming rapidly, but still soft in the middle. Using her body weight, she kicked and wiggled her way down while clutching the confounded photographer. The desert sealed up behind them. They were on a little ledge that was dissolving even as they fought for purchase, their wide eyes adjusting to a strange half-light that filtered throughout a honeycomb of crumbly tunnels. A sudden burst of daylight to their left accompanied the rapid plunge of another of those creatures. “God,” Sharpe whispered, “it’s real.” Robert grabbed her arm excitedly. “Middle-earth!” “Let’s go.” “Are you nuts?” “Look, Gollums—” she took his hand “—we’ve come this far, and we’re not leaving without some pictures. We’re onto something amazing here. And what are you afraid of, anyway—they weren’t chasing us; it was the other way around. Real quick thinking upstairs, by the way.” Their breaking shelf sealed the issue. With physical support fast eroding, they were forced to creep downward a foot at a time, half-visible wraiths in the depths, rock and sand readily giving way to their tentative footfalls. Maybe thirty feet below, the creatures seemed to pass directly into the soft walls. At last Robert and Sharpe were standing alone on a fairly flat floor, bathed in a dim fuzzy light while contemplating a slender passage into the unknown. “Gone!” Robert whispered. Sharpe looked up and around. “The desert floor’s porous here; light filters down in bits and pieces, so to speak. There’s air, enough to breathe anyway.” She squinted into the narrow tunnel. “Not so much light outside of this hole we’re occupying, apparently, but there’ll always be some at our backs.” “You’re going . . . in?” “We’re going in. Make sure your magicflash is ready on that multigizmo.” “Forget it. Let’s just get some shots of this cave and split while we can.” Sharpe shoved. “I’ll cover your butt, you cover mine.” The dimness increased step by step. In a few minutes they became aware of a similar light source at the tunnel’s far end; evidently another surface-lit pit. This additional illumination, faint at best, nevertheless made navigation possible, and soon revealed a small fragile cavern to their right. They slid inside to strategize, Sharpe almost screaming upon colliding with a hairy tenant. It was hanging upside-down in the manner of fruit bats, but with arms dangling against the wall. As their eyes adjusted they grew aware of dozens in the warren, suspended without a trace of cognizance. Cobwebs clung to the animals’ faces and torsos; their dense body hair was, overall, in sync with the general stretch and weave of these sticky, omnipresent webs. “Sleeping?” Robert whispered. “You think maybe they’re dead?” “Maybe.” “Where’s your flashlight, anyway? What kind of investigator are you?” “I didn’t come looking for bogeymen.” Something hissed in the darkness, long and low. “Let’s get out of here.” “Gimme just one shot first.” “If these things aren’t dead,” she said, “a flash is sure to wake them! Don’t be an ass.” They inched back out into the narrow passage. Sharpe led the way, hunched, one hand feeling along the 7

The Depths right-hand wall. They stopped just outside another hollow, still obscured by the tunnel’s relative darkness. On this pit’s circular floor sprawled a deep pile of personal belongings, spilling out into various wall niches. All were mashed and charred by physical disaster; most were streaked and spattered with old dried blood. Scarves and stockings, a flyer’s cap, two wigs and a set of false teeth—all jammed or hammered into cracks and gouges in the cave walls. A nauseating smell hung in the air; an old, grieving smell of caked sweat and stale perfume. Gathered round this pile were two dozen of those ugly little brutes, coveting and fondling individual items. When Sharpe’s and the photographer’s living aroma filtered into that place, the entire mob turned simultaneously. For a long while stares were exchanged in dead silence. Slowly the creatures rose as a unit and began to fan out, hissing like cats. At almost the same time there came a great commotion, and the little hallway was cut off. The whole scene froze, the silence dragging on and on. A gentle stirring rose just behind them, but they were too mesmerized to turn. “Why—” Robert whispered, “why aren’t they attacking us?” “Because we’re alive, that’s why. These are ghouls. They prey on the dead. That’s why they only go after personal stuff; they want bits of our souls.” “Oh, man! That seals it. Well, what’s to stop them from just offing us?” “I don’t think that’s the scheme of things, Gollums. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this little conversation, now, would we?” Robert flexed the fingers of his Sting hand. “If Gandalf can survive a Balrog . . .” “What?” “I said, like—dude, where do you think they like come from?” Sharpe shrugged. “Who knows? Dead lawyers, literary agents, my personal trainer . . . go ahead and ask, why don’t—” she was cut off by her own shriek as the first leaped clawing on her back. It was the call for a general rush; they were swarmed and thrust kicking and screaming on the pile. Teeth found their throats. A nauseating odor, a rottenness, pumped out the little bellows of the attackers’ lungs. Robert, screaming like a woman, bashed away with his camera until a random thrust triggered the flash. The resulting burst of light so startled the creatures that they fell away. Two went pale before collapsing. Sharpe scrambled to her feet, bleeding at the lower lip and ear. “Gollums! You took their pictures—you copped their souls, man!” Catching on, the photographer lunged to the wall, taking flash after flash while Sharpe yelled and waved her arms, and then they were somehow banging down the narrow rock hallway, shouting and shooting all the way. The brilliant snaps of light revealed scores pouring out of the warren, wild with excitement but disoriented by the quickly repeated flashes. The press of ghouls down the tunnel relented and reversed as their fellows kicked and collided. When Sharpe and Robert burst into the original chamber the whole mob poured in behind them, scattered into small hissing pockets, and stared up bitterly while the two backpedaled along the vertical drift created by their descent, losing a foot for every two gained. The surface responded to a few direct raps of Sharpe’s fist and they were through. “Man!” Robert panted, shuddering on his knees. “Was that ever hairy!” They watched the breach seal. After a minute they staggered back to the base on eggshells, expecting the ground to break up with every step. The bus was waiting in the heat; the crew on board, the gear packed. “Hold it!” Robert whispered. He shielded the camera under his shirt and brought out a black steel film canister on a leather thong. “Our secret’s safe in here,” he said, draping the canister around his neck like a pendant. “What secret? Why in the world—” 8

The Depths He squeezed her shoulders in his arm. “Just for now. Trust me, dude.” “Don’t you shush me!” Robert surprised her by passionately clutching her hands. “We’ve got the proof, man! We’ve got what dudes have been tripping about for, like, forever. We’re gonna be rich, we’re gonna be famous. We’re gonna be rich and famous.” “We’re gonna be committed. Lunatics don’t get rich and famous off of daft interviews.” “Who said anything about interviews, man.” “So . . . what? You’re organizing Nevada Triangle tours?” “Trust me.” The driver, all sagging belly and flushed flesh, leaned against the right front fender with a forearm resting on the windshield’s hot frame, his free hand languidly waving them in. He clung to the handrail for perhaps two minutes after they’d found a seat; his head down, one foot on the first step and the other in the dirt. He climbed in like an invalid, sweat rolling down his back and chest. Robert, unable to sit still, brought his voice down low and leaned in. “Ummm. Listen, sir or ma’am . . . I been thinking. About this whole thing, I mean, and I got the feeling we should like make us a pact.” “A pact?” “Yeah, a pact. You know, like a private agreement, dude-to-dude.” “I’m listening.” He nudged her gently and rattled the film canister. “In here’s pure gold. These pictures aren’t just worth a fortune, man, they’re like priceless. We can name our sum to any TV station in the world.” “Those photographs are the property of the Agency.” “Oh-h-h . . . I dunno ’bout that, man. I’m an intern; I’m not on anybody’s payroll. This camera’s my property, and so’s the film. Until I’ve received a check from ’em, they got no say whatsoever. We’re in this whole deal together, see? You got the credibility and I got the goods. By that math, Agent Sharpe, these pictures of the little Orc dudes are both our property.” She leaned in tight. “It’s like Marilyn.” Robert’s whole face lit up and he stuck out his hand. “A pact it is then!” She shook hands. “A pact it is.” They sat as schoolchildren, hands folded on laps. Little by little Robert’s left hand crawled across his thigh. Their fingers locked. “Okay, folks,” the driver wheezed. “Let’s roll on out of here and snag us a couple of cold ones.” The passengers all cheered and he wiped his forehead, grimacing. “Everybody make sure your seatbelts are on.” Once he was certain they’d complied he gasped and turned himself in his seat like a man boarding a wheelchair. The engine kicked over. “Ah, Christ,” he muttered, and put the bus in gear. As they bumped along he gradually leaned against his window. His face was very red. Bit by bit he sagged into his seat. Suddenly he sat bolt-upright. And the bus banged out of control, accelerating in a serpentine path off the dirt road to the lip of a rocky gorge, where it did a swan dive into an outcropping, flipped twice in the air, and smashed onto its roof in a storm of diesel smoke and thrashing flames. And the ground erupted in a flurry of sagging pockets as the hairy little figures raced out, clawing one on top of the other for first dibs. One of the scrappier fought corpse to corpse, snatching medals and keys, earrings and key chains, finally lurching onto a scorched man and woman locked in a horrified embrace. He ripped open the man’s fatigues and scratched around until he came up with a little film canister. He rattled it against his ear, stretched the leather thong, tested the cylinder’s side 9

The Depths for smoothness. Another paw made a swipe, but he bit and slashed, jealously clutched the canister to his chest, and dashed out the bus.

10

Rage

The night rears, and I sag. Seize and recover, seize and recover. Headlights burn my eyes, but I don’t dare close them; no way. Got to stay upright. There’s Oscar loitering in the half-shadows. I know he sees me: his left eye gleams and drops. But there are no unnecessary movements, no increased tension. We’ve dealt before. Oscar gives a discreet toss of the head, and I follow him down the stairwell, where a pool of pitch obscures us from the sidewalk above. Oscar glares. “Like I told you, S.A., don’t come shuffling around here like the walking dead. Put on some decent clothes, wear something casual. Jeez.” “I need a dime,” I mumble. “Just a roll.” “Yeh, yeh, yeh. You need a dime, I do the time. Don’t play with me, dog. Make this worth my while.” I grip the twisted steel handrail. “I need a dime. I’ve got to stay awake. Got to.” Oscar backs off, sneering. “Then do some espresso, man. Get off my turf.” “Please . . . if I fall asleep it’ll happen again. My rage . . . will escape. I can’t keep letting it happen.” “Shit, homey. What do you mean, your ‘rage’? Are you gonna start on me again? We all got rage. You keep that stuff at home where it belongs.” I hang my head. “No, man. I can’t control it. If I fall asleep again, I’ll go off again. It’s that simple.”

Rage Oscar backs away melodramatically. “Simple? That’s some heavy bullshit, brother. And it’s the same crap you ran by me last time. Read the papers, man, we got enough nut jobs around here. You don’t need no more whites. What you need is a good headshrinker.” “Fuck you.” “Fuck you too, bitch! Get your homeless ass out of here. Don’t you be disrespecting me, chump.” I cling to the rail. “Please. I’m sorry. Just this once.” Oscar appears to seethe. Finally he says, coldly, “Where’s my dime?” I stuff my free hand in my left front pocket, pull out a few crumpled bills and a mess of change. “Eight dollars and thirty-nine cents. It’s all I could manage. I’ll make it up to you next time.” In a moment I feel the handful scraped away and the slim foil-wrapped roll take its place. “There ain’t gonna be no next time,” Oscar mutters. “Now split, fool.” I climb the steps like an old man and stagger down the sidewalk, streetlight to storefront. My mouth is caking dry, but it doesn’t matter. Tear open the roll. Pop the little handful of pills without washing them down. Next thing I know I’m sitting on the curb, gagging, tears squeezing from my eyes. Saliva rushes into my mouth but I refuse to vomit. The bitter, bitter mouthful dissolves and peristaltically works its way down my esophagus. The sound of brakes. A spotlight’s beam hits my eyes. The officer’s voice is icy. “Are you all right?” I wince and turn my head, nodding. “Something,” I manage, “caught in my throat.” “Do you need medical assistance?” I shake my head and make a great show of swallowing. “Better,” I say, and open my mouth wide. The beam breaks from my face, searches the curb and gutter. The light is switched off. “Move along.” I stand and raise a grateful hand, walk down the sidewalk with forced aplomb. But now the night’s an iron heel. How much longer before the uppers kick in . . . the cars hum a sick street lullaby, the library steps dribble and pool. Stumbling, cinching, weaving—sit down, motherfucker, or fall down. An alley, dark and rank. A plywood slat, leaning against the wall. The amphetamine will work; it must, if only I can rest. Sit. Tucked behind the plywood is a bed of flattened cardboard, stained by booze and pee and God knows what. A bum’s crash pad. My arms tremble uncontrollably, a burning flash takes my chest. Recline, behind the wood, out of sight. Close your eyes or they’ll fry right out of your skull. Just for a minute, just for a breath. Just rest. There he is, on the move. I must have slept, and well: my juices are flowing, my mind sharp. We’re creeping down the alley, one shadow after another. He’s intent and resolute; he doesn’t know I’m on him. I follow him over a sagging fence; a fence that fights me, like everything else. He’s looking, looking. And now he’s far ahead, inching around a corner to study the street. I can sense what he wants. He’s found a man walking alone; a man in a nice suit, tapping a silver-knobbed birch cane. His excitement rises with the sound of the approaching cane. Can’t reach him, can’t stop him; my limbs are in a web. I can only scream silently as he grabs the man and drags him headfirst into the alley, bashes his skull repeatedly against the cold brick wall, chokes him to death and hurls the body 2

Rage back down. I holler for him to stop, and he seems to glance up for a second, then bends down to frantically root through the dead man’s clothes. He leans back on his haunches, analyzing something important in the fractional glow of streetlamps. He peers around, and his blank eyes squint as he looks my way. But he can’t, or won’t, see me. In a minute he drops back out of sight, ravaging his prize as the night caves around us. A bed. An unlit room. A smashed-out window framing a dirty false dawn. I must have broken in, must have sleepwalked here. Dank and smelly, but familiar. The uppers didn’t work; that son of a bitch Oscar. Still, there’s a residual effect: jazzed jaws and fingers, teeth grinding for the pulp. My eyes burn like snapping embers . . . this is an old abandoned hotel; rats on the floor, cobwebs in the corner. A half-memory challenges me, and I reach under the mattress to pull up a billfold stuffed with cash and credit cards. The driver’s license reveals a distinguished, elderly gentleman smiling pleasantly for the D.M.V. Just a face in the crowd. But he knows me, and he fears me. I cram the bills into my trousers pocket and my palms begin to sweat. My fingers itch like crazy. Who am I? Outside are scrub-peppered hills. A strange landscape, yet I feel I’ve known it all my life. Climb out into an overgrown alley—this section has been going to sod for years, but once I’m on the road there are plenty of small businesses, even some nice homes. And I glimpse a pursuing figure just to my left—a raggedy, disgusting creature who looks like he just crawled out of a cave. Christ, it’s my reflection in a waking storefront window. The image is so disturbing I refuse to look again. An open doughnut shop; only a few customers before the morning rush. The amphetamine must still be circulating: the thought of food makes be want to puke. I smooth my wad of bills before purchasing a large black coffee. The clerk and customers regard me strangely, but is it only my wild appearance? The coffee is burnt motor oil—I have to get it down, have to keep it down. I can’t allow myself to faint. On a crumb-covered tabletop, the local paper’s banner headline screams up at me: Canyon Killer. Half-memories swirl like falling leaves: a jogger . . . a wandering bard . . . a young photographer. Victims mangled and mutilated. Tension razzles my nervous system in little electric waves. Dirty whites. Have they found the old man yet—the bills are burning in my pockets. Wolf down the coffee, ignore the pain. Too paranoid to order a refill. But I’ll have to do some more caffeine; anything that will help me stay awake. Dawn is breaking as I grope along the sidewalk. I’m gonna swoon, man. What is it that makes a man fall asleep on his feet? Oscar won’t be out until dark. Even assholes have rhythm. Helicopters sweep the hills in the semi-darkness, their searchlights’ beams jerking this way and that. You can make out the call of their rotors as they move between crests. To my left, an old woman sits slumped against a market wall. She raises a languid arm and smiles gummily. What does she want: money . . . company . . . sympathy? I blow her off until I see a sheriff’s car climbing the hill, then instinctively sit behind her, away from the road. She grabs my hand and jabbers her psychedelic whatnot while I peer around her, see the car slow and continue up the road. My mind refocuses. “I read you,” she’s saying, gripping my hand with passion. “Sleep. Sleep is your problem.” I try to pull away but she only clings tighter. “What do you want, man? Money?” I pull out a twenty and hold it in her face. She snatches the bill like a bullfrog catching a gnat, shoves it in her bra with one claw, retakes my paused hand with the other. 3

Rage “You are hiding,” she drones. “You are on the run.” “Fuck you, lady. Let go of my hand.” I push myself upright. She’s trying to haul me back down when her eyes shoot open and her jaw drops. “No! It’s you!” “I said,” I snarl, “let . . . go!” Pull myself free, bang around the wall and slump down the bricks, my head brimming with sleep’s cement. Pedestrians pop out of nowhere. Traffic picks up. It’s all a drone, man, I can’t stay awake. Feel my way around the shop . . . a space behind garbage bins. Don’t close your eyes, jerkoff, stay awake! Don’t close your eyes. He’s slinking ahead, but not so hazily, not so irresistibly. I could reach him, if only I could break free of this mucus. And I know where he’s going; I can feel his want. He moves like smoke, seeping between buildings. Just a shape: a head and torso impelled by four liquid limbs; a spectral spider. He doesn’t look back, though I scream myself hoarse. Down a broken walkway to a gutted cottage, stripped black by wildfire. I’m almost on him when he reaches the sleeping old woman, but my arms and legs lock into a slow-motion spacewalk, my long howl of protest splinters and fades. He has her by the throat now, he’s lifting her up the wall and choking her for all he’s worth. I can’t stop him, but for one crazy moment he pauses to look behind. I’m drifting back out of reach, my fingers cramping, as the woman’s head bobs and bounces, as her arms slap left and right on the wall. Then, with one final, impassioned squeeze, the nosy old witch is silenced. Kicked in the bathroom door in the hotel’s lobby. Shaved and hacked off hair by the handful. A little pomade and a found baseball cap and I look almost human. The sporting goods store provides striped jogging sweats and running shoes. More important: I’ve purchased a programmable alarm device. Once I figure it out, I’ll set it to vibrate at ten minutes, before rapid eye movement can take hold. Everybody’s staring at me. Or am I just paranoid; everybody’s staring at everybody. How long before they discover the old lady’s body. Christ, I’m swooning. Coffee does nothing, NO-DOZ is no help at all. I almost passed out leaving the store. It’s coming on dusk; got to hang on for Oscar. I’ll buy the cocksucker out. The whole wad, man, for just one long, electric white, bitter rush into night. This time that savvy eye glints rather than gleams. Oscar, leaning insolently on the railing, drops and sardonically wags his head. I shuffle up with my hand patting the running brick wall, trying to not stumble. “What did I tell you, fool? Didn’t I say you wasn’t to come around here no more? Now split.” I show him a handful of bills. “I want quantity this time.” “What did I just say, asshole?” Oscar shows his silver caps. “I told you to split. You ain’t welcome, you ain’t wanted. We don’t do business no more. I don’t know you.” “Listen, man. I can barely stay on my feet. You don’t understand. I can’t keep falling asleep. I just can’t.” I start down the stairwell. “You go down those steps, boy, and you don’t come back up. You hear me?” 4

Rage I whirl and climb, my rage rising with me, but the moment’s passion leaves me drained. “Please . . .” A loud burring comes from my left pocket. You can see the fabric vibrate. Immediately Oscar is a live wire. “What’s that!” A hand finds his back pocket and I hear the characteristic click of a switchblade. “You’re one dead narc, motherfucker.” “No, no. It’s an alarm. I’m still learning to program it. I keep telling you—I can’t let myself fall asleep.” I feel the blade’s tip poking my belly. “Back off,” he says. “Please. Just this once.” “Back off, Sleepy, and I don’t want to see you no more. If I catch you on my street again I’ll kill you.” I backpedal down the walk, turning to see a police cruiser nosing around the corner, recovering in time to force a shuffling jog. The spotlight’s beam hits me before swinging onto Oscar, now leaning casually on the railing. At the corner I stop to look back. Oscar is talking jocularly with the officers, who haven’t left their car. It’s obvious they’re looking for something bigger than pissant dealers. The car moves along. Slip back into the alley. There are more official vehicles about tonight, and the helicopters, as always sweeping the hills, appear closer to town. Passing out. I’m going, man; I know it. Dead on my feet. Pull out the alarm. The LED winks cheerily. Set it for ten minutes, and for five-minute repeats thereafter. Back in the pocket. Clinging to a fire escape ladder, the rust breaking off in my fingers. Letting go. Slipping like silt, as the black ground rushes up to meet me. Through the alley and across the road, between the parking lots to the main street—I know where he’s going. One deep shadow in the lesser darkness, he flits in and out of the streetlights, makes straight for the railing and stairwell. The web has me again, and it’s too late anyway—he has Oscar in a chokehold and he’s fighting him, dragging him back to the walk between lots. He drags him right through me, Oscar struggling and gagging all the while. There’s a strong sound beneath me—a hum and vibration. He turns and looks all around, flagging in the dark. And I’m being pulled out of sleep’s murk like a fish on a line. The vibration ceases; rapid eye movement is renewed. He drags Oscar’s body all down that bisecting walk and across a haunted road, frantically bashing the skull on asphalt. I’ve almost caught up. And now he looks back, arches like a cat, and redoubles his efforts. I’m making headway, closing in. He hauls the body down the alley, snarling back at me. Another burring of the alarm, somewhere on the line between grogginess and complete insensibility. Five minutes have passed; it seems like five years. He collapses with the body. After a pause he pulls himself upright, grabs the corpse and, with gathering ferocity, repeatedly smashes its head on the ground. When I cry out he stops and turns like a cheetah at the kill. His eyes, two white holes in the night, widen with mine. He grabs Oscar by the hair and drags him along, weaker now, slamming back and forth down a reeling alley bordered by leaning buildings. Another burr and he collapses, just outside the old hotel’s window, then drags himself inside. I haul myself along the brick wall, yelling in a vacuum, as Oscar’s body passes through the frame. Pulling myself into the room is like fighting quicksand. He looks up, rips his nails out of Oscar’s eyes and goes for mine, even as the alarm shocks us back into alignment. I tear a sheet from 5

Rage the bed, wrap it around his neck and squeeze my way out of slumber. His hands find my eyes, but I have leverage: enough to stand on the bed, enough to loop the sheet round an old wall fixture, enough to use my body weight to draw the sheet tight. I sink back down until we’re face to face. And my mouth spews a mantra while I watch his black lips writhe in sync: Die, you son of a bitch, die. Die, you son of a bitch, die. Die, you son of a bitch. Die. All data regarding the Canyon Killer Murders point conclusively to derelict Owsley Martin as the perpetrator and sole concerned party. Martin was a vagabond living since his late teens in the hills of Laurel Canyon, drifting down to the populated areas when he required sustenance: one of those hit-and-run relics of the hippie era known colloquially as “coyotes.” He was discovered hanged by his own hand in an abandoned hotel room off of Deep Ridge. The instrument of his demise was an old sheet taken from one of the ground room’s beds. The body of a petty drug dealer, one Oscar Benecito, was also discovered in the room, but forensic analysis shows he expired before Mr. Martin, and was therefore not a party to the actual hanging. This was a murder-suicide. Long-time Canyon residents remember Martin as intense and highly antisocial, prone to bizarre behavior and empty nights spent talking to himself while walking the hills. According to several locals who had spoken fleetingly with Martin during the three weeks of murders, he had complained of an inability to stay awake, and these witnesses received the distinct impression that Martin suffered from acute narcolepsy. However, the autopsy reveals that Martin was a victim of pineal gland damage involving the body’s circadian regulator—that aspect that controls the sleep-wake cycle in healthy beings. Blood sugar and serum albumin indicators demonstrate that Martin was not a narcoleptic—that he had in fact functioned without sleep for an astonishing twenty-six days. The tax on his mind and body must have been incredible, producing delusional psychopathia and a complete inability to differentiate between reality and fancy. Owsley Martin was a man who, paradoxically enough, only dreamt he was asleep. One major footnote demands appending in this case. Although fingerprints, DNA analyses, and hair-and-clothing vestigial evidence prove beyond contest that Owsley Martin was the sole culprit in the Canyon Killer Murders, there were three additional deaths in the city, and two in the hills and canyons, that have been attributed to a so-called Copycat Killer, due to their striking similarity to the Martin slayings. The bodies—a tourist, a shopkeeper, a hitchhiker, a deputy sheriff, and a deep canyon squatter—were murdered and mutilated with Martin’s trademark ferocity, and were forensically determined to have been dispatched, one by one, in an erratic line leading from the city to the hills. No indications of a perpetrator, outside of the immediate signs of struggle, exist to cast light on the identity of this mystery figure. A massive operation was undertaken in the depths of Laurel and Topanga Canyons. Some two thousand squatters and derelicts were rounded up, fined, and physically expelled through the highly commendable efforts of Los Angeles County Sheriffs, CalTrans, L.A. Firefighters, various citizens groups, and, eventually, one regiment of the 43rd National Guard out of nearby Santa Monica. Over a period of two years the entire area was segregated by electrified fence, in the locally famous Hands Helping Hands project, a County-funded enterprise that, ironically, provided strong temporary employment for those very evicted squatters.

6

Rage The Canyons are now indigenous plant and wildlife sanctuaries, rigidly protected by officials and citizens alike. They are off limits to all civilians, and are rigorously patrolled by County inspectors and by periodic helicopter runs. No unauthorized person has ever entered the sanctuaries. Yet there are scores of residents, still shaken by the grisly murders, who whisper of an odd nightly phenomenon. It’s just human nature: urban legends are born in the imagination rather than in fact. Still these dwellers lock their windows and doors, still they clamor to congressmen and councils, still they swear of a black figure roaming the hills, raving to the night of an elusive slumber, and screaming at the moon of an insurmountable, of an unknowable, of an unimaginable rage.

7

Author’s Introduction to Elis Royd

Life follows a universal, not merely a global, blueprint. The parameters are basically the same, planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy. On land: four limbs, two front and two rear. In a liquid environment, smooth flanks and motive tail In a gaseous one, forelimbs adapted for soaring and propulsion. Nothing’s cut in stone, and the variations are endless, yet the same theme runs through all things living (life cannot exceed its active window), regardless of the fanciful extraterrestrial properties introduced by inventors of new worlds. Life respires oxygen. Living creatures age, and eventually die (a world can produce only so much sustenance—so ‘immortal’ creatures would eventually end up eating themselves out of existence anyway). Everything fits everything else. Without trying to. Without thinking about it. Intelligence, and sapience in general, are inevitable flukes, not necessities. Life metabolizes. You and I, and anything else that eats and craps, are just food sources for everything else that eats and craps. That’s what we are. That’s why we’re here. Life adjusts . . . gorgeously. Even on an artificially enhanced asteroid like Elis Royd—slightly smaller and infused with a necessarily rarer atmosphere than Earth—disparate beings over many

generations found their muscles and vital organs adjusting by infinitesimally subtle degrees. This holds true for all living things everywhere: as long as there is sufficient oxygen, sufficient heat, and sufficient metabolic material, life will eventually do just fine. The laws of physics cannot be broken. But science fiction just wouldn’t be much fun if the rules weren’t bent once in a while—even with savagery. They simply mustn’t be ignored altogether. So artists, whatever your medium, go ahead and animate the impossible—immortality, invisibility, non-organic life, telepathy, the “living dead”, God, ghosts, goblins and ghouls . . . something from nothing—just take the necessary pains to invent a plausible backdrop before you paint. In all the galaxies I’ve studied, I’ve never encountered a life-form (and there are gazillions) remotely resembling Homo sapiens in character. This is because we are unquestionably the most advanced species. Unquestionably. So heave a collective sigh, guys; we’re top dog, head honcho, king of the mountain. This superiority comes from social evolution (a herd phenomenon), not from intelligence (a very personal experience). It’s how the million apply the one-in-a-million that spurs growth, spends populations, and ultimately makes the world turn. Traits of selfishness, hypocrisy, and partisanship (all ists have isms) are adaptive functions. Although they’re vilified by figures of authority and the media (arguably the very critters most exemplifying these traits), they are necessary, are imperative, are excruciatingly important survival mechanisms—they are what makes us what we are (not who we are). The system cannot be changed. Woe to the blade ignorant of the lawn. In many ways it was tough chronicling the rise and fall of Elis Royd—not because it was confusing, but because it wasn’t. Turns out civilizations, like the universe itself, have a blueprint. Everything, goddamnit, does. So the asteroid’s bittersweet destruction, along with its denizens good and wicked, was unfolding just as I was getting to like some of the characters. Elis Royd, before it crumbled, was a microcosm. Everything is. I sure do hope you can enjoy—and, way more important, learn something from—this tight little history, before it vanishes, like you and I and everything else, into the great and bleak and ravenous abyss.

Elis Royd “You are a little soul bearing about a corpse.” —Epictetus

Chapter One

Beppo took his time on the final grade. He had to: his hooves were split and bleeding, his back aching and stiff. And his little rhia Gwenda—his life-and soul mate, his constant companion— trembled and wheezed as she hiked. A trillion stars loomed on the horizon, but they weren’t the night’s visual attraction. What drew Beppo was a burnt gold to deep blue gradient—a heat aura lying like a mushroom’s cap just beyond this last weedy hill. At the summit they dropped in a heap. Far below stretched Earth Administration, the gleaming nerve center of Elis Royd—thirty square miles of glorious artificial light, flue-vented blossoms of regenerated heat, and great fans for stirring the ever-dead air—all run by a miniature subterranean atomic power plant. According to folklore, the gates, walls, and fences of Earth Administration—known by the local species as EarthAd— concealed soft beds, clean water, and delicacies light years-beyond the simple imaginations of Elis Royd’s long-rotting applicants. Beppo unhitched Gwenda’s little wood cart. “See, my Gwenny? It is as I told you. No more hedgeroots and kunckleberries for us. We will eat as Earthmen, and for once we will recline in comfort.” The rhia’s left foreleg was shaking so badly Beppo had to squeeze it between his paws. “We will rest now, girl.” He pulled out his homemade wartroot flute and blew a crude four-note melody, watching dreamily as twilight quickly gave way to darkness along the asteroid’s craggy rim. Elis Royd has an interesting history, though it’s now just a footnote in the Solar Annals.

Elis Royd Bear with me: the 23 Century’s first great wave of Terran conquest and colonization did not produce those eagerly anticipated troves of precious metals and self-perpetuating photo-energy sources. What it did produce was a laughable answer to that ages-old Earth question: Are we alone? Anything but. The Milky Way is crawling with, is filthy with, is infested with life. So much so that kids on Earth now use a crude and immature aside to mock the slow-witted: “Duh, do you think there’s life on other planets?” This rarity of life idea was at least as preposterous as that antiquated notion of a spaceship reaching planets light years away. No single vehicle will ever span such distances. Our solution was to mimic the old course of European colonization: millions of stations were prefabricated and launched into as many orbits, allowing ships to mathematically leapfrog outpostto-outpost, until the very galaxy was in gridlock, and triumphant man’s artificial glow challenged the timeless dazzle of sweet nature herself. The scary part is that we’ve only begun the exploratory process. And even as the burgeoning Local Group War was creating wave after wave of refugees, Earth found herself the beacon for countless extraterrestrial species seeking to become democratized citizens of their conquering saviors. Applications for Earth citizenship were a global bureaucratic nightmare. A naturalization post, based on an old Earth model, was founded on one of the larger asteroids in the Sirius system. This asteroid was given a rotation with an eighteen hour day, and pumped in a re-circulating atmosphere. Once the place was up and running, it was provisioned with vast food stores and outfitted as a self-contained administrative field; a kind of halfway house for extraterrestrial applicants, or royds, willing to stick it out over the long haul. To make the place more attractive, and to help prepare applicants for the feel of Earth, many species of Earth flora and fauna were imported. Inevitably countless extrasolar viruses and pests were also imported. Great plagues swept Earthmen and non-Solars alike, while Elis Royd, cut off from all meaningful aid, adjusted the hard way. Cadaver-sucking, lamprey-like bleeders popped out of the soil, huge warty leapers jumped on the necks and backs of walkers, depositing their eggs in fresh sores that never seemed to heal, long serrated sleepers slithered from stalks and made their way into the open mouths of slumbering travelers, down their throats, and, through capillary induction, all along their spinal columns. Earthmen desperately turned Administration into a vermin-free fortress with spiked fences and armed gates, off-limits to anything nonhuman, and let the rest of the asteroid go to hell. As the War escalated, funds for Elis Royd dried up altogether. There was no time or energy for exotic projects; the War took everything. It’s shameful now to think of how the asteroid was deliberately neglected, ignored, and forgotten. An abandoned orphan, left to drift generation after generation around Sirius, while the infighting leaders at EarthAd clung to a crumbling, Dark Agesleaning vision of Christian Capitalist Democracy, and the ignorant adapting species tribalized, learned English, memorized brochures, survived epidemics—and waited for the hallowed doors to open. All this history, in Beppo’s time, was as remote as starlight. His understanding was the same as any other royd’s: he was a member of a lower species whose sole purpose and ambition was to be a naturalized Earthman. He’d attempted to finance this dream through hard work: Elis Royd is an ore-rich asteroid, chock-full of prized metals and precious stones for those determined to dig deep enough. But, like many royds, Beppo had spent his life’s scrapings on quick ’n’ easy naturalization plans presented by various Administration-sponsored organizations. Unfortunately these organizations always seemed to vanish under mysterious circumstances—most likely ambushed, rd

2

Elis Royd according to Administration analysts, by roving packs of savage royds. Rather than succumb to defeat, Beppo became a student of the Elis Royd Constitution, memorizing an original copy passed down from his great-great-great grandparents, who had perished, he was told, on this very hill, looking longingly on Earth Administration while clutching their cherished applications. Little Beppo was now two hundred and thirty-seven Solar years old, and Gwenda nearly half that age. Both were hoary and hunched, both were wracked and ridden and almost too weary for words. So it took Beppo all of ten minutes to make it back to his hooves, and longer to right and rehitch Gwenda. It was easier hiking downhill, and he took heart in the imposing spectacle of EarthAd’s gothic West Gate. His imagination, fueled by Administration brochures featuring grinning lily-white humans toting stuffed grocery bags and rosy-cheeked babes, was way ahead of him. West Gate’s head sentry must have heard Gwenda’s tiny lead bell. A cracked yellow searchlight threw a sallow beam all around. “You,” called a voice. “Identify yourself and state your business.” “Beppo of Potter Bogs. I and my rhia have come to expire as Earthmen.” “As Earthmen?” There was a bark of laughter, and a muffled exchange with an unseen guard. “You sure don’t look like any Earthman I know. And what’s that gnarly little thing supposed to be— your racing pony?” “We have Constitutional affirmation.” Beppo pulled a rolled parchment from the cart. “Keep your paws where I can see them.” An older, gruffer voice approached from behind the sentries. A flashdisk illuminated this man’s and the guards’ faces while the searchlight played over the cart. “What’s that you said about a Constitution?” “Article 72-A,” piped Beppo. “‘Any denizen of Elis Royd who dies on Administration grounds while awaiting due and proper naturalization shall thereupon be deemed a naturalized citizen of Earth.’” “Let me see that thing. Post, open the gate.” There was a clatter of iron chains. The big wood gate rose impressively, and light streamed over Beppo and Gwenda. A badged Earthman in loose shirt and pants stepped up, wiping the sweat from his eyes. All Earthmen sweat prodigiously, and all Earthmen stink like pigs. It’s not their fault: the artificially-enhanced environment of Elis Royd will never compensate for the natural, sweet climes of Earth. The asteroid’s other species are the products of numberless generations of adaptive survival on worlds no Earthman would last a day on, and their staple diets, like Beppo’s and Gwenda’s, consist of whatever can be gnawed off the plains and marshes of Elis Royd. Earthmen, by contrast, live sheltered lives filled with rich foods and fattening desserts; all provisioned by those humongous underground warehouses stocked by the asteroid’s developers, time out of mind ago. The Earthman, by his badge a captain of the guard, took the parchment from Beppo’s withered paw and unrolled it in the light. In a minute he called up, “It’s the real deal, all right.” He came to a delicately squared and underlined article. “Any denizen of Elis Royd who dies on Admin—” and looked back down. “You’ll forgive my impertinence, sir, but you don’t quite fit the specifications of ‘dead’. Not just yet, anyway.” “Very soon now,” Beppo mumbled. The captain harumphed. “What’s the difference where you die? Why don’t you just piss off with the rest of your kind? Why bother us? You two can die anywhere.” “But not as Earthmen.” The captain stabbed a fat forefinger. “‘On Administration grounds!’ I can read as well as you, and better. Until you’re within these walls you’re just a pest like all the rest. And what have you to 3

Elis Royd barter?” He looked at shivering Gwenda. “Who’s going to pay good money for a faded-out furball like that?” “Article 74-B3,” Beppo said. “‘Any denizen of Elis Royd seeking sanctuary in relation to any specified clause herein shall be granted entry for due counsel with an Arbiter of Elis Royd.’” “West Arbiter cannot be disturbed! Come back in the morning.” “—‘due counsel’,” Beppo whispered timidly. “Captain, I shall not last this night. Profound biological awareness is common to my species. This is why we have come. This is why we have come tonight.” The captain reared. “You have no legal representation! You and that silly ass can rot right here and who’ll know the difference? Where are your witnesses?” He craned up. “West Gate Guard! What did you see down here?” The two sentries lowered their heads and looked away. “The bottom of the scroll,” Beppo said. “Please.” The captain unrolled the parchment completely. At the bottom was a dated testament to Beppo’s intentions, signed by two score witnesses. The ink was still fresh. “I can’t read this crap.” “Those are the witnesses you seek,” Beppo said. “They retain a copy.” He looked up respectfully. “Certainly a member of the Arbiter’s court reads trans-species?” The captain dropped his hands. “I give up.” He called to the sentries, “Somebody roust West Arbiter. I know, I know. This isn’t going to be pretty.” He tucked the scroll under his arm. “I’ll hang onto this. Come along, you.” The captain led them through West Gate into EarthAd proper. Beppo’s jaw dropped at the numberless shops, closed for the day. There were lights all over the place; streetlamps, advertisements in glowing primaries, large and small blinkers. The roads were sweet, squared, and cobbled; heaven to the hooves. “Pick it up,” said the captain. “Now that you woke him, you sure as hell don’t want to keep him waiting. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” They followed the main road to an imposing structure grander than anything Beppo had ever imagined. On a seemingly endless stairway, he was made to bump up the cart one step at a time while the captain glowered, and he and Gwenda had to undergo humiliating full-body cavity searches while their little cart was shaken down. Inside the building stood the Guard, stiff as cardboard cutouts, their eyes following Beppo and Gwenda all the way to West Arbiter’s Chambers. It was dark in the Chambers, and they were forced to cook there for the better part of an hour, facing a caving old desk beside a faded Terran flag. The place was a humidor for body odor—the whole room stank of Earthmen come and gone. The sweat of concentration, of squabbling, of arguing over spoils and shares, clogged the rents in the walls’ peeling wood like burnt fat caking a crematorium. Beppo comforted his sagging rhia with a white whiskered paw. A clammy bailiff walked in from the hall. “Stay where you are. Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Understand that you’ve come at a bad time.” Now a series of curses rose behind a heavy old oak door. The door banged open and closed, open and closed. More curses, another bang, and then a rickety aluminum wheelchair burst into the room and creaked up to the desk. West Arbiter was certainly in his nineties; toothless, wattled, and half-blind, but just as tough as petrified wood. The bleariness, the wispy white strands of hair—the overall wildness of his expression was that of a very old man cruelly torn from desperately needed sleep. The bailiff brought him his teeth and carefully wound him up in a heavy black robe. West Arbiter slapped away his hands. His voice was a toy flute: “Who demands sanctuary?” 4

Elis Royd “This is Beppo,” said the bailiff, reading from the captain’s prepared statement. “He claims his Constitutional right to perish in Earth Administration with the guaranteed status of Earthman, as validated by Article 72-A, and upheld by Article 74-B3 in cross-reference. The clauses have been underscored in red for Your Arbiter’s perusal.” West Arbiter gestured irritably. “Where the hell’s my eyes?” The bailiff hefted a device shaped like a fishbowl on a lamp stand, carried it to the desk, and plugged it in. He swiveled the prescription-ground bowl laterally, then wrapped and secured the parchment to the glass. West Arbiter switched on the reading light and stuck in his head. For a while there was nothing to be heard but grunts and wheezes. Finally he popped his head back out and said, “I have seen enough.” The bailiff switched off the device and slid it aside. West Arbiter gored Beppo with his eyes. He turned to the bailiff. “Has it been properly disinfected?” “There are apparently time constraints. His death and all that.” West Arbiter looked back. “You. Come forward.” Beppo limped up to the desk and meekly folded his paws. West Arbiter said, “I’ll not waste our time with silly questions. You wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if you weren’t sincere. I understand, by dint of that annoying captain of the guard, that you are to die tonight with chronological certitude. So be it. But understand that, by any sane reading of this Constitution, you can only be a dead Earthman. While you live you are merely a lesser species present as our fawning guest—an unlettered, ignoble creature born only for bogs and hollows, an embarrassment and failure; a dirty, ugly, untrustworthy specimen scraping humbly at the mat of godlike sophistication—a foul thing unfit, by any stretch of the imagination, to bear the proud title ‘Earthman’. Are we clear on this, sir?” When little Beppo nodded shyly, West Arbiter leaned back and grinned ear to ear. “So you want to be an Earthman . . .” He snapped his spindly fingers. “Perhaps I am growing soft with the years, Beppo, but since you are here, and while you are alive . . . would you like a taste of what it’s like to actually live as an Earthman? A last supper, so to speak.” “Oh,” Beppo breathed, “so very, very much.” “Bailiff!” West Arbiter snapped. “Pass the word! Beppo is to be treated as a man of Earth tonight! You will be his personal tour guide. Give him the red carpet treatment. Make him feel at home.” “One other thing,” Beppo interjected. “Sir. Such a small thing. My rhia. She too will pass this night. Gwenda is my soul mate. If you look at the seventh clause under Article 79, you will see that family are included in the Honorary Earthmen’s provision. Gwenda is all the family I possess; I cannot exist without her, nor she without me. Our deaths must be as one.” West Arbiter’s head rocked on his clasped hands. “You’ve certainly done your homework, Beppo. I don’t need to examine the Constitution ad infinitum. What the hell! Tonight Earth Administration is the genial host of you and your rhia, and tomorrow you shall both be interred, together, on Earthmen’s turf . . . as men of Earth!” Beppo fought back the tears. “Oh, thank you so much, sir.” “Scat!” West Arbiter barked. “And if I cannot get back to sleep I’ll have that captain of the guard impaled on his own spinal column. Be of good cheer, little Beppo, for tonight you die.”

5

Elis Royd “This,” said the bailiff, “is the main galley. It’s where we come to eat at specific meal times, but Earthmen are free to hang out and munch whenever they’re in the mood.” “Incredible!” Beppo said. “The aromas! Beyond my most savory dreams.” Beside him, Gwenda was craning and sniffing like a pup. Little by little a plaintive whine seeped from her wet twitching muzzle. “There’s a menu over the counter, but it probably won’t make much sense to you. Why don’t we walk along the buffet and you guys just select whatever looks good.” To the lady behind the counter he said, “Stroganoff for me. Cheese sticks and honey crisps.” “It all looks wonderful,” Beppo gushed. Gwenda’s muzzle slid back and forth below the sneezeguard. “What is this?” “Milky Way pudding,” said the bailiff. “Baked sweet dough, raisins, butter, cinnamon, sugar, warm cream.” “Gwenny says yes.” The server smiled with her eyes. “And for you?” Beppo’s eyes searched the floor. “Just something light,” he said. “Would boiled roots be too dear?” “Hot butter beans and ham it is,” she said. “Corn bread and mashed potatoes, sweet peas in cheese. Butter pecan ice cream with a side of mixed berries and whipped. Big glass of cold milk to wash it all down.” “Tab’s on Administration,” said the bailiff. “And the tip?” “Covered.” They sat quietly until the server brought their food. Everybody laughed when Gwenda buried her head in the pudding, but a moment later the ice was back. “I just said you were covered,” the bailiff muttered, “so’s your food wouldn’t come cold. I’m sure as hell not paying for all this. What’ve you got in that little cart?” “I’m sorry?” “What are you using for barter? There’s this food, the Arbiter’s fees, my eight percent, your burial plot . . . you got any precious stones, or gold in your teeth? How much could I get for this raggedy animal? He’ll have to be tanned; forget the fur. And he’ll have to be dried for jerky. No one’s gonna want to eat this mangy stuff as-is.” “She is to be buried with me. I was under the impression we were to be treated as Earthmen.” The bailiff gave Beppo a hard look. “Okay, Earthman. Now why don’t you tell me what’s in the cart? What’s under that blanket?” “My personal affairs. There are certain things one cannot part with.” “Like rare metals, maybe? Gemstones? Everybody knows you royds hoard what you find. What good’s it gonna do you when you’re dead?” “Nothing like that.” “Then you won’t mind if I look.” He scooted closer to the cart. An odd little panic gripped Beppo. It was cross-species; for the first time in his life he was feeling violated. “Don’t touch that,” he managed. “Fifty-fifty,” said the bailiff. “I can fence for you. You’ve got the goods, I’ve got the connections.” “No!” “I’ll make sure you get the snazziest headstone. I’m telling you, this is your lucky day.” He took a broad step to the cart and yanked away the coarse blanket. Underneath were half-gnawed 6

Elis Royd roots, hand-polished pebbles, various antique Administration brochures extolling the wonders of Earthlings, and Beppo’s personal drawing pad and journal. “What is all this shit?” “My thoughts and artwork,” Beppo said. “Earth Administration literature . . . some rocks I was planning on painting . . . breakfast leftovers.” The bailiff glared for a long minute. “Man of Earth,” he muttered, picking up Beppo’s barelytouched plates and tossing them in the disposal chute. Sensing his design, Gwenda immediately snorted the last of her pudding. The bailiff silently led them out the building and back onto the main road. The little party of three made their way down the darkened streets in a silent file. Shadowy humans, male and female, watched quietly from doorways and hollows; the bailiff flashed his badge and they melted into the dark. Farther on were ramshackle homes, where Earthmen stared from porches; Beppo smiled fraternally, but the eyes slid away. He’d never been so conscious of being a royd. The narrowing streets became side roads, and soon they were following an old dirt path that gave way to a field, a wetland, and finally a marsh reminiscent of home. Now the only illumination was starlight. Beppo and Gwenda pulled the cart through deepening muck, their hooves slurping in staggered time. To their left ran the circuitous pale of Earth Administration: a high steel fence capped by razor wire and studded every few hundred yards with egress-only spiked turnstiles—entrance to Administration grounds required tandem keys for temporary displacement of the turnstiles’ retaining bars. It was obvious, by the dully shining gristle on the spikes, that generations of royds, desperate or slow-witted, had given their all attempting to beat the system. The bailiff used a multi-stepped reflector to scatter starlight before them, and at last they reached a particularly desolate arm of EarthAd—a place Beppo recognized as just beyond Harrow Bog. The bailiff shined his reflector on a sinkhole and turned. “This is your plot. You and your animal may die here. As you lack funds, you lack all funerary expenses. That means no one to cover your corpses, and no marker. However, the ground here is soft, and in time your bodies will certainly be absorbed.” The bailiff gave a little flick of a salute. “Vaya con Dios,” he said, “‘Earthman’.” Beppo bowed clear to the waist. “Goodbye, fellow Earthman. And bless you. And bless all we men of Earth.” “Yeah, right.” The bailiff receded into the night. Beppo began guiding Gwenda, but the rhia went straight into seizure and dropped on her belly. He unhitched the cart and lifted her in his arms. She was too heavy to bear outright, so he halfcarried, half-dragged her through a turnstile, out of Earth Administration and into Harrow Bog. The two struggled up the incline to a solid hill and collapsed in a pile of paws and hooves. “There there, girl,” Beppo cooed over and over, while the rhia bleated and shook in his arms. In the ground around them, bleeders responded to her throes by erupting from the dirt and leaping on her muzzle and flank. “No!” Beppo wailed. “Not yet!” He frantically peeled them off, even as Gwenda’s final shudder ran down his frame. The bleeders jumped from her forelegs to his face and throat, sprouted between his legs, pinned his ankles to the ground. He flailed his arms and rolled onto his back. And the vermin piled on savagely, forming a writhing violet hump. Beppo lurched twice, attempting to rise, but was overwhelmed by the weight and frenzy. And the many sucking mouths passed the precious fluids deep into the ground, to their flopping starving mater, her tapering purple limbs clamped to a hundred narrow jags in the black hole that is Elis Royd. 7

Chapter Two

“Son . . .” Governor Wilde gripped Lance’s shoulders, pinning him to the bed. “I want you to know you’re a hundred percent safe here. Regardless of what you may have heard in the Hall: those are just rumors. The Hoodooman can’t get past the Guard.” The scene was as laughable as it was touching—Lance was thirty-one years old, fully bearded and feverishly balding. Physically, he was much larger and stronger than his father; mentally, he was an eight-year old going on six. On a bad day, and today had certainly been a bad day, the tantrums would kick in, the convulsions take hold, and Lance’s blubbering yelps would grow in intensity until they tore right through his quarters’ walls. Once again the governor would be forced to sing the boy down or, that failing, haul out the restraints before Council, once again, played the son’s illness against the father’s office. “Lancey go sleep now,” Wilde sang coldly, “splash in crystal streams.” This was a proud and independent man, forged with the instincts of a bull terrier. “All of Lance’s friends now, come play in Lancey’s dreams.” The storm was over. Wilde stepped to the window, placed his hands on the sill, and breathed in the night. His son’s room was on the second floor, some thirty feet above the crushed earth and cartwheel-scarred cobbles. The governor looked up, craning his head left and right. No limbs close enough to grasp. Bricks too old to support a man’s weight. A number of dried-out vines still stuck to the wall; he shook one and it broke off in his fist. Only an acrobat could reach this window. His thoughts were interrupted by a series of sharp triple raps. “I’m busy,” Wilde snarled. “The Council requests your presence. Immediately.” 8

Elis Royd “Tell them I’m on my way.” To Lance he said, “I have to go now, sweetheart. You heard.” He walked to the door, cracked it, and turned. The face on the bed was staring straight up, eyes frosted from within. “You’re perfectly safe in here, son, and Daddy’s not going to tie you down this time. So please just go to sleep. Don’t call for me, even if you think you hear the Hoodooman; I won’t be able to come.” The head didn’t move. Wilde froze against the door, waiting for the least sign of acknowledgment. A boy in a man’s body . . . a vegetable for a successor . . . his genetic reflection— no! He wouldn’t go there—the boy took after his mother. The governor ground his teeth and whispered: “Rockabye, pumpkin pie. Sleepy little angel, tucked in a sigh.” He grabbed his sash and quietly stepped outside.

Council Chambers: a structurally decrepit room as grim as any in Earth Administration. Blame it on the asteroid’s natural oppressiveness, blame it on a thousand and one meetings packed with contentious Earthmen marinating in their own sweat. All throughout the Officers’ Complex, and all down the Main Hall, overhead fans barely stirred the stale air. Half the Guard looked ready to faint. The Council triad appeared to have been stewing there forever, but the governor strolled in with an air of complete indifference. The Elder immediately banged his gavel. “Now that we’re all here, this meeting is convened. Governor Wilde, you will please take a seat.” He wiped his neck and brow. “You’ll notice Chambers is conspicuously lacking in familiar faces—this is not a court in the regular sense; Scribe is not present, and there will be no records kept. Every member with half a wit is already fast asleep—we, however,” and he tapped a gnarly fist over his heart, “have business to attend to. This is a strictly private matter, to be held close to the chest between we four very close . . . associates.” The Elder made a great show of getting comfortable. “Now, let’s get right down to it. We’re all perfectly aware of this growing unrest among the royds. Their having a murderer on the loose is their business, but having one of the victims found on Administration grounds is another matter altogether. Those jabberers outside West Gate won’t be the last—and I don’t care how many times they call it a body of inquiry; those brutes can only mimic civilized behavior. They’re claiming the murders are not the acts of a royd . . . it’s the damnedest thing, but you’d swear there’s a straight thinker among them. Who knew they were even capable of being rallied? Well, they’re now demanding the capture of that same silly ‘Hoodooman’, and, I suppose, expect us to lead the posse.” The Guard Commander rose angrily. “Doesn’t anyone catch the inference? Why should this ‘Hoodooman’ contain the suffix ‘man’ in the first place? Am I the only one here intelligent enough to realize these royds are attempting to implicate Earthmen by way of nomenclature?” “Trash and nonsense,” said the Head Administrator. “Implication is a concept way over their heads. This is obviously a word they have transmogrified from our lexicon. Remember, in adopting English as the official language of Earth they received access to uncountable terms and phrases of great antiquity. I doubt even they recognize an inference. Simple coincidence.” “Nevertheless,” the Elder mused, “this latest instance lends a veneer of credibility to their claims. To be frank, I can’t stomach the thought of entertaining even one of those nightmarish creatures in a legal capacity.” “No royd body,” the Governor interjected, “may impress itself upon Earth Administration without first introducing into Chambers a duly elected official. That requires focus, research, and at least a little hard planning. As you implied, Elder, they’re incapable of organizing on their own. So if they do get this far we’ll know for sure there’s an alert presence in their midst.” 9

Elis Royd The Elder said sarcastically, “A ‘Hoodooman’?” He tugged his lower lip. “Still, they’re protected under the Constitution.” He glared at the Commander. “‘The only one here intelligent enough’, are you? Why weren’t you intelligent enough to have your men drag the damn body back off the grounds?” He drummed his fingertips and stared at the ceiling. “These are extraordinary circumstances.” “There is nothing extraordinary about any of this,” Wilde said. “What we have are royds acting like royds. They don’t have the brains to have rights. But . . . if this hypothetical presence did coerce them into dragging one of their victims onto Administration grounds, well, I’d call that conspiracy.” “Governor Wilde.” The Administrator swiveled regally. The old man, with his head notched back and his robes clenched about him, resembled nothing so much as a fading eagle with folded wings. “I will be blunt. This body, sir, is preparing a charge of kidnapping and rape to our list of what is now four royd murders. This latest act, involving an elderly Betsu female of no conceivable attraction to any sane man of Earth, took place within the very walls of Administration. That is to say, the female was abducted in the bogs and sexually assaulted and killed herein. We are all aware that any Earthman can exit these premises unmolested: it is therefore within our intellectual purview to entertain the notion, no matter how troubling, of an Earthman doing his mischief off-premises. Reentering the grounds is another matter altogether; the Guard would have to be circumvented. This would require intimate knowledge of shifts and patterns, and at least a cursory overview of the fortification itself. Gentlemen,” the Administrator turned back, addressing the Commander with his left hand and the Elder with his right, “only ranking officials are privy to that information. A less than scrupulous officer could conceivably, perhaps unwittingly, pass this data to a colleague, a friend, or even a family mem—” “Do you dare state—” Wilde seethed to his feet “—do you mean to imply for a nanosecond that my son would have anything to do with this?” “We only mean to consider the possibili—” “For the thousandth time you intend to use my son’s infirmity as a wedge against my office!” The Elder blew it. “Governor Wilde! I defy you to point out anything in the Administrator’s statement of a personal nature. This is pure paranoia; no one’s out to get you. Now, I’m sick of adjudicating at this level—sick of it! And it’s precisely why I elected to do this in closed session.” He lifted his glass and drained it in three long, deliberate draughts. When he placed it back down he appeared to have regained his composure. “Nobody’ll lose any sleep over the deaths of a few royds, regardless of the circumstances. A royd rape and murder on Administration grounds, however, is untenable to the civilized mind.” The Elder rhythmically locked and unlocked his fingers. “Governor Wilde, our resolution was set prior to your being summoned. It is the earnest suggestion of this Council that you, sir, find and arrest this criminal forthwith. Upon that act the royds will be mollified, and the air permanently cleared of this most unprofessional innuendo. Take however much support you feel necessary. If you have any objections I suggest you air them now.” Wilde threw up his arms. “And you wonder why I’m paranoid. So we all ‘agreed’, now, did we?” “You are not under coercion, and may withdraw at any time. I’m certain there are several good men willing to fill in for you.” “I can hear them champing now.” “Decide.” “You’ll get your Hoodooman,” Wilde vowed. “And when I bring him in I don’t want to hear any more of this bul—this innuendo.” 10

Elis Royd “Then show up bright and early and we’ll make it all official. Godspeed. This body is dismissed.” Wilde was almost to the door when the Elder’s voice caught up with him. “And Governor, about your son.” The Administrator and Commander stopped where they were. Their faces boldly studied the Governor’s. “You will kindly make sure he remains confined to his quarters until the investigation is concluded.” Wilde’s eyes burned across the room. “Should he at any time leave said quarters, the office of Governor shall be held in contempt of Council. Do we understand each other?” He gave a light, perfunctory tap of his gavel. “Consider yourself forewarned.”

“Son.” Wilde placed his palm on Lance’s hot crown. “I’ve been ordered to go and find the Hoodooman. Daddy’s going to catch him and chop off his head for you, okay? You don’t have to worry: the Guard is assigned to watch this room, and for your safety you’re not to go out that door. I promise it won’t be for long.” Lance was much improved from only an hour ago. Wilde laid his head on his son’s chest and closed his eyes. “When your mother was alive it was the same thing. She just got sicker and sicker, and they tried to use that sickness against Daddy too, just like they attack me whenever you’re unwell. But it wasn’t her fault, and it’s not your fault either. Do you understand, sweetheart?” “Yes, Daddy.” “Some day we’ll move out of here. I don’t want the stupid position any more; not under these circumstances. And they’re obviously not happy with me. I’ll retire, soon enough. We’ll move somewhere far away.” “Not with the royds, Daddy.” “No, darling, not that far away. I don’t like those ugly little things either. Nobody does. We’ll find us a place somewhere on Administration’s fringes, far from these stale old men.” Lance’s head rolled to one side of the pillow. A few seconds later it rolled back. “No royds.” “No, angel. It’ll just be you and me, safe and sound.” Wilde slid his hand down Lance’s forehead and face, using two fingers to close the eyes. “When I come back there’ll be one dead Hoodooman. That much I promise. Not for those dusty pigs in Council, and not for the stupid Guard. For you.”

The Commander and Administrator had been assigned as the Governor’s personal little launching party, complete with gifts of cakes, sheaths, and official papers bound in silk. The Governor smiled down on them, his eyes distant, his head full of fresh sights and sounds. So like the Elder to mask his closest spies as wellwishers. The Commander provided three of his best riders, and the Administrator a short checklist. Wilde, dressed for the hunt, stroked his steed’s shining mane, feeling almost a kid again. “You are armed and provisioned?” asked the Administrator. Wilde indicated the rifle slung in its saddle sheath, then showed him his saber and bow. “Don’t worry. And the riders are carrying plenty of food and water.” 11

Elis Royd “You were issued maps and a compass? All things must be in order.” Wilde raised a compass and crude map. “Tell the Elder to relax.” “You carry medical supplies? A journal for detailed analyses? Restraints?” “We’re fine!” He indicated the bags on the last rider’s steed. “Go ahead and check for yourself.” The Administrator did so, meticulously and repeatedly. “Then you are on your own. On my advice, you will not return without someone to show for our troubles.” “Advice noted,” said Wilde. He whipped his steed’s flank, the riders followed suit, and soon the Commander and Administrator were just two bitter old scarecrows silhouetted against West Gate. “Good riddance to bad apples!” called one of the riders, and the others laughed. Getting out unsupervised was a thrill for all the men; it’d been years. They navigated by eyes and ears—the map was a joke, and the compass a useless relic on an asteroid with a magnetic mind of its own. Anyway, royds are notorious for relocating willy-nilly. The riders pressed on until they encountered a group of Ceptu loitering about a narrow steam-fed stream. “You there,” called Wilde, still high with the moment. “I am Governor Quentis Wilde of Earth Administration. We are looking for an individual responsible for a rape and murder within our walls. He goes by an alien name, a royd name. He is known as the ‘Hoodooman’. I demand you assist us in this search, by either fingering the perpetrator or directing us to someone who will. Failure to readily yield will have dire consequences.” Ceptu are a wiry species; horned, webbed, and armed with extremely sharp teeth and nails. The group of eleven confabbed, members occasionally staring back at the riders. Wilde sat higher. “Answer!” In a minute one loped up to the governor’s horse and showed a long curling tongue. “Hoo-doo . . . you!” Wilde drew his whip and lashed the offender repeatedly. “Damn you! I asked a question!” The Cept staggered back to his group and hissed threateningly. “Bow,” Wilde said. The rider to his right handed him his bow and a single arrow. The governor closed an eye, aimed, and expertly put the shaft straight through the Cept’s throbbing green throat. The Ceptu squealed and hopped into the hedges. “After them!” Wilde cried. “Bring me one alive!” But the Earthmen were no match for the marshes and brambles; the Ceptu, perfectly adapted to Elis Royd, vanished into places that appeared utterly without cover. The governor bellowed with frustration, stamping his horse in circles. The riders regrouped. “Wing the next one you see,” Wilde puffed. “We’ll see how tough they are when it comes to a little sophisticated persuasion.” And they never saw another. The men pushed through a marsh and came upon a broad field of weeds and half-gnawed roots. In the center of that field, suspended fifteen feet above the dirt, sprawled a massive wood sunscreen tied to cornering trees, and beneath that screen were perhaps two dozen bramble huts painted with pitch. One of the riders commented, “The Xhul. They can’t bear the light. But watch out. They move fast when they have to.” Wilde called out, “You in there. Come out in the open where we can see you. I am Governor Wilde, here on official Administration business.” In a minute a hide flap was pulled aside, and a smallish male figure peered out. He was swathed head to foot; even his mouth and nose were covered. “Send in a messenger. We are not free to move around in the light.” 12

Elis Royd Wilde snapped his whip feverishly. “Did you hear me? I am the Governor! You will stand before me at once!” A second pair of eyes joined the first. The flap closed. “Ingrates!” Wilde punched his riders with the boss of his whip. “Burn them out! Teach them some respect!” The riders obediently set fire to the huts, and the fleeing Xhul were quickly run down and cowed under the rearing steeds. Wilde leaned from his saddle, repeatedly lashing any royd within reach. “Who is the Hoodooman?” he demanded. “Where are you hiding him?” The Xhul howled with the torment of direct light. “Who is the Hoodooman? I must know! Who is he?” Wilde brought his horse to rear and stamp, crushing the screaming royds with its hooves. “Who? Who? Answer, you bastards! Who?” The closeness of their steeds eventually tangled up the riders, allowing the Xhul to scramble out and dash across the field, arms thrown over their heads against the light. It was impossible to run them down. Wilde was reduced to pressuring a captured female and her infant. He wrapped the whip around her neck and hissed in her ear: “I know you can understand me. I won’t kill you if you tell me exactly what I want to hear.” The female screamed and struggled wildly. “Stop screaming,” Wilde said reasonably. “Who is the Hoodooman? This is government business. You are a royd. I am an Earthman. You must tell me what I want to know. Stop screaming!” But now she was shrieking out of control. “Stop it, I said! Stop screaming!” Wilde went berserk with the lash. His three riders cheered him on, then, sensing his official capacity was no longer a restraining factor, grabbed their rifles by the barrels and got in some licks of their own. The female dropped and went into convulsions. Governor Wilde staggered back against his steed’s flank, and it wasn’t until her body seized up that he realized it was Sirius’s light that had proved lethal. The infant gave one tiny wail and was still. As the men rode away, the governor gave vent to a brief grudging soliloquy: “How can it be that the greatest race the universe has ever produced can be utterly foiled by the most mediocre? What mad deity invented irony, anyway? Is it possible—can all royds be so low on the evolutionary ladder that even basic respect is beyond their ken?” After that they rode in silence. It wasn’t just these two misplays that had the governor so down—a novel resilience in the royds caught him completely by surprise. Wilde was already toying with the idea that he just might be coming home empty-handed after all. “There,” said a rider. In the slight shade of a rare copse rested a small caravan of Rauna coaches, their beasts unhitched and grazing. The Rauna are royd gypsies; a wandering species that gave up on naturalization generations ago, and now clatter along horizon to horizon in bizarrely dressed coaches pulled by exotically crossbred steeds. Rauna are hideous creatures; all warts and wattles, with ratty persimmon-colored fur lining their limbs and torsos. “Stay where you are!” Wilde called out. “Men, form a circle. I am Governor Quentis Wilde of Earth Administration. I’ve been directed to get some answers out of you things, and by the stars I swear I will! Who speaks for you?” The Rauna hunched and glared. A few moved toward the coaches. “Who?” Wilde demanded. “Guard!” The riders unsheathed their bows, pulled arrows from quivers, and took random aim. In a minute a little old female separated herself from the group, stepping up with a dignity that made Wilde almost burst with anger. “What do you wish to know?” “You will address me as ‘Governor’!” 13

Elis Royd After half a minute she said, almost inaudibly, “What do you wish to know, Governor?” “The identity of your Hoodooman.” Her warty head notched back. “And how are we to divine this?” “Everybody knows you Rauna are mystics. Your people see beyond the senses. So you can see what awaits you if I don’t get a straight answer. Who is the Hoodooman!” “This knowledge, Earthman, you can better live without.” “You old fool! Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you realize what I can do? To you? To your spawn and your elderly?” The Raun female considered a space between Wilde’s steed and the adjacent rider’s. When she looked back up all traces of compliance had left her expression. “Go back to your plush sanctuary. Your Administration administers only misery.” The governor went rigid in his saddle. “You’ll mind your tongue, old witch.” He slipped out his saber. “Or I’ll cut it out for supper.” She didn’t budge. Wilde felt the hint of a stroke . . . the heat—and the moment had passed. His heavy chin dropped to his chest. “Open your mind, Governor. It is your son—it is he who is this ‘Hoodooman’.” Wilde shook his head sharply. He placed the blade under her chin and pressed up until she was standing on her toes. “Very carefully,” he said quietly. “Very clearly explain yourself.” The female’s eyes squeezed shut and her mouth twisted halfway up her face. Blood began rolling down both sides of the blade. “I read you,” she managed. “And you know.” Wilde lifted the little female clean off her feet. The blade tore through her lower palate and tongue, emerging between her lips. She shook madly as though being electrocuted. The governor hurled her down. “Torch the coaches and slaughter the steeds. String these little monsters up.” He leaned down and wiped the blade on her homely burlap dress. “Why are they standing up for themselves? Who’s providing their backbone?” He swung his free hand in an all-encompassing circle. “No matter! I’ll not suffer another disparaging of Earth Administration!” It was grisly work. The group hanged the Rauna one by one, hoping a weakling would break before they’d gone through the lot. But Rauna are a tough species, and at last the Earthmen found themselves contemplating a dozen swinging corpses surrounded by burning coaches, with barely enough energy to butcher the Rauna steeds. As the group pressed on in their quest, a kind of mania came over them. Newly encountered species were strung up after only the briefest interrogations; after that royds were simply shot on sight, or forced to lynch their own under threat of torture. Mile upon mile the hangings went on, and when at last Wilde was forced to admit defeat and turn home, he made it his personal campaign to leave whole tribes strung up as his calling card. Most royds were too timid or too ignorant to resist; skirmishes are rare outside Earth Administration. The sharpest fled when word came of the approaching massacres, the slowest were caught unbelieving, and were shot in the back while their property burned. Wilde and his riders hanged royds all the way to Administration’s gates, and by that time it was dark and they were completely spent. The governor came clopping through West Gate barely able to carry the dignity of his office. He dismissed his men and made the long walk to Chambers while slicking back his hair and dusting off his bloody clothes. The Council of three was waiting for him. “Another late session?” he called. He raised his head and marched up the aisle like a Reformist approaching his execution. “You come alone,” Council Elder said slowly. “From our spires we see countless executed royds along the road to Administration, but no captive criminal. Perhaps we did not make it clear that this was to be an exercise of law, rather than of sport.” 14

Elis Royd “The royds are non-compliant,” Wilde heaved. “They’re being programmed, I tell you; they won’t say a word, no matter how they’re pressed.” “Be that as it may very well be,” Elder said, “they were most vocal at the Gate, not an hour ago. There they complained of a fifth rape and killing; this time a pre-pubescent Hila female. The atrocity took place even as you were gallivanting about the countryside, further inciting our very accusers.” “I was on Administration business,” Wilde grated. “At your behest. I can’t be in two places at once. And I’ll take my sport where I find it.” The Elder slapped down a hand. “You were not given carte blanche to engage in the wholesale eradication of our royd population! You didn’t pause to consider the ramifications? Our mint depends on a continuous flow of precious metals—a dead royd produces nothing! Then there is this confounding business of a growing royd self-awareness. Who knows what you may have stirred up. Your tactics, Governor Wilde, have proven heavy-handed and utterly inefficient. We have discussed this matter thoroughly in your absence.” “Ah! And let me guess.” “It is the verdict of this body that you very seriously consider vacating your office. The benefits of retirement are a world apart from the rigors of impeachment. We now leave you time to weigh your option.” Wilde stalked out of Chambers and into the Administration’s Officers’ Complex. Here the Guard stood in pairs, covering each individual residence. Wilde moved up to one and said quietly, “William, I’ll need a firearm. Let me borrow your personal revolver. I’ll have it back to you in two shakes.” William let his breath hiss out. “Governor,” he said, just as quietly, “you know that’s illegal. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to refuse.” “Come now, William. It’s not like I intend to put a bullet in the back of that Elder’s ugly old head or anything.” He looked up with a boyish gleam in his eye. “How long have we worked together, William? We’re practically family.” The guard smiled tautly. “And serving you has been my pride and joy, sir. But this is just one of those professional things—I really can’t. You know exactly what I mean.” “Indeed I do.” Wilde slipped a solid gold Elis Eagle from his waistband, placed it in William’s hand. “Really I do.” William peered down without lowering his head. He removed an ancient handgun from a hip holster and pushed it into Wilde’s waiting palm. Wilde verified the chambers were loaded. “Sir,” William said uncomfortably. “I’d prefer this little transaction remain private. I’m sure you just want to use it for target practice, but if anything should go wrong, I mean, I’d feel a whole lot better knowing . . .” Wilde smiled up at him. “Of course, William. What goes on in the family stays in the family.” He slid the gun under his coat and winked at the guards watching his son’s room. “Just a quick bedtime story to put him out. The kid’s all nerves over that silly Hoodooman myth.” Wilde cracked the door and peered in. He could see Lance’s left eye gleaming in the light. The governor slipped the gun from under his coat and quietly made his way inside. He closed the bolt, crept to the bed, and went down on one knee. Lance was breathing hard. He’d been out; he smelled of roots and hedges. “Son,” the governor breathed. 15

Elis Royd The heaving chest paused. Wilde placed his left hand over the heart. His right hand pushed the gun across the pillow and eased it to Lance’s temple. “Son,” he whispered. “Son . . . are you the Hoodooman?” Lance froze. Wilde moved his face up until they were eye-to-eye. Their breaths mingled. Lance bit his lip and his whole body shook. He nodded. “I love you, son,” Wilde whispered, and jerked back his head as he pulled the trigger. The gun’s recoil and the kick of Lance’s body knocked the governor to his feet. He pulled off the top sheet and wiped away the gore before draping it over his son’s head. Wilde dragged himself to the window. Outside, a billion stars were enough to half-light the brooding shapes of lynched royds rotting over the bogs. There was a great commotion in the hall as the Guard, responding to the shot, ran up from all sides. The governor attempted to address the cosmos. Finding the night too large for words, he said simply, “Forgive me. I have failed. Somehow . . .” There was a hard thump at the door, and another. The bolt bent and gave. Wilde placed the barrel in his mouth, closed his eyes, and calmly pulled the trigger.

16

Chapter Three

“There’s a good boy,” Carver said, grabbing his big Shep by the jowls and affectionately shaking the head. He tugged on a shredded purplish Symaran foot clamped between the dog’s wet fangs. “Okay, Slobber, let go now. Come on, boy. Let go.” The dog, so rudely torn from sweet reverie, rolled up his eyes until they burned into Carver’s. A steady growl rose from his depths. Sheps are massive and naturally vicious; one of the few big canines to thrive in the topsy-turvy world of Elis Royd. Most of the smaller breeds succumbed to exotic pestilences long ago, or were simply stung out of existence by leapers. But Sheps, sturdy animals running chocolate brown to deepest black, are magnificently adaptable engines. A best-of mix of the original imported rottweilers, pits, and mastiffs, they can be impertinent or withdrawn, lazy or restless, amiable, indifferent, or psychotic. So they’re happiest with a master who knows when to chum up and when to keep his distance. Carver tipped back his second pint of the day. A Gate Guard’s lot is a good one: long hours basking on a bulwark without a cloud in the sky. Carver had just reclaimed his recliner for the late morning snooze when an oddly tremulous growl made him crack an eye. Slobber was standing almost perpendicular to the bulwark floor, his paws on the retaining wall, staring hard at the ground outside the complex. Carver scraped himself upright and peered out at something beyond his drunkest dreams. A large group of royds was marching purposefully to the Gate, looking almost organized. There must have been sixty of the things, male and female, adult to elderly, of every imaginable 17

Elis Royd species. Most curious of all: the leader wore a kind of bannered overcoat, and the female at his side carried something like a placard covered with gibberish. Carver sat straight up. “Well, I’ll . . .” He took Slobber’s collar with one hand and hit the pint with the other. “Hey!” he called down. “If you’re not a nightmare I’m damned. What the hell do you want?” The royds chattered excitedly. At a prompting from his female, the overcoated male called back: “We are a committee seeking redress for the atrocities of yesterday.” “Redress?” Carver shouted in amazement. Slobber whined frantically. The royds huddled. The leader cleared his long scaly throat. “Reparation, if you will.” “Redress!” Carver went on. “Atrocities!” Slobber yanked him to his feet. “You’re the atrocities! Atrocious little buggers. Where’s my rifle, Slobbs?” The dog, whining hard, dragged him along the retaining wall. Now the leader was fidgeting all over the place. His female smacked his claw until he got up the nerve to shout again: “We demand redress!” Carver was able to brake Slobber by slamming into a pylon. He clung there, hanging half over the wall. “You demand re—you . . . demand?” His nails tore into the wood. “You?” Slobber’s whine changed gears as a pair of guards edged up from behind. One leaned over and took a hard look. “Messy, man, messy. This is for Council.” “Council, hell,” said Carver. “We’re going down.” The second guard broke in, “Let’s not get involved, okay, Carv’?” He laid on a pacifying hand, but removed it at a warning snarl from Slobber. “One of you guys open the gate.” Without taking his eyes off the little royd spokesman, Carver choked up on Slobber’s collar. The dog pulled him staggering to the steps. “Oh man,” said the first guard. “Oh man, oh man, oh man.” “Just keep out of the way,” replied the second, shaking his head. “Don’t be an idiot.” He hauled down on the chain. Carver ducked under the rising gate. It took all he had to keep Slobber at bay. The crowd broke into small backpedaling groups, completely unprepared for this bizarre turn of events. There was genuine menace in Carver’s face. “Who demands redress?” The little spokesman hunched, looking as though he’d faint. “Sir, we require—we request a word with someone in authority.” “What do I look like?” Carver shouted. “The village idiot?” Slobber strained wildly, making Carver goose-step forward. “Carv’!” called a guard. “Let it go, man, let it go!” “That’s the respect you freaks show humans? Insults? You come here to insult us?” He stamped his foot so hard he almost lost control of the Shep. “Freaks, freaks—you’re all fucking freaks!” The female stepped directly between them. “You—” she said. “You keep your distance!” Carver’s jaw dropped. She was . . . she was ordering him! There wasn’t a moment to waste. He drew back his fist and laid her right out. Came a space of complete confusion, a crazy space, and then it seemed every royd in the crowd was screaming. Sweet music to Slobber’s ear—the dog tore free and went for the spokesman’s throat while Carver railed at the scattering royds: 18

Elis Royd “You think you can come here making demands and we’re all supposed to just smile and kiss your ugly green asses?” A shot from the Gate tore through the spokesman’s shrieks. It was a shot fired in the air; a warning shot, meant to restore a degree of order. “You think you can come here mocking a human committee—like you have the slightest idea what civilization’s all about?” Another shot, then a series. The royds took off in all directions. Carver disdainfully threw out his arms. “Aww, run then.” He wrestled Slobber off the corpse of the spokesman and dragged him back to the Gate. “Bad move,” said one of the guards, hurriedly lowering the gate. “Real bad move, man.” Carver ignored him. He walked Slobber back to their post, collapsed on his recliner and closed his eyes. He ran his big hand back and forth across his dog’s head and scratched behind the ears. The hand, sliding down the muzzle, encountered the spokesman’s severed leg jutting from Slobber’s jaws. Carver opened his eyes and his expression lit up. “What’s this? Baby’s got a new toy?” Slobber growled warningly. “Okay, okay,” Carver said, wiping his hand. “Just teasin’, big fella.”

The inrush of light peeled open Carver’s bleary unburied eye. Slobber’s head rose slowly. “What is it?” Carver grated. “I’m on my break, man. Let me catch some winks, willya?” The light was eclipsed by the guards ostensibly under his command. “I’m afraid it’s bad news, Carv’,” said one. The door opened wide, revealing a contingent of six armed Administration guards. Four immediately aimed their rifles at Slobber; the other two dropped to their knees and hurled a weighted net. Carver was just able to roll free. “What the hell’s going on? Get away from my dog!” The Gate guards gripped his arms. “He won’t be hurt. Now hold still, Carver. Please.” Carver was squeezed between the four rear guards and walked out of the room. The two others remained inside with Slobber. The door was kicked shut. “What are you doing?” Carver demanded. “Let go of me!” “Don’t resist,” hissed a Gate guard. “Please don’t resist!” “Get your fucking hands off me!” Carver kicked and bit his way free. He was just reaching for the door when a pair of rifle butts arrived half a second apart on each side of his skull.

A massive iron key turned in the massive iron lock. Carver blinked up from his cold straw bed. “Story time,” said the armed black silhouette. “Let’s go.” Carver was prompted down a series of halls to Administration’s Main Courtroom. Three other men were waiting outside, each accompanied by an Administration guard. The doors were thrust open and the party of eight walked into a big peeling chamber, partitioned into two identical sections of tables and benches. Present were only a bailiff and guards and, pressed into a huddle on the far side, a group of fourteen royds. Carver recognized them as the stupid little pseudo-committee’s nucleus, minus one spokesman, who had caused so much trouble at West Gate. In the center against the north wall rose the judge’s bench, and, right in front, an oblong table bearing a plain wood coffin. The bailiff intoned, “His High Just Justice, the Honorable Wain.” A black curtain was pulled aside and Honorable Wain strode to the bench. Iron-gray, hunched, bilious and lined. And, of course, sweating like a pig. 19

Elis Royd “Down, down, down. Everybody sit down.” He scattered some papers until he came to a rolled parchment. Wain donned his glasses and turned to the royds. “This is an original copy of the Elis Royd Constitution, brought to us by a royd seeking guaranteed naturalization via expiration on Administration grounds. His body disappeared so his argument was academic, though the Article, 73-A, is perfectly valid.” Wain lovingly smoothed the parchment. “Beautiful, is it not? Priceless; in far better shape than our own cherished copies.” He wiped his face and neck. “Your argument too is valid, and as you are the first to exercise your right to express it, I congratulate you. You are an organized body legally filing a grievance in an official Court of Earth Administration. “Now, you claim in your statement that an Administration officer, Governor Quentis Wilde, led an organized party of three riders on a massacre of our local royds while on official business. This is your first charge. You are suing Earth Administration for unspecified redress to be defined as we go along. “To begin with, you will need to confirm an identity. In that casket is the body of Governor Wilde. Each of you file by now, and tell me you are certain this is the man you witnessed committing the alleged atrocities.” The first royd to peer in was a male Rauxus; pasty gray, with tiny flexible tusk-like feelers round his oval muzzle. He was dressed humbly for Court, in homemade straw vest and top hat, to resemble an Earthman shopkeeper featured in a photospread on one of Administration’s archaic welcoming brochures. He looked back up with an expression of horror and disgust. “This human has no face.” “Governor Wilde,” Honorable Wain said impatiently, “suffered an accident with a firearm in his quarters. The surgeon has done an admirable job sewing the flaps and fragments together. Look again, and be certain.” The little male stared long and hard. “He is the one.” “Next.” One by one the royds filed by. Each matched the Raux’ reaction, and each concurred with his appraisal. “Fine. Now I’ll need you to identify his accomplices. Guards, bring forward the group prisoners.” He turned back to the royds. “Search well these faces, and take your time. Are these the three humans under the charge of Governor Wilde?” A female said, “We do not need time. They are the ones.” “And you speak for your group?” “I do.” “Guards, return the prisoners to their seats. Now as to your second charge. You claim that a guard at our West Gate unleashed his dog on one of your own, killing him outside of Earth Administration walls. Do you see that man in this Courtroom?” “I do.” It was the same female. Carver looked her dead in the eye, his blood rising. The Courtroom was still. “And?” Their stare went on and on. Carver was letting her know he’d butcher her if it was his last act alive, and she was reading him plain. Her arm rose slowly. Every eye in that chamber was magnetically drawn, every breath held. “He is sitting,” she articulated at last, “directly across from me.” She pointed her long crooked first digit. Honorable Wain’s eyes followed the motion and swung back. “And you are?” “The murdered male’s widow.” 20

Elis Royd Wain clucked twice, dropped back his head and, addressing the ceiling, said, “Murder is such an explosive word. I am considering negligence on the part of a Gate guard, a serious charge to be sure.” The royds grumbled and huddled. The female said, “And the massacre? Also a case of negligence?” Honorable Wain ground his teeth. “Take another look in that box, ma’am. It is quite obvious that Governor Wilde is beyond the jurisprudence of this Court. As to his accomplices, they were compelled to follow his orders. As to Mr. Carver here, it is evident he was unable to control a guard dog provoked by your mob. And as to the animal, it is presently kenneled and will be put to sleep this evening.” Carver rose before his guard could respond. “Slobber!” Wain looked over with distaste. “Slobber yourself, sir. Guard, restrain that man.” He turned back to the royds. “Additionally, Sergeant of the Guard Carver was found intoxicated at his post. For this, there is the fine of one day’s wages. As he is no longer employed, the issue is moot and the fee waived.” He sighed. “Once again, I applaud your mettle.” Wain peered over his glasses. “Please understand that your case is not being dismissed. I, like every peace-loving man of Earth, realize that all denizens of Elis Royd are equal under the Law, and must be treated with the dignity, compassion, and respect demanded by our forebears. I am certain all good Earthmen can generously sympathize with your profound sense of loss. But I’m afraid this entire convoluted ordeal is a civil matter.” “This,” the female hissed, “is a case of wanton killing—the heartless destruction of fieldhands, of bystanders, of innocent mothers and children! This is no ‘civil matter’!” Wain slammed down his gavel. “You’ll hold your tongue, royd! This is my Courtroom, and it is run by my rules, and the verdict will be mine and mine alone! Do you understand that? Open your filthy little mouth again and I’ll have you jailed for contempt!” The group of royds cringed, but the female stood tall. Her eyes flashed from Wain to Carver to the three guards. The Courtroom was quiet. Her eyes slid back to Carver’s. “It is the verdict of this Court,” Wain pronounced almightily, “that these four prisoners acted irresponsibly. I find their conduct wholly unprofessional. It is therefore the judgment of this court that they be permanently relieved of their positions, and replaced by men more able to make mature decisions. Have the complainants anything to add?” The little female burned against the huddle. “Empur se;” she muttered, “ulis rawn hom pynon.” “What was that?” “This is not over,” she said. “It most certainly is!” Honorable Wain smacked down his gavel. “This Court is adjourned!”

A tall thin Administration guard, one of the pair responsible for subduing Carver’s dog, moved easily down the hall to a waiting room reserved for folks with Court business. He walked in and stared coolly at the royd female. “Close the door,” she said. He did so, took a chair opposite, and placed a rolled canvas bag on the table. She lifted a pouch off her lap, untied the knot, and set down the pouch so its contents were visible. Showing were maybe a dozen precious stones. She took two of the smallest—a sea-green quartz chunk, and a brownish opaline pebble—and slid them across the table. “As we agreed.” 21

Elis Royd The guard in turn slid the canvas bag to a spot beside the stones. The female pulled it between her arms, unrolled it and took a peek. Inside was the ratty wool blanket off of Carver’s bed, stinking of Earthman and dog hair. The odor was so high she was compelled to immediately re-roll the bag. “I took a big chance getting that thing,” the guard said. She met him eye-to-eye. After a long minute she said, “You are a brave human.” “I could be court-martialed, or worse.” She studied his face: eager but uncertain. Earthman sweat, the clammy stuff, was gathering at his temples. Finally she said, “That would be a shame.” He licked his lips, clenched his fists, and tried again. “They could make me talk. They pay us so little . . . what choice would I have?” “But you are a reasonable human.” “Yes—I can be reasonable.” She picked out a tiny violet chip, spotted and pale on one end, and slid it forward. Without another word she grabbed the pouch and bag and stalked out of the room.

Inside the holding tank, reality was just kicking in. The four ex-guards sat one to a wall, commenting in round-robin fashion: “Booted off Administration,” said the first. He tried to snap his fingers, but produced only a mushy sound. “Just like that.” “Nowhere to go,” said the next. This was true: coincidentally, all four were bachelors living in Administration quarters. “No job, no paycheck, no home.” “Out of the Guard forever,” said the third. “My whole life . . . it’s over. I’m too old to look for something new.” “I’m gonna kill that bitch,” said Carver. “I’m gonna screw her royd ass right up a flagpole and watch her fly.” He turned to his company. “It was her what put us in this position. It’s royd logic: work one Earthman against another. If you think I’m gonna rot in the alleys of Administration while those freaks party it up you got another think coming.” “You have a plan?” “Listen,” said Carver. “I hate royds. I don’t disagree with them, I don’t dislike them—I despise them! So I’m gonna crash that party. I’m gonna break it up and burn it down and ride away with every precious stone and all the gold those bastards have glommed. Anyway, everything on Elis Royd is by Law of human origins and ownership, right? I’m gonna live like a prince for the rest of my natural days, and I’m bringing any man who wants to come with me.” “But see here,” said the first, “you can’t just run around beating up every royd you encounter. You’ll need weapons, and provisions, and a good horse for hard travel.” “This place has an armory, right? There’s warehouses, ain’t there? It’s got stables, don’t it?” “You mean—?” The door opened and the bailiff strolled in. “Okay, I hate to see you guys leaving out the back door, but you’re free to go.” “Where’s Kennel?” said Carver. The bailiff regarded him sourly. “No visiting, Carver. It’s back of Items, but seeing the old slobberer again would just break your heart.” 22

Elis Royd Carver walked up and affectionately draped his arm over the bailiff’s shoulders. “Y’know, Henry,” he said, “you’re the first guy ever accused me of having a heart,” and threw him into a vicious headlock. Carver balled his fist, aimed, and knocked him out with two crushing blows to the nape. “I thought,” someone whispered harshly, “we were going to take it out on royds!” Carver smiled. “‘We’?” He stripped off the bailiff’s uniform. “Was that a slip, son?” “It’s Redrick. Carl Redrick.” “Maurice,” said another. “I’m Albert.” It was obvious they approved of Carver’s take-charge style. “And I’m gone,” he said, edging out the door while buttoning up the bailiff’s shirt. “Quite the man,” whispered Maurice. Albert nodded. “A man’s man.” Carl made it unanimous. “An Earthman.” They soon caught up, and then all four were quickly working their way down poorly lit halls to a courtyard exit. Sirius had set; the rush of twilight was on. Carver, guided to Kennel by the howls, marched up to the cages while his men waited in the lobby, peering through a small observation window. “You guys have a large black Shep in here,” Carver said amiably, thrusting forth his chest. The badge caught and passed the overheads. “I’ll need him for witness identification immediately. They’re holding the Court until I get back. So please make it fast, or it’s my ass.” Three minutes later he was in the lobby with an ecstatic muzzled Slobber. Carver called back through the door, “Friendly fella, ain’t he?” and waved. Once they were outside he removed the muzzle and said, “Put forth your hands.” It was already dark. Each man held out a hand. “Down by mine.” The arms were lowered. “Everybody grip.” Carver clasped the three hands, making a knot of four. “Sniff, boy.” Slobber sniffed the arms up and down while the three men sweated. “Let go.” The locked hands released. “Now he knows we’re buddies,” Carver said. “Now you can sleep without worrying your throats are gonna be torn out. He’ll protect you the way he protects me.” “Smashing!” Maurice whispered, cramming his shaking hand deep into his coat’s pocket. “What now?” And with those two little words Carver knew he was in complete command. “Now;” he said, “now we get us some leverage.” They all knew the location of Armory. Each man calmly signed in, just like a thousand times before. Still in uniform, they marched into Stock. Carl closed the door behind them. The lone officer scowled at Slobber. “Sorry, sir. No dogs allowed. You know that.” Carver said, “Get him!” The Shep leapt almost without going into a crouch, springing, at a forty-five degree angle, straight to the officer’s neck. “Hold!” Carver commanded. Slobber kept the terrified man motionless on the floor, his jaws clamped just above the jugular. Everything went into a custodian’s cart: rifles, bows, quivers and arrows, various handguns, crossbows, combustibles, boxes and boxes of ammunition. Carver tore down Stock’s faded Terran flag and threw it over the cart. He leaned down to address the officer. “Be a very intelligent man. Do not make a move or utter a word. Sleep here tonight, with one eye open, and forget whatever you think you may have seen.” To Slobber he repeated, “Hold!” and joined his men. They calmly rolled out the cart, signed out on the register, and slipped into the night. 23

Elis Royd In a minute there came a high trilling whistle. Slobber released his prisoner one fang at a time. He meekly padded out of the building. The officer, controlling his breathing, gently closed his eyes. “Provisions is on M Street,” said Albert. “Right.” Carver guided them to bins behind the stables. “So you’re gonna watch the guns right here, Al, and we’re gonna be right back.” They quietly emptied the cart. Albert sat on the pile like a wary mother hen while the men rolled up L Street to M, where Carver had Slobber leap into the empty cart. He covered it with the flag and they wheeled their crouching cargo through the main entrance. A heavyset woman commanded the desk. “Delivery,” said Carver. She looked up, bored almost to inertia. “In the back.” “No, no,” Carver said, “special delivery.” He tore off the flag. “This is Fido. He eats people. But only bad people. Be a good people and order up fifty pounds of jerky; beef, turkey, and pork. Fifty pounds of freeze-dried fruits and vegetables, instant coffee, dried milk, salt and sugar. Oh, and eighteen liter bottles of Kentucky bourbon. For medicinal purposes. Please include in that order forty pounds of dried gourmet dog food, and one roll of strong duct tape.” The provisions came up unattended on the freight elevator. The men loaded it all into the cart while Carver did up the woman’s mouth, wrists, and ankles with tape. He then taped her entire body, head to toes, to one leg of the heavy desk. They wheeled back to the stables. “Credit where due,” said Carl, and bowed. “You, Mr. Carver, certainly know your stuff.” Carver bowed back. “But I don’t know horses. That’s your department. Can you fellows persuade the proprietor to loan us four good steeds, along with a couple of sturdy pack animals?” Maurice pulled a shotgun from the pile. “Just watch.” Carver got comfortable with his dog and a liter of Kentucky bourbon. It was the genuine stuff all right, locked up in Warehouse so long the label had disintegrated. A pregnant moment: whereas an hour before he was looking at a dead future without a job or a roof, he now saw an opportunity for perpetual growth, and an escape from the routine of Administration. And in this same vision he saw an ugly little royd woman with a long branch stuck up her privates, screaming like a banshee for mercy, and he saw that bright sticky red branch moving out her misshapen mouth, up her low barrel proboscis, and straight into her squealing lesser brain. Her death would be long and deep and smooth; as long as his coming reign of terror, as deep as the luster of countless precious stones, as smooth as the rich flow of bourbon now warming his homeless belly. A compound clatter drew him out of his dream. The steeds were beautiful, running roan to deepest brown. The pack horses were speckled gray fillies, bearing new saddlebags and harnesses. The men provisioned the packers and made their way to a rusted egress-only turnstile that would lead them forever out of Earth Administration. “Just a second,” said Carver, and dismounted. He stepped over to a dismal tree and snapped off a dead branch. He measured it, with his eyes and with his mind: between the legs, out the mouth, up the nose, in the brain. “What’s that?” called Maurice. Carver slid it into a saddle sheath. “Oh, just my lucky stick.”

“Knock knock.” 24

Elis Royd Carver pulled aside the hut’s flap and stared inside. Slobber’s head poked round his shoulder—the dog’s eyes were gleaming, his gums black and foaming over; he looked rabid. To the huddling Besm family, no sight could have been more terrifying. This was a much different-looking Carver than the man of a week before: his gray-shot beard and mussed hair gave him a wild appearance, and the stress lines of rugged living and three score royd murders made him seem far less sane than he really was. “Mind if we join you?” He made his way on hands and knees, one arm pressed through Slobber’s collar. He sat cross-legged, and to Slobber said, “Still!” The dog grudgingly reclined and just stared: he knew another kill was in progress, and had learned to savor the moment. No scent was headier than royd terror. “I’m looking for someone,” Carver said, “and was wondering if you good folks could help me out. So far I’ve had no luck at all.” He drew a long throwing knife from an ankle sheath, and used it to make his points in the air. “She’s a royd; I don’t know for sure what species. Ugly as pus on shit. But I thought maybe you guys might recognize her if I gave you some background.” The grandmother picked up an infant and protectively cradled it in her arms. Carver’s whole face lit up. “Aww! How cute! How old?” The family was silent. Carver had a worn rifle sheath strapped to his back, and in this sheath he carried the branch removed from Earth Administration. He’d given it considerable attention in his spare time; whittling, smoothing, engraving designs. He displayed the branch proudly. “See this? It’s my lucky stick. It’s for someone special; that royd slut I was just mentioning. I’d like to dedicate it, but for the life of me I simply can’t remember her name. Anybody?” The family’s eyes were all over the place. “Anyway,” Carver went on, “she’s the widow of another royd; some henpecked pissant who went and got himself killed outside of EarthAd just over a week ago. Seems this husband was trying to start a big to-do about our ex-governor’s little hunting expedition, but I’m pretty sure she’s the brains behind the whole operation, not him. Sound familiar? Everybody knows you royds are a regular party line when it comes to piss and propaganda.” He brought the blade up close to the face of an elderly male, evidently the grandfather, and pointed it like a bully stabbing a forefinger. “You? Any bells?” He moved to a middle-aged female. “How’s about you?” Carver’s eyes darkened. “Are you monsters mutes, or just idiots?” Slobber began a long low growl that rose in pitch like a cello moving up the scale in legato. Carver screamed at the father:” You?” He tore the infant from the grandmother and held the knife to its throat. “Emra,” spoke the middle-aged female coldly. “Widow Baldain.” “Ah! And how would that be spelled?” Carver carefully engraved the name as the female spelled it out. He looked back up with a smile. “And where would I find her?” “On move.” “Where do I find her!” “She find you.” “Last chance.” He pressed in the blade until the infant shrieked. “Where do I find her?” The female looked away. “Funeral. Funeral Baldain.” “Where’s this funeral, damn you! Where do I find her?” “Maert’n.” “North of here?” “In Maert’n. Maert’n.” “Thanks.” 25

Elis Royd Carver grunted in the sudden spray, though his eyes remained wide and fixed. “Now, was that so fucking hard? Love to stay and chat, folks, but I’ve really got to run.”

His mind was racing as he strode up to his men, the front of his shirt sopping blood. Carver wiped off the knife, snapped it in its sheath, and whistled. Slobber immediately bounded out of the trashed hut. “I think we’re getting somewhere now.” Albert glared from his horse. “We’re getting nowhere.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “He means,” said Maurice, “that your obsession with this dumb old royd is a dead end. For us, anyway.” Carl broke in, “I think what we’re trying to say here, Carv’, ol’ pal of ours, is . . . how do I phrase this . . . oh, yeah: just how much fucking loot did you pull out of there, anyway?” The three riders were hot, dusty, and dog-tired. Carver looked them over. “How long has this been going on?” “How long have we been on the road?” Carver shook his head incredulously. “We’re already rich as bitches. What in the world is everybody’s big hurry? It can only get better.” “It’s like you said,” Carl rumbled. “We’re loaded. And now we want to spend it! We’re sick of living like tramps!” “Well, I’ve got some big fat news for you, tramp. With a little gentle persuasion, I just learned the location of the royds’ Great Hoard.” Carl sneered. “A fairy tale.” “Believe what you want. I just got it from the source.” “Where then?” “North of here. Place called Maert’n.” Maurice leaned down. “Define ‘Hoard’.” Carver spread his arms. “Picture an underground mountain of precious stones, growing since Elis Royd began. Now picture that mountain gleaming with nuggets of gold, and with silver ornaments polished to a high sheen.” “I’ve heard of Maert’n,” Albert mused, “but I’ve never heard of this underground mountain.” “Then maybe you guys should start taking notes, instead of sitting around on your asses complaining all day.” “I’m game,” said Maurice. “But, Carver, if there’s no hoard it’s the end of the road, okay?” “Okay. If that’s the case we can head home, keep going, or split up every man for himself.” As they pressed on, Carver embellished by way of imagination until he half-believed his own fabrication. But it was obvious his command was seriously diminished. The group bent to a more democratic approach, discussing rather than following. When it came to directions, Carver’s straightforward methods were voted down. Instead, Maurice asked passed royds how to reach Maert’n, and by duly following these directions they eventually found themselves moving through treacherous territory filled with softball-sized gnats and vile-smelling fumaroles. A stuffiness filled the air, bringing about a running stupor. The underbrush, a hybrid of a Terran import and one or more species of extraterrestrial flora, snatched at the horses’ passing hooves. As the sultriness grew, the woozy riders were forced to dismount, leaving their steeds to graze on mireweed. 26

Elis Royd “Screwed!” Albert spewed. “We’ve been lied to all the while. This way goes nowhere. Worse—it goes somewhere I don’t want to know about.” “I’ve got to rest,” said Carl. “Something in my bones.” Carver studied them sourly. “So what did I tell you about royds? But no . . . you guys have to play Tourist instead of beating out some solid information.” He uncapped a fresh liter of bourbon. “Maert’n,” Maurice mumbled, twisting a lip, “Maert’n . . . a nice place to hang, you’d say?” He turned his half-shadowed face to Carver’s. “Now I wonder where we might find that on the map.” Carver swallowed mightily. “Royds don’t make maps! They don’t think like us. When are you guys gonna get that through your heads?” He watched a leafy tendril creep up a filly’s foreleg. Something misty and bulbous landed on her rump, but she flicked it away with her tail. Carver really knocked back the bottle. Carl said, “My guess is we’ve been set up.” He ripped open his shirt. “I can’t breathe.” “We’re mired,” Maurice noted. “We have to get out of the lowlands; look for higher ground.” But he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. “A campfire,” he panted. “Keep away the insects.” “Capital idea!” Carver blurted. He’d already downed a fifth of the liter. “I wholeheartedly agree!” He rolled onto his side, hugging the liquor. “Let me know when we’re cruising.” Twilight came on like a runaway locomotive. The men watched Carver heaving there, occasionally drawing the liter to his mouth and slurping steadily in the manner of a baby at its bottle. Sparks appeared in the gathering dark, slowly drifting to the ground to begin their nightly reproductive cycle among swarms of ravening dirtbabies. Every now and then a long pallid tube wound down a stalk and swept tentatively along the ground. “Mountain of treasure . . .” Albert muttered. “Bullshit like all the rest.” He turned his heavy eyes to his friends. “We’ve got what we came for. What are we hanging around with him for?” The other two were silent. Finally Carl said, “Maurice is right. We need a campfire.” Curled up next to his snoring master, Slobber watched curiously as the men scavenged tinder and put up a blaze. His eyes, reflecting the light, gradually fell closed. “I’m done and undone,” Carl said, flopping onto his roll. “This is as far as I go. I’d rather take my chances in the shadows of EarthAd with gold in my pockets.” “I for one,” seconded Albert, “cannot give you a single intelligent argument to the contrary.” Their eyes all met. “In the morning, then,” said Maurice. “Before he wakes.” Carl and Albert nodded. “Before he wakes.” The men stretched out like the dead, their skulls stuffed with mud, their ears singing. Mouths fell open, gulping the hot hanging air. And the sleepers squirmed and twisted down their stalks. They inched along the ground while the horses, having grazed their fill on mireweed, heaved and swayed on trembling legs. A ruddy mist drifted over the hollow, obscuring the stars. Somewhere a gninr began its piercing guttural call, quickly answered by a female some miles away. And the sleepers crawled across forearms and crept over chins, slithered into mouths and slid down throats, deadening nerves with glandular secretions along the way. On Carver’s side of the fire they were absent. The bourbon on his breath kept them away, and Slobber’s rapid panting worked against infiltration. One by one the horses dropped. One by one the grouped slumberers clutched their guts and went into the fetal position. And the fire sighed and died, and Elis Royd’s vermin-choked shroud fell full on the unconscious four horsemen, three turning fitfully and one snoring well, and on the whining and kicking black Shep, happily mauling royds in a dream. 27

Elis Royd A Rauna coach clattered up the dirt drive running half-around a low brick and steel compound. An ancient, gaunt Utpu female wheeled out to meet it, just as she did for all callers and customers. Her chair was custom-crafted for Utpua, who possess only stubs for upper limbs, and a single, powerful, tadpole-like lower extremity. The vehicle’s point of locomotive thrust lay in the base’s geared arbor, rather than in the wheels themselves. Healthy Utpua are able to move upright with vigor, by a kind of serpentine semi-pirouette. Advanced in years as she was, Irith was only able to propel herself with steady arbor-pulls utilizing the great nether dorsal muscle, where she still possessed the strength of her species. The problem, at her age, was standing. Emra stepped unassisted from the coach. When she was properly composed the driver handed down a sloppily rolled canvas bag. Emra glided up to Irith and bowed. They touched foreheads. “It has been long,” Irith hissed. They closed their eyes. “This cannot wait.” They rolled their necks side to side while their foreheads remained in contact, exchanging pheromones. Irith said: “You consort with Rauna?” “The need is pressing.” Emra stopped rolling, permitting transmission of a single focused thought. “From now on, consorting can only mean ‘with Earthmen’.” Their mouths were centimeters apart, their brows sopping. “I have overseen Baldain’s funeral.” “I have heard.” Again their necks rolled. “Eight days. Many hundreds of mourners, of several species. You are honored.” “Yes.” Emra straightened. Their brows relaxed; the hundreds of gaping follicles distended, the prehensile nerve stems receded. Emra offered, “You wish?” Irith nodded curtly. “You may.” Emra pushed the chair over the drive and into Irith’s main chamber. Irith was the asteroid’s richest royd female; a clinging legend, both feared and respected. Her success only confounded the royd population, but the secret to her wealth would be perfectly understandable to anyone within the EarthAd enclosure, for although the Utpua were one of the species most unlike humans in appearance, they were by far the most similar in terms of cunning, and savvy, and in the predisposition to exploitation. Only one other royd species was on par with the Utpua. These were Emra’s people, a matriarchal breed of world-builders and world-breakers, of which she was a prime specimen. Though Irith and Emra were genetically bound to despise each other’s guts, they could still find a strange, cold camaraderie in their exclusiveness, and in their common distaste for passive royds. Irith’s great chamber was an open display case for her goods. Tools, barrows, coach parts, medallions and body rings—all were laid out on tables and wall shelves. There was no security, there was only Irith. Royds do not steal. “Root tea?” she suggested. “Thank you, no. I am rather pressed.” “Let us proceed.” Irith took over the locomotion of her own chair, while Emra held aside a succession of heavy black curtains. They came to a thick wood door. Irith nodded and Emra drew it wide. At their scent a terrifying scream broke the darkness. Something large began thrashing about, panting wildly, banging against its steel-rail walls. Irith, striking a match gripped in her pursed mouth, lit a high twisting candle. 28

Elis Royd The room was actually an oblong cage containing a single dojhyr, the last of its kind. When it smelled Emra standing there, an untested royd presence, it leapt directly onto the facing bars and slashed futilely with a massive three-pronged claw. Emra was now only the second royd to view a dojhyr up close and live to tell about it. In a state of complete repose, the healthy dojhyr resembles nothing so much as a shiny blueand-green marble flecked with gold—if that marble happened to be the size of a medicine ball, and plated with flexible, wafer-thin scales that tremble or peak according to emotion. When on the move, that perfect sphere takes on a panther-like shape and stride, but in a highly fluid sense. The belly hangs low to the ground, while the long forelimbs and short hindlimbs cock and propel the dojhyr like a projectile. It’s a mainly-airborne stride, impelled by great digging turns of those trident nails, and steered with muscular variations of broad, triangle-shaped wings that disappear when the forelimbs retract. But most arresting of the dojhyr’s appearance is its “face.” The thing has no eyes or ears, no nose or mouth—only a perfectly round, incredibly sensitive central diaphragm the size of a dinner plate. This diaphragm is a nervous nexus; all sensory activity is focalized here according to importance: sounds are received as tympanic vibrations along the pliant rim, and motion detected by thousands of villi-like nerve buds grouped about the center, similar to the waving tentacles on a sea anemone. But scent, that prime survival mechanism for all large ground predators—scent is processed by numberless colonies of spontaneously replicating olfactory glands in the diaphragm’s great yearning heart—a purplish taste-smell nucleus that dilates for feeding, and upon direct contact forms a peristaltic funnel for ingestion. The dojhyr also respires through this opening, and produces its one lung-driven sound, a heart-stopping scream designed to stun its prey. That scream is brought to a howling apex at the kill. “There is no mate.” Irith spoke matter-of-factly, but with a poorly veiled and most unbecoming tinge of sentimentality. “He will leave no small one behind.” “A shame.” On a table beside the candle was a dully shining upright musical device, built like a section of spinal column with seven broad vertebrae of increasing breadth. These were bells of xhilium, a prized artifact of Irith’s, off-display and not for sale. She leaned in and, using the middle stub of her left prehensile upper limb, awkwardly rang the top bell. The tone produced was high in pitch, ethereal, and cathedral-sweet. The dojhyr’s diaphragm vibrated and it leaned toward the sound. Irith rang the next bell, lower in pitch by half an octave. The dojhyr’s claws slipped down the bars. Step by step she rang the bells, until the nether tone sang sepulchrally, low and long, and the dojhyr lay in a slowly heaving stupor. “The last,” Irith whispered in the echoes. Emra turned. “I pay well.” She removed her pouch, placed it on the table, and loosened the cord. Nine precious stones sparkled in the candle’s glow. “You bring a scent?” Emra placed the canvas bag beside the gently shimmering instrument. Irith used her mouth to crack the top and immediately recoiled. “Stench of Earthmen! What is this?” “The blanket of a guard at EarthAd, infused with his and his dog’s odors.” “Of what significance is this filthy thing to you?” “It is the blanket of the guard who unleashed his dog on our committee, killing Baldain.” “I see. You may keep your stones. This is not a commercial matter.” Emra bowed. “Your grace.” “And yours.” 29

Elis Royd Irith now rang the bells in reverse, low to high, and the dojhyr gradually came to its senses. She motioned to a grasping tool leaning against the wall. “Remove the scent.” Emra used the scissor-pronged device to fish out the blanket. At the smell the dojhyr went mad, banging against the bars and hooting by way of a furiously oscillating larynx. “Pass it through,” said Irith. “And mind your distance.” The warning was unnecessary: the dojhyr immediately grabbed the blanket and rubbed it desperately in the diaphragm, emitting little hysterical yelps round the folds. It then curled up into a perfect ball and, with the blanket stuck in its orifice like a rat in a dog’s mouth, went rolling wildly about the cage, smashing against the bars, spinning in demented circles on the floor. When it was exhausted it lay weeping softly, shreds and hairs embedded in its scales. The blanket’s stench permeated the room. “The release,” Irith said, motioning with her head to a lever high on the wall. “Pull it down.” Emra climbed on a chair and used her weight to haul down on the heavy steel rod. A catch snapped, and the rear wall collapsed. The last of daylight burst into the room. “Let go,” said Irith. Emra did so, and the rear cage bars collapsed onto the wall. The dojhyr screamed and bounded into the world. “The last of his kind,” Irith whispered again. “You wish?” Emra inquired. “You may.” Emra wheeled her out; past the curtains, through the great chamber, and onto the drive. “You will not stay for tea?” “I must be at Maert’n by midday.” Emra leaned down and their foreheads met. After a moment Irith mumbled, “I see . . . would that I could join you—but the years.” Emra, gripping the pouch of gemstones to her chest, bent lower and gently kissed Irith on the lips. “Thank you, good mother,” she whispered, and held up her hand for the coachman.

Carver was wakened by the sound of Albert puking his guts out. He opened an eye, sat up, and reached for a fresh liter. Carl and Maurice were hunched on their blankets, looking very ill. “What’s eating you guys?” Carver called. “Or, better yet, what you guys been eating?” He raised the bottle and grinned. “Maybe it’s time you changed your diets.” He took a swallow, mussed Slobber’s head. “You ain’t been in my dog’s food now, have you?” He stood up with a huge hangover yawn, stretched his arms, took a lazy look around, and howled from the bowel: “God damn it!” He stomped over to the horses’ bodies, absolutely livid. They’d been bled white; their only color was in the hundreds of brown sucker rings dotted heads to hooves. “Damn it again!” Carver swore. He vibrated his boot on the ground to mimic death throes; an old Groundskeeper trick. When the bleeders piled on his boot he went ballistic with his rifle’s butt, squishing six or seven. Slobber latched onto a good one, tearing it out eight feet before the neck snapped. Carver immediately crammed his rifle into the vacated hole and fired four times. “You didn’t get her,” Carl moaned. “Maters retreat when they’re wounded.” “Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t.” The group’s little experiment with democracy was done with—Carver was right back in command. “We’re moving out. Now.” “Without horses?” 30

Elis Royd Carver cocked the rifle and laid the barrel’s tip in the hollow behind Carl’s left ear. “I got me three good pack animals right here.” “You’d shoot me,” Carl grated, “in cold blood?” “Doubtful. I’d probably let Slobber have a go at you first. Everybody up; I don’t care how sick you are. Grab the harnesses, grab the gear, grab the victuals. We’re marching back the way we came.” “But that’s,” gasped Maurice, “miles!” “Good for the digestion. Royds have horses, as well as carts and coaches. We’ll snag us a few ponies and be right back in business. And I don’t want any more of this doubletalk and sassafras! I’m the only man with the good sense to lead. Now move!” Right off the bat the march went sour. Albert pitched into the weeds, clutching his belly and hacking up bloody mucus. Carver kicked his thigh, then the small of his back. “Get up, man. Carry your share. Don’t think you can pull this crap on me.” Albert went directly into convulsions, remaining prostrate despite Carver’s persistent kicks and threats. “Leave him alone!” Carl gasped before doubling over. Carver studied both their faces. “No! It’s sleepers for sure.” Maurice turned desperately. “Don’t say that, Carver! Why aren’t you sick, then?” “Beats me.” They watched the men twitch and kick, hands tearing at their ribs and throats. Slobber nosed up curiously. “Oh God!” Maurice cried, and spewed vomit and blood from his nostrils. The bleeders were on Albert even before he’d succumbed. Carver tore out their last campfire pouch, ripped away the seal with his teeth, and wrung out half the kerosene over Albert. The bleeders writhed madly but, overwhelmed by their ravenous mater, retained their suckerholds. Carver struck a match to a kerosene-saturated twig, dropped it quickly, and stepped away. The bleeders whipped back into their holes. “Please, Carver,” Maurice cried. “Burn me too, man, I’m begging you. Don’t let them suck me, Carver. Don’t let them.” “You have my word,” Carver said solemnly. “I promise to do you too.” Maurice shook all over. “Man, I—” and his legs appeared to be kicked out from under him. Carver stepped over to Carl, lying on his back with one hand tearing at his gut and one hand raised in supplication. His heels were battering the ground like jackhammers. A bleeder raced up his trouser leg, another rolled over his throat. Carver squeezed out the last of the kerosene. He looked down into the man’s raving eyes just as the sputtering match hit him. He then turned to Maurice, trembling on hands and knees. Carver dangled the exhausted kerosene pad, said, “Sorry, friend,” and put a bullet between his eyes. He whistled sharply, and as Slobber bounded up said, “Keep moving forward, boy. Don’t look back.” They marched on for what seemed hours. Carver was now down to just a rifle and shotgun, his bow and six or seven arrows, and a few pouches of ammunition. Man and dog sat in the shade of a warty hybrid waiting for the day to cool, though it was barely past noon. Carver slapped a hand on the back of his itching neck, and brought it back squirming with life. With a little cry he hopped to his feet, hurled the leaper to the ground, and stamped on it twice. Immediately another landed on his left shoulder. They came on like angry bees, injecting their eggs in every available square inch of naked flesh, until all he could do was run along bellowing with Slobber barking at his side. Carver rolled in the dirt, swatting furiously, and in the end was spared only by outrunning the little monsters. He bit at all the sores he could reach, sucked out the eggs, spat and sucked out some more. The toxins were already kicking in. He thought he’d go mad with the itching and burning and vacillating 31

Elis Royd delirium; the only course for physical relief was to rub in dirt and try to keep out of Sirius’s rays. The disorientation would pass in time. Slobber had been spared by his body fur; the big Shep urged on his fading master with nudges to the calves and thighs. Carver wandered in a daze for a while there, and when Slobber finally pulled him out of it with a low intense growl, he found himself tangled up in bushes by a winding country road. Coming up the road was a rickety little wagon pulled by a single gray pony. “Still!” Carver commanded. When the wagon was almost alongside, he stepped out waving his arms. He must have been a terrifying sight to the royd driver, covered as he was with hot red bumps and dirt, raggedy and unshaven, a wild look in his eyes that belied the broad convivial smile. “Thanks for stopping,” Carver panted. “You’re a lifesaver.” His eyes ran over the pony and wagon, then took in the driver’s oversized hooded cloak. “I’m looking for a place called Maert’n. I’ve a rendezvous with a little woman there.” He winked and smiled all the wider. “You know how it is.” “This road will take you to Maert’n,” the driver fumbled. “This road will take you to many roads.” “But how’ll I know it’s Maert’n when I see it? I’d hate to just pass on by.” “Steam,” the driver managed. “You will see lots of steam.” He nervously raised the reins. “I must go now. I am sorry, but I am not permitted to pick up riders.” “That’s all right. Your boss won’t know a thing.” He aimed his shotgun between the driver’s eyes. “Now pull off that cloak. I’d hate to get it all bloody.”

Even from a distance, Maert’n can be identified by the great broken swath of runoff steam rising from the vents over Elis Royd’s subterranean power plant. The vents run along the floor of a gorge a hundred feet deep, and this gorge is perpetually filled with steam. Maert’n is a royd word, meaning, roughly, death breath, so named due to the subtle but incremental effects of minutely radioactive steam. For generations the local royds have obtained drinking-and cooking water from the gorge—and tradition being what it is, they’re not about to change their ways. Their method is to tie gigantic resin-painted tarps from one side of the gorge to the other, with a line secured to an eye at each corner. The rising steam causes the tarps to billow upward. By tying winch lines to rings sewn into the tarps’ centers, royds hauling from either side are able to stretch these tarps so they’re shaped like tents. The steam condenses on the undersides and rolls down into troughs positioned along the sides, and the channeled water drains into casks and barrels on the clifftops. There are dozens of these peaked tarps running above the gorge. They don’t catch all the steam, of course; plenty escapes to give Maert’n her famous hazy horizon. The man in the little wooden wagon pulled his pony to a halt. He’d been following the long road that runs along the clifftop, looking for a bridge or some sign of habitation. He wiped his face with the hood of his cloak and studied a copse of trees opposite the gorge. There were huts and several spaces for cooking and washing, and what appeared to be some kind of inn. A large black dog jumped out of the cart. The man reached behind him and, carefully and systematically, reloaded and double-checked a rifle and shotgun. He shrugged on a quiver and bow, then tightened his throwing knife’s ankle strap. Just before descending he pulled out an ornately graven three-foot branch. One whittled tip was as sharp as a thorn. He kissed this branch and slid it into a shoulder sheath. With the dog champing at 32

Elis Royd his side, he made certain the weapons were concealed by the cloak, and pulled the hood low over his face. Then, scratching his arms like crazy, he began the slow hike to the inn.

“Good afternoon.” There must have been two dozen royds lounging at tables in the inn, and perhaps a dozen more in the kitchen and playroom. Nobody was lounging any more. Every face in the place was cut in stone, and staring only at the giant hooded figure taking up the rear doorway. “I’m looking for a certain royd female. You’ll all know who she is when I mention her name—heck, the way I understand it, she’s just about famous around here.” The figure whistled softly. An enormous black dog appeared behind him and quickly made its way in. The two moved quietly down the aisle between tables. “Her name’s Emra. She’s a million years old and physically too disgusting to describe. But she took something precious from me. It’s called a livelihood, though I doubt any of you’d be familiar with the concept.” He used his concealed weapons to raise the cloak, placed the rifle’s barrel in a young royd’s face and the shotgun’s barrel in another’s. “Emra,” he whispered. “Say it.” Both royds froze up. “Say ‘Emra’. If you don’t I’ll blow your fucking heads off and my dog will eat what’s left.” The royds couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Carver threw back his head, bellowed, “Where’s Emra!” and simultaneously fired the rifle and shotgun. The whole inn erupted with screams. Carver stomped through the place, blasting anybody available and shouting, “Where’s Emra? Where’s Emra? Where’s Emra?” Slobber took care of the slowest runners; Carver pursued the rest outside. “Where’s Emra?” he howled, shooting fleeing royds in the back. The little figures seemed to vanish in the trees. Carver was able to kill only the ones brought down by Slobber, and, dogs being dogs, the Shep wasted precious time mauling single royds, allowing most to escape. Carver moved out of the trees into the open, halfway between the inn and the gorge. He whistled sharply. In seconds he was joined by Slobber. “Come on out of there!” he called. “Come on out and I won’t hurt you. All I want is one little answer. You just tell me where I can find that rat whore and I’ll leave you guys alone.” In response there came the weirdest scream Carver had ever heard. He turned and stared up at a rocky knoll some two hundred yards away, where a round bluish-green thing was bouncing on its haunches, sniffing left and right. “Well, fuck me,” Carver mumbled, mesmerized. The thing appeared to catch its bearings. It faced the man and dog, screamed again, and charged downhill. It came directly at them, full-tilt, fairly soaring between bounds. When it was only a dozen feet away, Slobber shot out of his crouch and brought it down. The two rolled off as a unit, snarling and panting. They fought all down the grade and up to the tree line, clear to the clifftop and back, sometimes thrashing hysterically, sometimes locked up in a compound death grip. About that grip: Slobber had his jaws closed permanently below the dojhyr’s diaphragm, while the dojhyr’s spike-like claws had the Shep in two places—the throat and head. There came a moment when time seemed to freeze. A determined peal rose out of the dojhyr, followed in a few seconds by a cry from Slobber that broke Carver’s heart. In a dazzling move the 33

Elis Royd dojhyr ripped off the dog’s head—tore it, like a strongman sundering a phone book, and hurled the parts down. Carver immediately dropped to one knee. He didn’t waste time: before the upright and fully extended dojhyr could reclaim his scent he pulled out his bow and an arrow, drew a bead, and placed a shaft in the animal’s right shoulder. The blind dojhyr felt about, grasped the arrow, and snapped the shaft. Carver tore off the hooded cloak. He retreated a few steps, drawing out his rifle as he moved. This time he lay full-out on his belly, took careful aim, and shot the hunching dojhyr in what he estimated was the breast. The thing screamed and spun like a top. When it stopped spinning it was facing straight at Carver, the diaphragm huffing and twitching rapidly. Carver retreated ten paces and fired again: same result. Still backpedaling toward the gorge, he paused every ten paces to get off another round. But now the bleeding dojhyr was stalking him, and Carver was running those paces before firing. When the rifle’s magazine was spent he dropped everything and took off at a sprint. With nowhere else to turn, he ran back and forth along the clifftop until he staggered out onto a little precipice and found himself cornered. The dojhyr veered as it came on, perfectly following Carver’s deliberately erratic dash. Even so, it was badly damaged, its focus impaired. Sensing this, Carver kept low and backed up as quietly as possible. But now he was at the narrow end of a wedge overlooking the misting abyss, and his pursuer had him cut off. He faked a run to his right; the dojhyr moved to its left. He then tried to his left and got a perfectly timed response. The animal went down on all fours and approached slowly, slapping its foreclaws left and right in anticipation. Carver laid on his belly, gently using his elbows and knees to walk his body backward until his feet encountered only space. Without looking away, he began to shinny down the cliff. It was a bad spot for shinnying; a terrible spot. He hadn’t managed five feet before his root handholds gave. Carver slipped a few more feet and found himself dangling by a hand and foot, almost obscured by rising steam. He managed to kick out a toehold, but the chalky earth gave at once. In a minute the bloody blue and green globe loomed above him. Carver could tell his scent was being torn by the hot mist; he saw every oozing detail in that obscene diaphragm, wiggling erratically. Now the dojhyr stood erect and dug its rear claws deep into the ground. It spread its forelimbs very wide and, incredibly, began to descend its upper body in an arcing trajectory, inch by inch, using its wing flaps to buoy against the air. Carver watched its hindlegs trembling with the strain. The billowed body extended almost perpendicular to the cliff, then, lowering in slow motion, gradually tucked into itself until the entire animal, supported only by its rear claws, was pointing downward and away from him at a fifteen degree angle. After hanging there like a bat for a few seconds, the dojhyr used its front claws to drag itself down foot by foot, stretching its body to the limit. When both claws were firmly planted on either side of Carver’s head, it abruptly twisted its distended neck and, the diaphragm right in Carver’s face, screamed the scream of the kill. In one move Carver whipped his throwing knife from its ankle sheath and plunged the blade directly into that respiring funnel. The whole diaphragm collapsed. Twin geysers of blood blew into the steam, and the dojhyr plummeted a hundred feet to the iron grates below. Carver was left hanging by one hand while the waving knife bit repeatedly, and ineffectually, into the cliff’s side. The hand went numb as blood left his arm. He felt the last of his strength going, and with it his consciousness. Not two feet above him, a sudden flurry of activity knocked out a crudely plugged aperture in the cliff’s side. A pair of odd yellowish hands with long clawed fingers pulled away the dirt, and the narrow, pale-eyed head of a qrty poked out of its burrow. When it saw Carver dangling just below, it gripped the broken roots around the opening and bobbed its head in dismay. 34

Elis Royd “Please,” Carver grated. “Mercy.” The qrty cocked its head left and right. “Maur-sai? Plees?” “Mercy,” Carver repeated. He managed to wedge one boot into the cliff wall, but the spot was crumbling even as he dug in. He released the knife and desperately scraped with his nails. “Maur-sai?” The qrty tentatively moved a hand forward. Its fingers twitched just above Carver’s. “Maur-sai? Plees?” “Yes,” Carver managed. “Mercy.”

Up on the field, a colorfully dressed coach wobbled to a halt and a small royd female carefully climbed down. Without a word to the coachman, she padded through the weeds to a pair of dark objects scattered some twenty feet apart. The larger object was a beheaded Shep, its body covered with slashes and puncture wounds. The smaller was the dog’s head, its contorted muzzle frozen in a permanent snarl. Forty feet down lay an old gray hooded cloak, and a little farther on a miscellaneous sprawl of weapons. Her eyes fell on a deep three-nailed print, then another. The royd followed the trail with great intensity, steam settling on her shoulders and brow. She came to the precipice and peered over, standing perched only a few feet west of the flagging drama some ten feet below. The disturbance caused a small chunk of loosed earth to tumble and disintegrate. The qrty looked up, its whole face pleated by concern. “Maur-sai? Plees?” “For the love . . .” Carver gasped. “Oh, please.” The female shook her head sharply. “No. Septu lai mot ennari. No mercy.” The qrty hung its head and quietly backpedaled into its hole. Carver’s raging eyes locked with the female’s. “You bitch,” he gasped. His throat seized. He plummeted into the steam unable to scream, still staring up at the tiny figure watching him fall. Emra studied the rising haze until her eyes were burning. She turned and strode with great dignity across the field, pausing twice to sharply clap her hands. Royds loitering in the trees ducked and scattered; the show was over. When she reached the vestiges of battle, she poked about until she came up with Carver’s lucky stick. She grasped the branch in her left hand, picked up Slobber’s head in her right, and glided to the coach. The driver helped her up, then placed the dog’s head on the bench between them. Emra wedged the highly-worked branch into a space between the bench and iron frame, so that the top eighteen inches pointed up and to the fore. She and the coachman jammed Slobber’s head onto the branch; their primitive version of a hood ornament. Emra twisted and adjusted the head until it faced directly forward. “We go now?” the coachman panted. “Yes, now we begin.”

35

Chapter Four

Every royd has its day. For Emra it was the moment of coronation; an event she hadn’t sought, didn’t want, and wouldn’t have accepted at any other moment in her life. But this was a ceremony beyond philosophy or politics; this was coronation by acclamation. A burlap wrap, a crown of thatch, and two thousand, six hundred and thirty-four admirers overwhelmed by the splendor of it all. The broad field on Maertn’s side of Runoff Gorge contains several knolls. The largest of these is named Temur Sam, or, in Earthman, Wrath’s Knee. This knoll has the distinction of capping a rise between diverging cart roads, and affords its climber a gorgeous view of East Valley shimmering in the power plant’s dissipating steam. Temur Sam has for generations held a dim spiritual significance for the locals. That appeal is purely symbolic—royds, an awkward amalgam of tribalized species struggling to survive on a godforsaken asteroid, have no religion. Now, an imposing speaker, with a vital message and at least a little charisma, can readily use Temur Sam to his/her advantage. Emra possessed that charisma in spades: bruised aplomb, a brooding mien, a dark aura—what all sincere mystics know as doom. Used well, it’s much more effective than hype. Unrolled in her hands was a copy of the original Elis Royd Constitution. She was quoting it now; a demigod addressing a sea of subjects from an island’s lofty peak: “‘All denizens of Elis Royd are citizens of the great system Canis Major, and are the legal beneficiaries of their godmother Earth. We are all grist of the stars, and as such we are equal in 36

Elis Royd every molecule we inherit, in every breath we respire, in every future we dream’.” She looked down at the rapt, upturned faces. “Heady stuff, is it not?” She went on: “‘Denizens of Elis Royd are therefore by definition neighbors and compatriots. No one individual shall be subservient to another, and no race shall be considered inferior, or treated as such. This naturalization asteroid is intended as a model of democratic efficiency, and, like her ancient Terran namesake Ellis Island, exists as a gateway to a better life for all. Any person or party who usurps this ideal fundamentally acts as an enemy of democracy itself’.” Emra paused for effect. “Again, noble words meant to inspire confidence and trust.” Looking round with the profoundest gravity, she very slowly and deliberately ripped the parchment down the center and committed the halves to a breeze. “Earth Administration has soiled this fine document since its inception. They are the ‘enemy of democracy itself.’ I have analyzed this Constitution in depth. Little, if anything, remotely resembles the tyranny overshadowing us today. It is time for all royds to come together under a common cause: the reversing of a trend that has persisted so long it has become a straightforward fact of our lives—the cell-deep belief that we are somehow inferior to Earthmen; that they belong in their cushy fortress and we in our bitter swamps.” To the bereaved sprawl below her—hundreds who’d lost family and homes to a gang of arrogant marauders a long time coming—she stated with resounding clarity: “As your chosen Queen I hereby pledge my time and energy to bringing the monster of EarthAd to its knees. I intend a dialogue on equal ground, and am sending an emissary with that very proposal. Upon their reciprocation of this act, the resurrection of Elis Royd begins!”

At night Maert’n’s faintly radioactive steam condenses to resemble a glistening fog, lending her low primitive dwellings a presence both brooding and enchanted. The soft yellow glow of her inn’s famous candelabrum can be seen for half a mile, surrounded by the tiny single lamps of individual huts. Every once in a while, the whole place just gets swallowed up in mist. That broad homey inn was now Emra’s loaned headquarters, or “palace”—not at all a bad deal for the original keeper, who was entertaining way more business than he could handle. The concept of royalty simply boggled royd minds. They left their ruts and differences behind, hiking from all corners of the asteroid to pay tribute in precious metals and stones. Had Emra the necessary arrogance, she might have viewed her new subjects as a virtually inexhaustible war chest. But wealth and acquisition make very little sense in a world of bogs and canyons, and besides, her heart was set on a diplomatic solution. All in good time, that needed haughtiness would come. Emra was no stranger: she knew grief, she knew hatred, she knew bitterness and resolve—she was already halfway there. A zobb snuffled through the lobby’s inner door, looked quickly left and right, and grotesquely slithered to his queen’s feet. Emra tucked in her slippers before he could make a mess of them. “What now?” “An on-voy. An esimessary—” he bounced his muzzle on the floorboards in frustration “—a messenger human. From EarthAd, in response to your summons.” “Send him in.” The zobb backpedaled on his belly, sweeping his long speckled nose left and right. 37

Elis Royd In a minute Emra could see a squat silhouette framed in the main doorway. The zobb flopped ahead, leading this figure across the lobby and into the inn proper. “Withdraw,” Emra commanded. The zobb nodded and nodded, grasped the knob in his mouth, and pulled the door closed. The emissary cagily took in the room, an obsequious half-smile partly lighting his face. He removed his high emblazoned hat and bowed. The man was quite short and stout, with fat greasy lips and tiny darting eyes. The stench of Earthmen clung to his every move. He unwrapped his scarves, bobbing his head like a drowned man at each exaggerated revolution, then used the hat’s brim to swat mist from his overcoat’s sleeves. “Your majesty.” Emra nodded. “Be seated.” The emissary draped his scarves and coat on the back of an old peeling chair, carefully placed his gloves in a vest pocket, and sat with a great show of fastidiousness. “Such an honor. Such an honor.” “You are tardy in your response.” The fat little human closed his eyes and nodded slightly to port. “The Council took immense joy in discussing your request for a dialogue, and very great care in considering your most wonderful gift. An act of tremendous foresight, I must say.” He raised an eyebrow. “Such a large and lovely gemstone. The entire Council was quite taken with it. An heirloom?” “A bauble,” Emra said indifferently. The eyebrow arched higher. The man languidly locked his fingers and sank into his chair. “Our Council Elder sends his warmest regards, and prays you will show at your earliest convenience. And along with his regards, he also sends a gift in reciprocation.” “Oh?” “Yes. Certainly not as eye-catching as yours, but heartfelt nonetheless. It is the wish of our Council that you be made aware of the earnestness of their sincerity. The willingness to compromise—and history will surely bear me out—is always best served by the judicious release of political prisoners.” “Prisoner?” Emra cocked her head. “Political?” “Yes, of course. The dissident Tarsum.” Emra sat straight up. “Tarsum!” The emissary’s whole expression collapsed. He sank even deeper in his chair, squirming and wringing his chubby hands. “You are not pleased? It was felt by Council that this would be an act most dear to Your Immensity’s heart. If there is another article more to your liking . . .” “No.” Emra stood up. “No.” She stared at the recovering Earthman. “Tarsum is a dead legend. He disappeared two score years ago, while independently attempting to open diplomatic channels with Earth Administration over royd grievances during the Great Creeper Pestilence.” The emissary flapped his hands. “He was arrested attempting to foment unrest, and has been our guest since. Everyone knows that. And never has there surfaced a shred of evidence implicating Earth Administration in the exportation of a biological agent. Not a fragment!” The human collected himself. The condescending little smirk was back. “As to this royd Tarsum: he has been given many, many opportunities to leave of his own free will, on the sole condition he renounce his riling ways. Administration must protect its integrity, you understand. But always—always he refused.” “So like Tarsum,” Emra breathed. “And you say he is alive, and now a free royd?” “Very much so,” said the emissary. “He is, in fact, presently waiting just without, in the very coach that directed me to your inestimable grace.” “Show him in, show him in.” Emra drifted between tables while the greasy little human picked himself up and scurried outside. Tarsum. Handsome, tall, brimming with intellectual light and the 38

Elis Royd kind of inner strength that average royds can only mock with envy. Every female’s dreamboat. Emra herself, as an insular young royd, had spent long hours in hopeless fantasy. She nervously flitted before the inn’s great smoky wall mirror. He would now be middle-aged, distinctive, graying, no doubt a bit on the aloof side. A suitor fit for a queen. “Oh, shut up!” she told her reflection, and tore off her silly thatch crown. Emra pinched her cheeks and smoothed her sack of a dress just as the door opened and a pair of zobbs wobbled in pushing a rickety wood cart. Sitting propped in that cart was an ancient, emaciated royd male; eyeless, toothless, legless, covered head to hips with scars, burns, and welts. The zobbs careered down the aisle, and were just bashing the cart between tables when Emra snapped, “Cease!” The zobbs immediately fell on their muzzles and scraped about the floor. “Stations!” They scrambled in reverse to either side of the door, and there glazed over in temporary mortification. Emra glided up. “I sought another.” The old man searched about with his hollow-eyed head. At last he raised his withered hands and croaked, “My queen.” “And you are?” “Tarsum of Hopra Hollow.” “No!” The wizened head fell. “I fear so.” It raised again. “Bless you, Queen, for this belated reprieve.” Emra took his thumbless hands. “What became of you, Tarsum? You were arrested for standing tall against the oppressiveness of Administration, for brazenly speaking that which we lesser royds could only whisper . . .” “Alas, my queen, I fear not. I was imprisoned without cause or trial, and kept in a wretched cell beneath Administration’s Council Chambers. They tortured me for years, on some days without rest, seeking that one answer I could never provide.” “The source of your courage?” Emra tried. “The secret to our pluck and drive?” The ghost of a smile crossed Tarsum’s sunken lips. “No, my queen, you will never understand the mentality of the Earthman. They sought only the location of the great Royd Hoard, and mistook my ignorance for resistance. Again and again they tormented me unto the moment of death, only to back off that I might recuperate, and the process begin anew. They burned me with irons, lashed me relentlessly, gouged out my eyes in their manic passion for information. When I still could not answer, they hung me from chains and stabbed my naked legs until the infections set in, and thereupon commenced amputating them, six inches at a time, that I might not die too soon.” He squeezed her hands. “My queen. You will never impress the Earthman with logic and dignity. I urge you to meet their leader while jewel-bedecked, and with all the trappings of regality.” “They have no absolute leader,” Emra reminded him. “They cling to a system called democracy, wherein power and leadership are shared amongst the best of their best.” That same wan smile. “Also, bear arms. Many arms. A great show of force will immeasurably aid your cause.” Emra clamped his mutilated hands between hers. “I fear there is much to learn.” “Alas, not from me.” He rolled his head, feeling the room. “Surely I deserve some small compensation for my assistance?” “Name it.” “I wish to expire under the stars.” He appeared to pale even as he spoke. “Facing my home world.” 39

Elis Royd “It is done.” Emra released his hands and clapped her own. The zobbs stumbled up and bashed him out the door. Emra drifted to the kitchen, and there addressed her standing retinue. “Pass the word. Fine gems are to be imported to Maert’n from Maldea. The jewelers are to provide high-quality cuts; stones that would complement a queen’s crown and gown. Additionally, the smiths are to pass out many nuggets of gold and small silver ornaments. These ornaments are to be impaired to the point of appearing as innocent heirlooms. No finely-wrought or highly polished items. The accountants are to maintain meticulous records.” She walked back to the great mirror and lifted her ratty hem. A tiny smile crossed her face. “Dola! Find our best dressmaker. Have her bring her finest satin and lace. Something,” she whispered, “fit for a queen.”

A pair of pony-driven carts came bumping down the narrow road separating Czarshnewigger Pits and West Administration Fence. The road had been there for ages; not because royds are so eager to gush over EarthAd grounds, but because the soil tends to be firmer round the fringes. The guards watched them pass with little interest: there was no way in without slicing yourself to pieces on razor wire. But when the carts stopped right outside an egress-only turnstile, two guards urged their horses over. One cocked his rifle. The driver of the lead cart looked up and showed his hands. “You can spare a moment?” he asked pleasantly, appearing to study the rifle. The guard considered. “Your moment’s up.” “I am reaching behind me,” the driver said, and did so, very carefully. “I am removing a small article from beneath a pile of folded rags.” Both guards leaned down for a closer look. The driver pulled out a shiny sliver of hammered gold. “Say . . .” said the first guard. “That’s some piece of metal you have there.” “Yours.” He handed it up between the bars. The guards passed it back and forth. “What’s the deal here?” asked one. “Who’s screwing who?” “Yours,” the driver repeated. “We have a business proposition.” “Go on. There’s nobody around but us.” “We are interested in purchasing arms. Handguns and miscellaneous small arms, but chiefly rifles. You have access to many such weapons. We have access to many more pieces of metal.” He showed them a handful. Both drivers laughed. Said one: “Why don’t you just ask for our hearts on skewers? You don’t have enough gold there to pay for our courts-martial, pal. So clop off.” The driver smiled thinly. “I am reaching behind me. I am loosening this cord, that I may draw back the tarp covering my cart.” He did so, revealing a handsome pile of fine metal: silver drinking cups, gold rings, various chains and pendants. The guards whistled simultaneously. “Well, pinch me,” said one. He reached through the bars for a feel. The driver dropped the tarp and gripped the cord between his knees. He reprised that sly smile. 40

Elis Royd “Forget it!” said the other guard. He grabbed his companion by the shoulder and hauled him back. “There ain’t a thing you can do or say that’ll drag us down to your level. Maybe you don’t know the difference between a human and a royd.” “There is nothing that will change your mind?” “That’s right, buddy. You’re messing with Earth Administration now. We’re trained to be on guard against you guys. But it doesn’t matter. An Earthman has something called integrity, and a sense of duty over his personal wants and needs. So clop off, I tell you, before I report you, and your little bag of goodies gets confiscated by someone with a lot less patience than me.” The driver nodded gently. “I am stepping down from my cart.” He did so. “I am walking to the cart behind me and pulling back its tarp.” The flash of precious stones dazzled the guards. It took a full minute before either could move, and when they could their first instincts were to simultaneously hand through their rifles. Strange, too, was their intuitive synchronicity, as they dropped their jaws and in near-perfect conjunction asked, “How many more do you need?”

“Council Elder!” called the Court Crier, with a broad sweep of his arm. “Esteemed members! Proud Earthmen everywhere—presenting her majesty . . . Emra, Queen of Royds!” The Grand Arch separating Council Chambers and the Great Hall now filled up with the Queen and her entourage. First through were a dozen silk-dressed zobbs, flopping purposefully to either side of the aisle, dragging a lace-fringed banner in their jaws. There was a savage scuffle in the center as two fought for the handsomer grip, then they’d somehow spilled over one another to facing sides. The Queen’s maids, seven stumpy fghns with hooves stuffed into dainty spangled slippers, bore her hem and train with forced aplomb, and the Queen’s Guard, now outfitted with Earth side arms and long bayoneted rifles, squeezed in tardily, having just lost a fierce staring contest with the standing Administration Guard. So, taken all together, her retinue’s entrance may have proved less than imposing to the hard-hearted Council, now leaning warily and silently to the fore. The Queen, however, surpassed all their expectations. Emra wore the loveliest white gown the Earthmen had ever seen, as jewel-bedecked as her crown, with satin and lace runners billowing at the wrists and throat. Her ear lobes were tastefully pinned to matching turquoise shoulder brooches, and a glorious diamond-dusted wart ring dangled from her left cheek. The crown’s centerpiece was a blood-orange jewel of great fire, unfamiliar to the denizens of EarthAd, and the crown itself was a finely wrought, sapphire-studded tiara, fat at the bevel with burnished gold. Even in her silver-tipped heels the Queen barely broke four feet, but her dazzling array more than compensated. Emra shone like a trove. The whole party spilled down the aisle; maids tangled up in satin and lace, zobbs and guards biting and jockeying for position. When they reached the bench the Elder placed down his palms and leaned forward like a mighty ship’s prow. “Your majesty. It is with great pleasure that we meet at last. Forgive our lack of respective pomp; we are a legislative-and enforcement body, and thus not well mapped for royalty. There is much to discuss.” He gave a small bow of the head. “Let us forsake these dreary chambers for an apartment more amenable to the occasion.” This said, he climbed down from the bench with the other members filing in tow. The Elder paused cavalierly beside the queen and made to offer his arm, but at a snarl from a zobb scratched his wrist instead. Head held high for the sketchers, he led her back out the Grand Arch with his hands clasped at the waist. 41

Elis Royd Only by ordering the Administration Guard into a flanking procession was the Elder able to squeeze everybody down the Great Hall—there was some vicious infighting between zobbs for pole position, and the rubbernecking Queen’s Guard haphazardly swung their bayonets and rifle butts, much to the consternation of proximate Council members. The procession turned left down a secondary hall. At the end of this hall, broad double doors were thrown wide and the royds found themselves gaping at a spread beyond their wildest dreams. This was Administration Ballroom, the secret rec room and ultimate pleasure farm for highranking officials. For this special day the place had been cleaned up: the resident whores, sycophants, and go-betweens were assigned elsewhere, the finest chefs and musicians had been imported, and the Ballroom decked out to impress solely the Queen and hers. And boy, were they ever impressed: sumptuous treats steamed on silver plates, huge cut-glass goblets sparkled with vintages from the Elder’s own cellar. Haberdashers and pedicurists dotted the perimeter, looking on curiously through an ambient drift of frankly staring maids. The royds’ eyes bulged round their muzzles. On some unseen cue a small orchestra laid into a lovely, room-hugging waltz. The Elder smiled down at his regal guest. “Please consider our palace yours, my Queen. Brei crŭmbe?” He motioned to a waiter porting an ornate silver tray, and had the man set this tray on a richly clothed table. Emra plucked up a soft slender wedge, simultaneously bending back the seventh digit of a reaching zobb. She slid the wedge into her mouth and her whole face melted. “Wine?” The Elder accepted a lily-glass from a fawning server and placed it in Emra’s free hand. “A rude number, to be sure, for a palate as discriminating as yours. But we are not here,” he stressed, adroitly changing the subject while leading her toward the dance floor, “to make talk.” The moment their backs were turned, the zobbs and Queen’s Guard went at it like cats over the tray. “We are all aware of your subjects’ distress,” the Elder went on, “and are deeply moved over your personal loss of a loved one. The movements of our ex-governor, of his men and this loose cannon of a Gate Guard, are not merely deplorable, they are not just heinous—they are entirely unconscionable to the sophisticated Earth Administration mind. All these madmen have met their due ends, and left it to us, dear Queen, to patch up the differences and proceed with our lives as best we can. In a certain sense this is perhaps a boon. It has brought us to the table, so to speak,” and he smiled and gestured at a small banquet waiting in the next room, “allowing us to reach out as neighbors on a most desperate world, at a time when neighbors are most desperately needed.” There was an abbreviated scream as a zobb bit into a whipped cream-smothered fghn, and then the Elder had eased shut the door. “Please.” They sat at opposite ends of the smallish dining table, orienting their respective selves while the Elder made various asides to a few very serious officials in waiting. Emra’s head was swimming; the aromas were unlike anything she’d ever experienced. It took great tact to delicately and unhurriedly sample absolutely everything on that table. Discomposing, too, were the several cordials that seemed to arrive in a steady stream. When at length the official men had been dismissed, there were only Emra, the Elder, and, stationed at a far door, a waiting waiter and waitress; waiting, waiting, perpetually waiting. “Forgive me,” said the Elder. “I asked to not be disturbed, but business always has a way of finding one, does it not?” He ignored his plate. “To the point. We all inhabit the same small world. The Council feels that, rather than remain at odds, your people and ours should exist in harmony. Too long have we exchanged under a barter commerce; we envision a legal trans-species currency, a system of fair and regulated taxation, and policed trade routes for the betterment of all. Now is not the time to go over these issues in detail; papers have been drawn up, broadly outlining our initial 42

Elis Royd vision.” He handed Emra a handsomely bound document. “Please peruse this at your leisure, and discuss it freely with your subjects. You enjoyed your repast? The spirits were to your liking?” He rose formally, in the pose of a partial bow. Emra too rose, a bit giddily. Perhaps the alcohol had loosened her tongue; now was not the time or place, but she said, “There is the incidental matter of some two hundred massacred innocents, most left dangling in a meandering line leading to this very enclosure.” The Elder cocked his head. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to invoke Administration’s wrath upon Quentis Wilde and his henchmen—those scoundrels, however, are forever beyond the reach of mortal vengeance. I beg your indulgence, Queen Emra, in our mutual construction of a finer world.” “Widow Emra.” The Elder smiled only with his teeth. “As you importune. I now repeat our offer of unspecified restitution, in a closed hearing, at your personal convenience. Again: the guilty parties are all deceased; one with his head blown off, three sucked bloodless in the bogs, and one, by your own witness, steam-fried at the bottom of Runoff Gorge. Really, Madame Queen; what would you have us do—display Wilde’s body on a pike above the Gate?” “The food and wine,” Emra said grimly, “were excellent.” She gave the curtest of curtsies and turned. “I will study your offer, but please don’t insult our dignity.” The Elder quickly rose to join her. He’d just reached the door when they were both struck stationary by a terrible clamor in the Ballroom. Tables were heard crashing over, a waitress screamed, shouts rang from the inrushing Administration Guard. The Elder tore down a wallmounted rifle and threw out a restraining arm. Emra was amazed by the old man’s vigor. He cocked the rifle and pulled open the door. The Ballroom was a riot of royds desperately wolfing down any goodies they could get their claws on. Zobbs were plunged headfirst into cakes and bowls, guards and fghns fought fang and talon over hot buttered morsels. The Administration Guard, freed from their job’s grating monotony by the emergency, laid into the thrashing royds with a passion, cracking skulls and wringing tails. The Elder turned with a smile. “Dignity is so overrated.” Emra stomped through the Ballroom. “Throw these buggers out!” she commanded. “And don’t be too gentle with them!” Taken aback, the Administration Guard looked to the Elder, who nodded without taking his eyes off the furious little figure. He coolly pursued her to the front doors and stood watching her stumble down one flight of steps after the other. In a minute the first guards came ricocheting through the Hall, dragging royds by every available appendage. The Elder stepped aside as the offenders were pitched down the steps. “Follow that carriage,” he told a corporal, staring at a weeping Emra punching and kicking her driver. “Take another man. I want to know where it goes, how it gets there, and any stops it makes in the process.” He turned and thoughtfully made his way to Council Chambers. Emra’s driver was beside himself, scrambling back and forth between the coach and tumbling bodies. “Leave them where they are!” the Queen snapped. “Let them walk back!” She dabbed at her eyes. Speaking as much to herself as to the driver, she said, “It’s all a lark, anyway. Right now, the Council are laughing themselves into a frenzy, thinking only of my humility!”

Right then, the Council were weeping themselves into a frenzy, thinking only of her crown. 43

Elis Royd “Did you see that gem!” the Arbiter General moaned. “A ruby, but not a ruby—impossible! And the gold! Filigree! The workmanship!” “Forget the gold,” said Scribe. “I swear I saw diamonds flash on her wrists. Large as my uncle’s gallstones.” “Were we fools to let her go?” wondered the Guard Commander. “A quick tackle and we all could have retired.” “Idiot,” said the Elder. “Where those jewels came from will come many more. Given half a chance, you’d have screwed us right out of the mother lode.” “You mean—?” “Yes. The Hoard. It’s no rumor, I tell you! She didn’t guss herself up like that by raiding granny’s jewel box. She’s got her finger on the whole royd population. Don’t you see—she’s made the Hoard her war chest.” His eyes narrowed. “The fog lifts! Now I see how she got those weapons.” “What about that old troublemaker of hers? The one you let go as an olive branch. If our boys couldn’t get the location out of him, then, damn it, there is no Hoard! It’s a fairy tale.” “Nonsense,” said the Elder. “That freak’s a patriot. What a fool I was! He’s probably working with her right now.” “I can have him smoked out and re-arrested in no time,” the Commander offered. “Hell, I can mobilize a unit that’ll take down their whole silly operation by nightfall.” He winked and nudged Scribe. “That’s if we can just get past that fearsome Queen’s Guard.” “Moron!” the Elder snarled. “Your whole damned brain’s a bludgeon.” He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace. “There is no more powerful weapon than subtlety. She obviously isn’t gathering it all by herself . . . there must be porters, delivery chains, secret routes . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Gentlemen! It’s time to legislate.”

For generations royds have traveled the Old Jacko Road unmolested. There are no highwaymen; it’s simply not in royd blood to steal that which may be honestly earned or begged. There are occasional encampments laid by the weary, but as a rule they’re temporary—royds are as restless as they are honest. The Administration Mounted Guard was a real novelty on Old Jacko. The Guard set up command tents every few miles, and the riders became easygoing fixtures on a monotonous landscape previously peopled solely by various worker species, moving to and from the Jacko Mines, pulling their little carts by hand or by pony. The workers were porting crushed rock to smelters at Exxona just outside of EarthAd, where the precious metals were legally bartered for delicacies and manufactured goods, and hammered into coinage in the Administration Mint. A new Administration regulation demanded cargo be certified pre-exchange: impurities were creating imbalances at the scales. The Guard, it was explained, were trained metallurgists. They were saving haulers the trouble of bearing inferior material, and grading them in the process. Those sellers with consistently fine hauls received stickers of merit, giving them preferential treatment at the scales, and the best deals going. Right now the lead haulers were proudly bearing those colorful Terran stickers on their carts, and the inspecting Guard were uncovering the cleanest hauls at the fore, but it was the roving riders who found what they were all really looking for, way in the rear, on one of those little turnoff roads that lace the asteroid. 44

Elis Royd There they’d pulled over an old Cept veteran of the long haul, his back as curved as his threefoot tongue. He was dusty with the road and dog-tired, but his eyes rose fiercely at the sound of the Mounteds’ Captain clopping up. He hissed when the human shadow fell on him. The Captain looked him over incuriously before turning to the little wagon’s contents. In the bed were dozens of raw diamonds and emeralds; the camouflaging rocks and clods lay in piles on the ground. “You were not heading for Exxona,” the Captain said. He studied the surrounding fields and criss-crossing roads. “My men inform me that you were accompanied by a young one, and that this young one ran at your command.” The Captain looked back down. “Would it be all that much of a stretch to suppose this lad was related to you; perhaps your son?” The Cept dropped his head. “Where were you bound?” The Cept said nothing. The Captain unsheathed his sword. It was a vintage piece, engraved from boss to hilt with fanciful diagrams depicting constellations as animals and people. He placed the blade’s tip in the center of the royd’s forehead and used it to gradually raise the head. The Cept, blood trickling down both sides of his face, looked the Captain directly in the eyes. “Where did you pick up these stones?” The Cept didn’t blink. “This blade will slice your head like embryo pie. I want your destination point. But more important—tell me where these stones originate.” He pushed firmly. Blood began flowing in twin streams. The Cept’s expression remained stony. “You don’t like Earthmen,” the Captain said. “Now there’s a perverse viewpoint.” He pushed harder. “Where did you get these stones?” He applied some body weight. Now the Guard could see the royd’s skin parting in the gush, and the gnarly yellow bone underneath. “Where?” The Captain leaned on the hilt. The royd’s fangs showed, and little by little his mouth widened. The nostrils flared and remained distended. “Where?” The blade sawed into bone. The royd’s eyes seem to take up half his face, but they remained fixed on the Captain. Blood painted his entire crown, dripping onto his chest and shoulders. “Where! Where! Where!” The blade snagged in the skull. “Where?” The Captain ground his teeth and twisted. The Cept’s eyes squeezed shut and his mouth flew open, the tongue curled back into a wretched roll. Blood spurted from the gash. But not a sound did he make. The Captain backed off. “You’re worthless dead. Get him up and tie him to a horse.” He smiled into those unflinching eyes. “Don’t worry; once we get you cleaned up we’re going to introduce you to a really sweet old man.”

Emra’s coach crashed and crawled through Trummp Marsh, its sinking cartwheels hurriedly tugged free by the skittish ponies. Twilight was seeping past the purple crags, with nocturnal life just a step behind. Every now and then one of the more aggressive marsh tulips clamped on a pony’s hoof, causing it to dance as though its legs were on fire. Phygean dragonflies, one of the few species to retain its native characteristics on the asteroid, buzzed the coach relentlessly, emitting little screams of frustration when snagged in the protective netting. The ponies were making for a slight grade rising out of the marsh. At the top hunched a huge, smooth-scaled numph, well camouflaged against the rocky terrain by his sloping shoulders, broad midsection, and mottled brown coloration. As he rose erect from all fours, his hindlimbs bowed and 45

Elis Royd his shoulders narrowed, allowing the massive forelimbs to fold behind him and the tiny round head to rear. Thus extended, he tromped downhill to meet the coach. Emra’s high demeanor was now the only indication of her royalty: the coach was a death trap, her crown history, and she was right back in burlap for the rough ride out. Two Earthmen on horseback had tailed them upon leaving EarthAd, and they hadn’t been at all circumspect—their contempt for royds, and the sense of escalating control over the situation, had brought out the kinso, the bully-human. After a while they’d taken to childish scare tactics; one galloping along the horizon with his coat over his head, the other imitating the calls of a ravenous m’laren. The queen’s driver had located a Rauna encampment, and Emra had traded away her coach in a clean one-for-one switch. The Earthmen had pursued two crouching Raun in the royal coach, and she’d snuck out, minus her gown and crown, in one of theirs. But before the coaches trade-off she’d been introduced to Varin, a kind of peripatetic tribal counselor. Emra was ushered under a braided parti-colored tent, its corners tethered to wagon rails at the four compass points—this arrangement left the Rauna, a deeply suspicious race, five feet of open vantage space all around. The Raun were by nature disdainful of Emra’s regal stature, but they’d lost too many of their own in the Governor’s rampage to not take sides. Varin, listening to her tale of awkwardness and abasement, readily divined her lack of royal confidence. He explained the hopelessness of a diplomatic approach, and posited an inherited disposition in homo sapiens to glom at any cost. In the end he was entirely unable to counsel on the whole human thing: Rauna had always dealt with Earthmen by avoiding them; Emra’s position as a royd was unique. Oh, she was doomed, all right. But for the meager fee of a jeweled crown and carriage, he just might be able to refer her to a higher source. And she’d traveled half the day to meet that source. She was staring at its caregiver/taker now. The numph came down on all fours. Emra was assisted from the coach and they stood face to face. When the numph moved in for a sniff she urgently threw out a hand against the stench. “Stop! I am Emra, Queen of royds. Do you speak Earthman?” The numph cocked his head. “I come from Varin. You are hereby commanded to admit me, and none other.” The numph turned and preceded her up the grade. At the top he motioned to a jagged hole torn from the earth. Emra peered in and snapped her head right back. “You silly monster. How am I supposed to manage that?” The numph turned, hurt. “I hear well as speak.” He stepped in and began to feel his way down. “You manage somehow,” he muttered. “Silly queen.” Emra followed him down, minding her nails on the raggedy stone. Light filtered in from a hundred surface fissures, creating a spooky half-light that appeared to shift with every step. The asteroid’s pocked interior was soon evident; rock on all sides gave away to mini-caverns and tunnels to nowhere. The deeper they climbed, the larger these little caves became; even so, the little caves themselves were riddled with ever-tinier holes. Several of these middling caves showed slowly heaving maters, clinging to the ceilings with their belly suckers while their long bleeders languished in those perforating fissures. Many appeared long-starved and stuck to the rock. In time they came to a small dome-shaped cavern. Vestiges of cooking fires and a miscellany of found objects established this hole as the numph’s home. In the very center was a stinking jumble of rags, sackcloth apparently. The numph bade Emra sit, and himself followed suit. The pile of rags stirred. “Make no move sudden,” the numph said, and bowed as an afterthought. “Queen.” 46

Elis Royd The pile rose slowly, corkscrew fashion, rim to center. A deep-seated miasma was disturbed, releasing a feculent, unfurling grave-stench that grew in sync with the heap’s progress. Now Emra could make out a rough shape, rather like a large cat in repose, altering by the second. The hump became a peaked heap, and continued to rise until a hunched figure was revealed, leaning in a slump like a corpse in a body bag. It began to respire. Each exhalation carried the stench of decay, horrible to endure in that haunted place. After a long moment the numph produced a series of articulated gutturals—not words by any means; rather an exotic tongue completely unfamiliar to the queen. The tones, low and soft and gurgling, were these: “Doo wee gnay ahn mee hum saw.” The floppy thing swiveled in the numph’s direction, and an orifice which could only be construed as a mouth responded: “Hwee nah phin da sre um too.” The numph turned to Emra. “Your want unclear. Must engage.” He paused for emphasis. “There is price.” “I,” Emra reminded him, “am queen. I do not barter.” The numph lowered his eyes. “Other price,” he mumbled. “Price dear.” “Tell it to engage.” This was a direct order. The numph nodded and said, “Hwee ow nan ki.” The lumpy mass moved its peak close to Emra’s face and sniffed her up and down. The deathstench was so wrenching she had to wince and half-close her eyes. The figure clamped that wideopen cavity on the center of her face, completely enclosing her mouth and nasal apertures, and began to heave with breath. Emra almost fainted from the foulness. Seconds later she was slipping, and her eyes had closed completely. “You dream now,” said the numph. “Sai ee hwa em tao. You let go feeling.” But Emra couldn’t ignore the icy feelers running over her body, couldn’t escape the sense of being violated in ways unspeakable. The thing seemed to melt on top of her, and the harder it pressed, the more pliant she grew. That breath consumed her internally; deadening her nervous system, fogging her mind. Maggots passed from its tongue onto hers. “You let go,” repeated the numph, from far away. “Know you, read you, be you.” Emra lay on her back while the thing pinned her in a copulative posture, burying her in cobs and must and fungal rot. Bit by bit she was opened wide, and little by little her feelings and memories were sucked away. All resistance vanished. Emra was now a conduit; a one-way flue for the expulsion of those ideas and emotions regularly retained by a healthy royd’s set of sympathetic blocks. All things essentially Emra passed from her like gas, and she died there, for a heartbeat, but in the next beat was just as fluidly reanimated. Gradually the overall impression of an appropriating force, of suction, left her body, from the depths of her being to the downy scales fringing her tough coppery epidermis. The weight upon her relaxed. The mouth unclamped from her face, and with the return of her true breath that rank fog slowly left her brain. “You sit now,” said the numph. The thing, once again a shapeless heap of tainted rags, rolled off and returned to its leaning slump. Emra sat up. All she wanted was a week’s uninterrupted bathing. The numph looked on curiously for a moment, then turned and said, “Hai ye hem ohn toa se pai?” The heap’s reply took a good while. Finally that oscillating drone began to taper, even as the drooping shape further relaxed—the whole event moved in the reverse of its original order: the 47

Elis Royd voice winding down like a slowed tape, the formless pile collapsing counter-clockwise, rim to center. Then there was only a filthy, raggedy mass, stinking the stench of catacombs. “You no think Earthman,” the numph summed. “Earthman only think self. Councilman hate you, Councilman see you weak, Councilman seek only royd wealth. Earthman pretend show queen respect, but watch close all time. Earthman depend on royd for gold, silver, jewel. When Earthman find treasure Earthman no longer need royd. Council then order death all royd and take royd land for self. This sure as star in sky. Earthman dream this since Elis Royd begin.” The numph studied Emra with an expression that struck her as dour. He said, matter-of-factly, “Queen be strong. No peace, never-ever. World can belong only Earthman or royd.” He nodded. “This long time come.” The numph rose to his characteristic, slumping crouch, and offered Emra his paw. “Queen.”

Beneath Council Chambers is a secret place, known only to the High Triad of Council Elder, Head Administrator, and Guard Commander. For any Triad member to betray its existence is for that member to voluntarily face charges of subterfuge in a kangaroo court, presided over by the other two, with the certain judgment of death by hanging. Long ago the Triad made a blood pact to publicly acknowledge the fabricated charge as true, and to accept the penalty without objection. It is the kind of vow made only by desperate men in positions of highest power. The secret place is an interrogation crypt, as old as Elis Royd. It’s dank and dark and depressing; the floor criss-crossed with blood gutters, the deep stone walls still ringing with the wails of slowly ravaged lives. In one cell: six dangling humans, their naked bodies scored and seared a hundred times over. Out on the floor: three robed humans, huddled around a broken and bloody royd. The Elder rhythmically jangled a massive iron key ring. The Commander and Administrator loomed menacingly. The Cept raised his bleeding eyes. “I have read Constitution.” He spat out a mouthful of broken fangs. “I cannot be imprison without trial.” The Elder’s jaw dropped. “Trial! You want a trial?” He twirled a hand over his head. “Gentlemen! Esteemed Council! This session of Court is in order. How do you find the accused?” “Guilty,” said the Commander. “Ditto,” said the Administrator. The Elder smacked down his hand. “And likewise it is! Do you understand that, sir? Is it within your filthy little window of comprehension? The verdict is unanimous! Have you anything to say—anything that might sway this noble Court?” The Cept stared back as best he could. “I thought not!” The Elder kicked him for the hundredth time. “Well, you’d better come up with something fast! We’re either going to loosen that ugly tongue or cut it off. Make no mistake about it.” He nodded sharply. The Commander and Administrator stretched the Cept’s forelimbs behind his back. The Elder used the key ring to slap the prisoner left and right across the face, yelling “Where?” with each pass. He labored until exhausted, then dropped the keys and collapsed on a low metal bench. The Commander roused the Cept with a bucketful of dirty water while the Administrator retrieved the keys. The Elder took one limb, the Commander the other, and the Administrator began the interrogation anew. “Where? Where! Where!” In a few minutes the Commander and Administrator exchanged places. It took longer to return the Cept to consciousness this time, and the Councilmen had to prod him with various sharp objects to snap him back to basics. When the Cept was again 48

Elis Royd aware of his situation, the Commander took over. “Where, damn you! Where?” Gradually the Councilmen sank to the floor, overcome more by passion than exertion. They propped up the Cept’s head and smacked it against the wall. All were at eye-level. “Where—” the Elder panted “where is the royd treasure?” The Cept’s entire face was obscured by blood. “I swear we will let you live if you speak it. You have our solemn word. Better . . . you, friend; yes, you, will be rewarded with an equal share.” “Yes,” breathed the Administrator. “An equal share by Law. By Earthman Law! We will draw up the papers right here and now, and drink to our union. No! We will feast! You will enjoy a banquet like you have never dreamed!” “Better still,” the Commander heaved. “You will be able to spend it as you wish—here, within these hallowed walls, as an honorary Earthman! Palaces will be yours! Chefs and handmaidens and females by the score. Underlings to do your bidding, slaves to lean to your every whim!” The Cept’s head rolled to one side and his long tongue fell out. “Dead!” The Administrator struggled to his feet. “No!” “Not yet,” the Elder snarled, and grabbed the first eighteen inches of that bloody lolling tongue. “Not until I say he’s dead!” He and the Administrator held onto the tongue and pulled with all their might, their heels buried in the Cept’s face. The Commander hauled back on the head until the Cept began to gag. “Where?” the Commander shouted, directly in his ear. “Where, you inferior son of a bitch, where?” The Cept went into convulsions. His thrashing caught the Councilmen by surprise—both the Elder and Administrator lost their balance, and then the royd was flailing on his feet with the Triad clinging to his legs and prehensile tail. It took all they had to bring him under control. With the last of his strength, the Commander delivered a vicious kick to the genitals. The Cept sagged. “Still want to live, do you?” the Elder cried, snapping up the key ring. He stomped to a rear door, unlocked and drew it open, and hauled out the Cept’s terrified son. “Well, here’s something to live for!” He shoved the child forward. “The Guard caught him trying to hide in a command tent. Big on the Constitution, are you? Well, there are laws about breaking into a field command’s quarters. Read a little deeper and you’ll see that parents are accountable for their litter’s actions whenever military personnel are endangered—and who knows what mischief this little unsupervised rat might have caused. Okay, I want some answers, and I want them now.” He threw the child into a chokehold and placed two keys against the eyes, applying pressure until he got the scream he was going for. “Where!” “Do not,” the Cept managed. “Please.” He dragged himself forward. “Where!” The child screamed again. “In Maldea,” the Cept gasped. The Administrator and Commander immediately dropped to their knees. “Again,” said the Administrator. “. . . Maldea.” The Commander gripped the Administrator’s shoulder. “I know of it.” He looked up at the Elder and nodded. The Elder stomped over and creaked to his knees. His face was inches from the Cept’s. “Then it’s true? A mountain of jewels, of silver and gold? Buried for generations . . . to what end?” “They’re hoarders,” the Administrator snapped. “Do not overanalyze this.” His expression softened. “There must be fortunes beyond imagination.” 49

Elis Royd The Commander rose. “What if he’s lying?” “Then,” said the Elder, “he’ll be one spawnless shut-in.” He stepped back to the son and placed his hands on the shoulders. “Eh, Papa Royd? What do you say? Want to see the kid grow up to be another proud pissant? Then you’ll just sit tight here until he gets back.” He lifted the child and bounced him in his arm. “How’s about you, son? Would you like us to keep your dad alive as our guest? I thought so. Okay, then. This is our Guard Commander. He has a command at his disposal. You’re going to be their guide, and show them the way to the Royd Hoard. When they come back with good news . . . then, and only then, will we let Papa go. Are we clear on this?” Without waiting for a reply, he shoved the child back out and slammed and locked the door. The Commander and Administrator dragged the near-lifeless Cept to the occupied cell. The Elder joined them, unlocked the cell gate, and helped kick the royd inside. He turned with his hand on a bar and said over his shoulder: “It’s comforting to know that the Commander can be trusted with his Guard, and that I and the Administrator don’t have to worry about his yielding to any sudden independent urges.” The Administrator slowly turned to face the Commander. “Yes . . . I shall certainly sleep better knowing that my friends are friends unto the grave.” “That they are,” said the Commander. He placed his left arm across his stomach and cupped the right elbow with his hand. His right forearm was now raised at a thirty degree angle. The Elder and Administrator followed suit and, standing very close, the three men thereupon locked their right hands so that their arms formed a pyramid. They nodded until their peaked hoods just touched. The Elder slammed the cell door and nudged the Cept with his foot. “At least you’ll have some company,” he said, motioning to the hanged corpses. “I know, by our Captain’s statement, that there was a considerable haul of gems in your little wagon. Yet by the time that haul reached home there was only a smattering. Turns out these six sorry dangling gentlemen took a hankering to your cargo, made a pact, and swallowed a number of stones to smuggle them past the rest of the Guard. Unpolished stones can be tough on the ascending colon. Once a doctor exposed the secret, the jig was up. It took a while, but I think we got out most of the contraband. Watch your step, by the way. The floor can be slippery.” “How . . .” the Cept gasped, one arm wrapped around a bar, “how can human be so cruel . . . in all land, no other race . . . so greedy, so selfish . . .” The Triad exchanged looks, marveling. The Administrator said, “That is ‘Earthman’ to you, royd bastard.” The Commander pawed the air and grimaced, aping a snarling wild animal. All three laughed. The Elder leaned in with a gleam in his eye. “Oh, you didn’t know?” Shielding his mouth with a hand, he winked up at his fellows and whispered, “It’s in the blood!”

50

Chapter Five

Buhwa and Moony were being over-assertive, as children are wont to be, but it just wasn’t fair to little round Luhluh, whose narrower female hooves were poorer negotiators of roots and muck. The males stopped at the top and glared back, wide forehooves on plump hips. “Move it, Slim!” called Buhwa. “The Earthmen won’t wait all day, y’know. Let’s get rolling!” To make his point he clasped his knees and went bouncing down the grade like a loose medicine ball. Moony giggled and rolled after him. Luhluh sobbed and dropped to all fours—but no one could see her now. Keeping low, she half-galloped, half-clambered to the top. Below was just another trough, followed by a small rounded hillock. That show-off Buhwa, inspired by a good push-off with a little english, was using his momentum to go for a clean roll-andwobble with a half-pirouette finish. “All the way!” cried fat foundered Moony, but Buhwa came up short by a dozen feet, and had to dig in before whirling back. Still, it was a good roll; one Luhluh could never equal. So she went for the quick comic break, somersaulting on her butt and crown, clipping Moony just as he turned to investigate her approaching thunder. She knocked him a good twenty feet, straight into a rock grybbet’s vacated nest. Luhluh nervously giggled over her shoulder while he fiercely chased her up, cursing like a human. But then Moony was laughing too. Not to be upstaged, he made a great show of his navigational prowess, using his elbows for side-to-side thrusts while bounding up titanically on his thick shiny hams. “There!” they heard Buhwa shout, and quickly joined him atop the hillock.

51

Elis Royd Below stretched the magnificence of Earth Administration, Elis Royd’s original gated community. Off in the distance lay the mall-like weighing station of Exxona, and, farther along, the tiny hamlet of Doopont. Just outside EarthAd’s East Gate was an engaging arrangement, a kind of picnic spread: two long draped tables, one with place mats, bowls, and utensils, the other with steaming kettles. The drifting aromas of mashed potatoes and cornbread almost made Buhwa pee with want. Moony began to hyperventilate; Luhluh speckled furiously. “Look!” Buhwa whispered, pointing at a few human figures moving languidly between tables. The children instinctively huddled. Those humans were dressed surreally—the men in dark outfits with broad white collars and wide-brimmed hats, the lone woman in a full-length dress and snowwhite bonnet. “Like I told you,” Buhwa panted, “it’s a special human holiday, and it’s real important to ’em. So don’t goof it up!” He punched Moony on the rump, but before Moony could hit him back he’d begun an easy downhill roll, throwing on the brakes every few yards. After a moment of uncertainty, Luhluh and Moony followed course. Bert was first to notice. He called to the others and, a big holiday smile on his ruddy white face, cheerfully banged a ladle on a pan’s copper bottom. The children came down like gigantic croquet balls; Buhwa still in the lead, Luhluh and Moony close behind and to the sides. They rolled into a group, maybe twenty feet from the tables, and shyly rose to all fours. “Kids, kids!” Bert yodeled. “Don’t be bashful! Today’s all about friendship, good neighbors, and, gosh darn it . . . healthy appetites!” The other humans grinned to the lobes and gestured to a bench at the sitting table. It seemed all right; the kids slowly tumbled over. “I’m Bert!” piped the vocal human. “But just for today it’s ‘Pilgrim Bert’. And that’s Pilgrim Michael, and there’s Pilgrim Marianne. Do you kids know what a Pilgrim is, and how the Pilgrims made today so especially wonderful?” The kids admitted they didn’t, and were, to be brutally honest, far more interested in the quivering treats than in their host’s marvelous rant. One by one they draped their pudgy limbs over the bench and heaped themselves into sitting positions. Mountains of mashed potatoes peeked back over the cloth. Luhluh almost fainted at the spectacle. “Help yourselves, children!” Bert cried, even as they stuffed their big round faces. “And don’t spare the butter and gravy!” When the plates were slurped clean, and the children were leaning back dreaming only of more, Bert said, “There’s plenty to come, kids; all you can eat. Pilgrim Marianne’s stirring it up now. But in the meantime, why don’t we introduce ourselves, get in costume, and learn what this fantastic day’s all about! By the way, thanks so much to your parents for answering the summons and allowing you to come. We’d hoped there’d be a whole lot more of you, but the party’s still young.” “Actually,” Buhwa muttered, “we had to sneak out.” “Ha!” barked Bert. “Pilgrims already! Anyway, now that you know us, what’re your names?” “Buhwa.” “I’m Luhluh.” “Moo—ny.” The first syllable was accompanied by an accidental gravy fart, awesome even for a gamer like Moony. Buhwa and Luhluh giggled nervously, then embarrassedly stuffed their hooves in their mouths. “Nothing to be ashamed of,” Bert assured them. “We all know that’s just royd for ‘thanks’. But before the second course you have to get in costume so we can play a real fun game called ‘Human Says’.” 52

Elis Royd “Human says?” Luhluh echoed. “That’s right. It goes back hundreds of years, to the great planet Earth herself. It was a game all the Pilgrim children loved playing, so it’s just perfect for today, which is our annual celebration of the Earth holiday known as ‘Thanksgiving’. First,” and he scooped some little outfits off the other table, “you put on these costumes.” “Funny!” blurted Buhwa. “No, son,” Bert said. “Not funny. These are turkey costumes, and the turkey was considered a noble Earth bird. ‘Turkey’ is what you call someone you admire; someone who’s a real winner. And today you guys—Buhwa, Moony, and Luhluh—all get to be our Honorary Thanksgiving Turkeys!” “Yay!” “Now, these fat little hats go on your fat little heads. They have these fleshy things that hang over; they’re called wattles. The outfits are covered with what were known as feathers, and they include these fun parts by your arms called wings. Now go ahead; put them on. That’s right. So, Luhluh, what do we do next?” Luhluh shyly peered between her dangling wattles. “We eat?” “No, honey; not yet. We still have to learn the rules of the game. And here’s how it goes: whenever I, Michael, or Marianne—or, indeed, any Earthman—says ‘human says’ followed by a command, you guys have to do what he says. Okay? Okay! I told you this was gonna be fun! So if I say, for instance, ‘human says gobble!’, you guys go ‘gobble, gobble, gobble’! That, by the way, is Earthman for ‘eat up!’ Parenthetically, it’s also the patriotic call of the noble turkey. So what do you say?” “Gobble, gobble, gobble?” “Not yet, kids. I didn’t say ‘human says’. Gosh, is this ever gonna be fun! So, are you guys ready? Well, then . . . human says gobble!” “Gobble, gobble, gobble!” “Good! Marianne, let’s lay out that corn now, shall we? And look—what’s this? Yams! Yams are sweet potatoes, just as sweet as you little guys. It’s what all the Pilgrims ate when they sat down for dinner with the turkeys. And here’s cornbread and cranberries and heaps of piping hot beans smothered in cheese; all reconstituted from the stores in EarthAd’s warehouses and cooked up by Good Pilgrim Marianne just for today. Take a bow there, Pilgrim Marianne! You deserve it. Aww, she’s blushing. Just like you, little Luhluh! Well, not exactly like you, of course. She’s blushing a generous rose, but that’s because her complexion’s such a lovely shade of white. You’re more of a grotesque fecal brown, Luhluh; typical of roydal melanimic resynthesis.” “Huh?” said Moony. “Just holiday talk, son. What’s important is we’re white, and you’re . . . not.” Buhwa impulsively raised a hoof. “How come white skin only comes from Earth, Pilgrim Bert?” “That’s an interesting question, Buhwa. Something to do with virtue, I suppose. But back when the original Thanksgiving celebration took place, all men of Earth weren’t white-skinned like me.” The children traded stares of awe. “You mean . . .” Moony ventured, “you mean they were royds?” Bert laughed. “Oh, no, no, no! They were humans, but they were discolored, and so they needed our help. Of course we were glad to give it to them.” Bert rapped a knuckle on the table and looked querulously at Pilgrim Michael. “Y’know, Mike, this just might be a good opportunity, on such a very special day, to give these wonderful kids 53

Elis Royd a little history lesson.” He spun back around. “Hands! Hands! Who wants to know how this all came about?” “Yay!” “Okay. Pilgrim Marianne is going to pass around some hot cornbread with butter and honey so you can eat while you learn. So human says ‘gobble’!” “Gobble, gobble, gobble!” “Good. Now, the wonderful white Pilgrims set off across a big lovely body of water called an ocean. On Earth, the water just sits on top of the land; it’s not pumped up and recycled like it is here. The Pilgrims drove on top of that ocean to search for hungry children they could treat to celebration days. They traveled in a big happy boat called the Mayflower. But they weren’t the first humans to ‘sail’ across the ocean; that honor goes to Mister Christopher Columbus, another wonderful white human. He came with a whole lot of friends on three pretty ships, called Niňa, Pinta, and Santa Maria.” “¿Niňa?” Bert leaned down and pinched Luhluh’s tummy until she giggled. “That means ‘little female’, just like you, you yummy little treasure, you. I could just eat you up, you’re so cute. Niňa,” he sang, “Niňa, Niňa, Niňa! Now eat your corn, sweetheart.” “Pinta?” wondered Moony. “A popular kind of bean. Now eat yours before they get cold.” “Santa . . .” Buhwa tried. “Santa Maria?” “The wife of a wonderful old Earthman who comes down chimneys to bring gifts to hungry children.” “What kinds of gifts?” “Oh, candy, cookies, delicious yams. Lots of yams. And corn, plenty of hot buttered corn. Don’t forget the noodles. Oodles and oodles of noodles.” “Oodles!” Luhluh exploded. “Oo-dles of noo-dles!” “That’s right. And, of course, mounds and mounds and mounds of stuffing.” “Stuffing?” “Sure. Stuff. Stuff you stuff in your chubby little mouths until you’re stuffed. Pilgrim Marianne!” Pilgrim Marianne, dressed to the nines for the part, came up smiling and balancing a massive platter heaped with steaming stuffing. “See?” said Bert. “Cooked bread with berries, celery, spices—oh, boy! I see some bright-eyed little pilgrims here! Human says ‘gobble’!” “Gobble, gobble, gobble!” “So back to our story. The Pilgrims fed all the humans on the other side of the ocean until they were just as happy as happy can be. These red humans, who were called Indians, begged the Pilgrims to allow them to repay all this wonderful, wonderful kindness. But white humans are very timid, and were embarrassed by so much gratitude. Finally they agreed to bring over all their millions and millions of white friends and turn the whole continent into a coast-to-coast megalopolis in honor of their friends the Indians. They even renamed the land ‘America’, which is white human for ‘Our Friends, The Indians’. “The Pilgrims’ descendants made America into a lovely ‘Happy Hunting Ground’ for the Indians. But they realized it was a super-big country and—clean your plate, Luhluh—there were other non-white humans who would be much happier if they could only join the white humans. So 54

Elis Royd they got in some more pretty ships, and sailed to a big land called Africa, where the black humans lived.” “Wow-ow!” Moony belched. The children all giggled. “Oops,” Bert said. “Sounds like you’ve got a hole in your tummy, son. Better plug it up with a biscuit. What does human say?” “Gobble, gobble, gobble!” “The wonderful white humans brought back as many black humans as they could get their hands on.” Bert ticked off points on his fingers. “They fed them, educated them, showed them how to pick cotton, let the females sleep in their beds, and taught the males how to fight and play sports really, really good.” “Wow!” “Yep. It was lots and lots of fun. Eventually the white humans even let them drink from their fountains, and gave them their own special bus sections. Boy, were the blacks ever happy. But as the years went by, America became very, very crowded, and the black humans had to go away.” “Where’d they go to,” Luhluh wondered, “Pilgrim Bert?” “Well,” Bert said, “we’re jumping way ahead here, sweetheart, and I don’t think it’s something children will understand. But since we are jumping ahead, let’s go all the way to Earth’s 22nd Century; only a couple hundred years ago. By then Earth was so crowded the bad humans across the oceans said they couldn’t live with the good white humans anymore.” “So what happened then, Pilgrim Bert?” “Well, Buhwa, they had to go away too. And plenty of them were white. But they were bad white humans, with bad religions, and bad languages, and bad political ideas. All those bad ideas went away with them, along with all the bad yellow and brown humans, until only good white humans were left on Earth, and the only language was English, and the only religion was Christianity. And Christianity is a good religion, and English is a good language, because they’re the religion and language of the Pilgrims, and the Pilgrims were good. And that’s why we’re all so happy, and that’s why we’re having this super-duper Thanksgiving celebration day. Whew. That was a long story, but I think I got in everything. Eat up!” “‘Super-duper’!” Moony giggled, laughing soup out his snout. He guiltily slurped down his cranberries. “Pilgrim Bert . . . how come . . .” Luhluh mumbled while tentatively partitioning her stuffing into little snortable piles, “how come all the non-white Earthmen were so bad?” “Because, sweetmeat, they had all those bad ideas I told you about, and just couldn’t accept that the only right thing to do was whatever the good white humans told them to do.” He glanced over at Pilgrims Michael and Marianne, suddenly very busy with the pots and pans. “Y’know, guys, without their having a basic understanding of genetics, this is gonna be a lot tougher than I thought.” He looked back. “You see, honeyhocks, white humans are forced to struggle under this terrible weight known as ‘White Human’s Burden’. That means it’s their destiny, their Humanifest Destiny, to save all the lower races and species from themselves. Lower races and species lie, scheme, and seduce others into doing what’s bad. Ugh. They even take advantage of children, by telling them things that will just lead them to ruin. But white humans have a special gene that causes them to do only the right things, and the very best white humans have what’s called a ‘super gene’, which makes them organize all their inferiors in the very best ways. Now think about it, tubbycakes, doesn’t it make sense to have the finest species in charge?” “Um, Pilgrim Bert,” Moony ventured, “did Mister Wilde have this super gene?” 55

Elis Royd Bert irritably knuckled the table. “Governor Wilde was not a happy man, Moonpie. He knew something—a dark secret, a terrible truth—something way, way bigger than his personal wants and dreams.” The children leaned closer. “What dark secret, Pilgrim Bert?” “Well, and it absolutely pains me to reveal it—don’t avoid that pumpkin pie, Luhluh—but Governor Wilde, through his diligent research into making a happier world for those living outside Administration, discovered that a dirty gene; one of those hormonal regulators carried only by nonwhite humans, had somehow been imported from Earth. Believe it or not—this dirty gene had lain dormant for dozens of generations until it finally woke up and infected the local royds. You can read all about it over at Royd Weigh-in—c’mon now, Buhwa, that macaroni salad won’t eat itself—but for now let me just simplify by saying that our dear Governor Wilde, heartbroken over the plight of his beloved royds, took it upon himself and three fellow royditarians to put the infected locals out of their misery, thereby preventing an asteroid-wide epidemic. A pandemic. You see now, kids? Saved from yourselves, saved from yourselves. Dip your yams in honey, Moony; otherwise they’ll just dry out.” “But, Bert,” Buhwa said, “I mean, Pilgrim Bert . . . how come Mister Wilde and his friends had to torture all the royds and burn down their homes and kill their horses? And why did they hang them from the trees instead of leaving them on the ground? And if humans are so wonderful, how come they keep all the good food inside EarthAd while we have to eat roots and bug poop? And why do—” “Human says ‘gobble’!” “Gobble, gobble, gobble!” “Now children, there’s one more member of the party I’ve yet to introduce. Kids, this is Pilgrim Chef, or Chef Pilgrim as we like to call him. Chef’s a wizard with the forks and knives— why, he’s the guy who put the ‘cut’ in cutlery.” A fat little moustachioed man in a big white mushroom hat now peered over Bert’s shoulder, his expression liquid with brotherly love. When he saw the children cringing there his face lit up like a crematorium. “Chef’s going to make you guys Thanksgiving stars,” Bert said. “But how about all the other humans,” Moony mumbled. “I mean, you four aren’t the only ones who celebrate, are you?” “Oh, of course not, apple-bottom! All Earthmen celebrate this day, every year.” He ground his teeth. “But the Council, bless its legislative little heart, yesterday moved all the meat to their Ballroom, and declared the rest of EarthAd a Thanksgiving meat-free zone.” “Meat!” Luhluh belched. “You mean . . . you mean . . . humans eat meat?” Bert mirrored her expression. “I know, I know: the thought of consuming flesh just makes me want to puke! And how wise of you to see it that way. You’re such a morsel. So . . . are you guys ready for another history lesson? Who wants to hear how the noble white politicians saved the universe from the evil brown immigrants?” “Not now,” Buhwa moaned. “I . . . I have a tummy ache.” “Me too,” Luhluh breathed. “Serves you both—” Moony tried, and nearly rolled off the bench. “Children, children! Don’t forget what day it is. Human says ‘gobble’!” “Gobba—ub*bba—gobba . . .” “Okay, I think you chubs have had enough. Mike, help me get these little guys up on the table.” The two men carefully lifted the children one by one and gently placed them in nice 56

Elis Royd comfortable aluminum pans. “Let’s get these costumes off—give ’em some air. There we go.” Pilgrim Bert looked down kindly. “There’s only one sure cure for a tummy ache, and that’s a good old fashioned butter belly rub. Now hold still, you three, while we massage this in. Luhluh, don’t lick. There. Now a little salt and some spices and—voila, turkeys! Happy Thanksgiving!”

57

Chapter Six

Forty-five miles of cracked dusty plains, and the horizon remained unbroken. The Commander stared until his vision blurred. With all eyes on him, he snatched up a piece of parchment and attempted to tear it down the middle. The stuff wouldn’t give, so he went for a diagonal rip. Same result. Finally, after trying from every angle, he crushed it in his hands and tossed it over his mount’s head. The mass billowed out and gently settled on his saddle. He picked it back up and, rather than try again, used it to grimly mop his face. “Stupid map’s a joke! A farce!” He swatted it off, only to see it lodge in the right stirrup. “This entire asteroid’s uncharted—unless those little monsters out there have learned how to fingerpaint.” He looked down. “The high price of exclusivity, eh, boy? Nothing to go by but urban legends . . . spontaneously mutating life forms, predatory vegetation, hallucination-inducing micro-spores, the ground opening up to swallow travelers . . .” He yanked the young Cept’s neck chain. “You’d better be good and goddamned sure we’re on the right track! I won’t tell you again.” He looped the chain around twice, forcing the boy to face west. “That’s the way we came.” He looped it again and tugged counter-clockwise. Now the boy was facing east. “That’s the way we’re going.” He tugged twice more, so that the boy in turn faced north—“Been that way;”—and south—“been that way too. Almost lost two good men in the gorges, had to shoot a hobbled steed. Broke my heart.” He relaxed his pull, allowing the boy to free his head by looping it in reverse around the chain. “Guard!” he called. “Dismount! Take five.” 58

Elis Royd The Commander heaved himself off his horse. “I want a lean-to,” he told a corporal. “Good water, some jerky, and some honeyed oats. Bring me my vintage.” Once the hide lean-to was up, the Commander muttered off-handedly, “Always wanted me a son,” and yanked the chain good-humoredly. He handed the boy a cup filled from his jug. “You must be thirsty.” He then gave him a couple of honey-oat logs and leaned back into the hot shade. “Too good for the horses,” he remarked kindly, “but never too good for you.” The boy wolfed down the logs while the Commander chewed his jerky. “How far to Maldea?” The boy pouted and gestured globally. “No, damn you. Answer me straight!” The youngster cringed. “I’m not going to whip you again, son.” The Commander eased back and smiled. “I just want you to like me, that’s all.” He unscrewed his flask’s cap and poured some brandy into a little bowl. “Here’s something I’d like you to taste; a special treat.” The Cept boy nervously unfurled his tongue. He lapped some back and immediately recoiled. “Stings a little, doesn’t it? That’s all right. Can you taste it? Cherry . . . yummy, yummy cherries. That’s the kind of treat you’ll get used to in EarthAd’s great big warehouses. C’mon; try again. There you go. Isn’t that good? Drink some more, son. You’ll feel happy real soon.” The Commander sipped from his flask, laughed, and poured the boy another bowl. “How far to Maldea?” The boy grinned and let his head roll in ever-widening circles. “Stop that! You’ll make yourself sick. How many days? Two, three?” The boy nodded broadly, then shook his head. A second later his head was rolling again. “Stop it! You’re in a military encampment, boy! If you can’t learn to—” “Sir?” The Commander looked up irritably. “What is it?” “We’ve sighted a party of riders, sir. On our westerly flank.” “Riders?” The Commander pushed himself to his feet and handed over the chain. “Watch him.” He stalked up to a man with a glass. “What riders?” “They’re royd horsemen, sir. And they’re armed.” “You’re kidding! Give me that glass.” Staring back from a large mound were maybe two score mounted royds, each bearing a rifle. “Corporal!” he called back, “send out a messenger. They must be an envoy from their ‘Queen’; they sure didn’t just stumble on us here. I don’t like all those guns around my men; let’s play up the whole Queen thing.” He slapped the guard on the back. “Fantastic!” “Sir?” “Don’t you see? We’re on the right track. They’re the first wall around Maldea.” He mounted his horse, pulled back his hood, and placed an embroidered cap squarely on his head. In a minute a messenger joined his flank, and the whole lot began a steady march toward the oddly staring royd riders. At a hundred yards the grouped Guard stopped. The messenger proceeded another fifty yards before halting. “Royd Queen!” he called. “I bring you regards from Commander of The Guard, Earth Administration, Elis Royd.” At length a solitary rider broke from the royd side. It was a gnarm, and an ugly one to boot: forehead pleats dangling round a narrow hooked snout; bulbous, pear-shaped eyes colored lichen green. His compound dorsal hunch caused him to ride in a most ungainly fashion, arms hanging down his steed’s cocoa flanks. It took him forever to clop up, and when he arrived his response was gloriously anticlimactic: 59

Elis Royd “Queen not here.” The messenger glazed for half a minute. “Well then, who speaks for her? You?” The gnarm chewed this over. Finally he said, “Queen not here.” “I can see that, sir. But I’ve been directed to act as a go-between—for the Commander of our Guard and an officer; that is, someone who serves as an authorized representative of your queen—so that oral proceedings can commence. This is really a pretty standard procedure; a formality, actually.” The gnarm glowered. His hand went for his rifle. “Enough!” The Commander clopped up and booted the messenger’s horse in the rump. The messenger rode back to ranks. “What is your name, soldier?” the Commander demanded. The gnarm squirmed. “Rshxemnphri.” “Outstanding. Do your people understand the rules of engagement?” The gnarm drooped his head and peeked round his hump. All royd eyes were on him. A minute passed. “Well?” the Commander said. “How many of you are there, then?” The gnarm’s snout bobbed mathematically. At last he said, “Thirty-six.” “Including you?” “Thirty-seven.” “That makes your force numerically superior. How fair is that?” The gnarm blinked. The Commander shook his head incredulously. He blew out a sigh. “So how many weapons do you carry? Just the rifles, or side arms as well?” The gnarm shrugged guiltily. “Only rifle.” “Well, do you have any back-up? Are there any reinforcements coming? Well? Speak up, sir! Speak up!” The gnarm’s pride was a red-hot wad. He swallowed anyway, and humbly shook his head. “So you’re telling me your only weapons are the rifles showing? You’re saying you’re an isolated party lacking communications with your base, with only the rudest of arsenals at your disposal? Is this what I’m expected to believe, sir, or am I missing something overwhelmingly obvious here? I don’t mind telling you that I find this entire situation incredible. Help me out, sir, will you—that’s the whole picture?” The gnarm sagged in his saddle. The Commander huffed. “You really haven’t thought this out, now, have you? The rules,” he said icily, “are as follows: both sides simultaneously drop their rifles on the ground. This shifts the situation from conflict to discourse. Then we all dismount and get to know one another. We connect; do you understand? We network. We settle our differences like grown men.” He bowed condescendingly. “And grown royds.” The gnarm sat up straight. “So then;” said the Commander, “will your soldiers perfectly understand your orders from here?” The gnarm nodded. “Royd follow example.” He held out his rifle at arm’s-length, looked back, and nodded sharply and with authority. The entire royd force copied his move, holding their rifles out at ninety degrees. 60

Elis Royd “Guard!” the Commander called, without looking back. “Rifles away from your bodies; right angle! Imitate the enemy!” The Guard followed the command with enviable military precision. Opposing forces stared across the gap. The Commander slowly and deliberately unsheathed his rifle and held it out for all to see. “Earthmen,” he said diplomatically, “come from an ages-old tradition embodying tolerance, sincerity, fairness, and goodwill. I might also mention dignity, compassion, magnanimity, humility . . . ad infinitum. But the single most endearing virtue of our species is, particularly in a military situation, trust. Fair play and honor are foremost among adversaries—it is literally impossible for an Earthman to take advantage of an opponent, or to mislead him in a way that would result in a skewed contest. It simply is not in our genetic makeup. In this spirit I offer to be first to drop my weapon. This will be a highly symbolic act to the men of my command, who will recognize it as the classic human overture to a real and abiding friendship. You must then drop yours.” He nodded forward and back, indicating both forces. “Then everyone together.” He tossed his rifle. After a second the gnarm did likewise. “Guard!” called the Commander. “On my command drop your rifles!” The gnarm, holding out his end of the agreement, thrust out his arm with the palm down. “Drop your rifles!” the Commander ordered. The Guard did so. Half a second later the gnarm let his arm fall. The royds all dropped their rifles. “Guard!” the Commander shouted. “Side arms! Fire at will!” And with that he drew a huge knife from his cassock’s waistband, lurched forward, and nearly decapitated the gnarm. The Guard broke for the startled royds with pistols blazing. Now utterly weaponless, those royds not killed outright pulled their horses into an hysterical retreat. The Guard chased them along a plain and into a small weathered canyon, cornering them in a cul-de-sac of rounded bluffs. There an unexpected turn occurred: the doomed royds came back fang and nail, throwing the Guard from their steeds and savaging them on the ground. The Commander rode up picking off the scrabbling royds one by one. When the last few were trapped against a bluff wall he calmly dismounted and began the executions, posing perfectly erect and with admirable calm, taking plenty of time to aim and reload. The last brute standing proved a particularly insolent specimen; it took a pair of bullets in the knees to bring him down, another in the groin to teach him respect—and even then he refused to cow. The Commander swore through his teeth. He became very deliberate in his movements, smoothly going down on one knee, firmly but gently caressing the barrel, and not missing a breath as he put a bullet directly between the glaring royd’s eyes. He rose with the aloofness becoming his office and handed the spent rifle to a cheering rider. “Guard!” he called. ”We press on!” The Commander cuffed the exuberant rider. “Now go find me my boy.”

This time the Queen’s entry was not so formal. Her entourage consisted solely of rush-drilled riflemen and a single tatterdemalion court crier. And this time she didn’t come all decked out: her rags were simple and sincere, though meticulously scrubbed and expertly trimmed. The Elder leered from his high bench. “Dressing down, are we?” He was the only Councilman present. “This time,” Emra said, “I did not come to dine. Read!” 61

Elis Royd The tall unsightly creature stiffly unrolled a new scroll and thrust it forward. He was one of those dreadful marsh sprenks; all scrawny neck, outsized head, and comical hairy paws. Each hem and pose, every awkward attempt at presence, only made the Queen look that much more foolish. “Get on with it,” she grated. “By the dictate of her majesty Emra,” he squawked, “Queen of Royds, matriarch of the unwalled many, muse of all who—” “Get on with it!” the Elder snarled. “—The Great Royd Coalition does hereby declare itself in a state of war with Earth Administration!” The sprenk collapsed on a bench. The Elder smiled down. “You’ve grown exceedingly myopic in your ambition, Madame Queen.” He gestured at her new Royal Guard. “And rather image-friendly in your corrective lenses.” “Oh?” “I see you’ve spent some time refurbishing your army.” “Thank you for noticing.” “You’ve spent some real money on ’em too! Don’t think I don’t know how you came upon all those weapons. I’ll have you know it is now a capital offense to trade arms for non-regulated jewels, gold, or silver within these walls. Miniature gemstones . . .” he muttered gloomily, “. . . battered old mantel pieces.” The Elder rapped a knuckle on his desk’s peeling trim. “So the ‘Great Royd Coalition’ comes to declare war . . . and how have we so displeased you? We’ve met with you, apologized, offered remuneration—on your terms—for that messy little scene involving our impetuous ex-Governor. We’ve drawn up a proposal for a new and better world, which you appear to have trashed. We’ve thrown our doors open . . . and you would ‘declare war’! Why must Earthmen always be the heavies?” “A Queen’s Rider,” Emra asserted, “returned to Maert’n from a massacre in the Canyons. The Rider was mortally wounded, having been left for dead by his assailants. And he mentioned, by way of passing, the Administration Guard.” The Elder raised an eyebrow. “Our forces are not under any geographical constraints. Are you implying some weird sort of trespass on ‘your lands’?” “He told me a story of a truce broken by subterfuge, of a merciless ambush, of the slaughter of unarmed royds in a state of helpless surrender.” “Stories,” the Elder mumbled. “Words broken. Helpless victims. Everybody has a story. What evidence have you? The ranting of a delirious royd rider . . . and for this you ‘declare war’?” “The marauding humans were reported under the leadership of your Guard Commander, a major player indeed. Always the heavies. The Guard were dragging wagons and excavation tools— this was not a military operation.” The Elder sat straight up. “Where was this force encountered? What direction were they taking? Did they appear lost, or did they seem to be closing on their goal?” “I am unable to disclose that information.” “Unable, Madame Queen, or unwilling?” He folded his arms on his desktop; it was a posture of deepest conciliation. “This is absolutely no way to comport ourselves—our common purpose is to become enriched through our exalted position in the world. Individuals of our caliber would not be having this discussion were we not like-minded, so let’s just dispense with the niceties of diplomacy and roll up our sleeves. Tell me the location of this unfortunate clash and I’ll get an investigative body right on it.” Emra smiled thinly. “Such a roundabout response to a declaration of war.” 62

Elis Royd “My dear Queen.” The Elder spread his black-robed arms. “A great number of traitorous men, women, and children—whole families—were recently engaged in a frantic movement to steal and sell Administration arms.” He waved a languid hand at Emra’s well-armed Royal Guard. “A great deal of crudely hammered gold and silver is abruptly circulating underground. So don’t speak to me of the roundabout. A bona fide act of war was perpetrated upon this noble institution long before your silly ‘declaration’.” “These hypothetical thieves of yours would have to be most clever to operate right under your executive nose.” “Those hypothetical thieves of mine are now skinned and swinging from gallows just within our gates. It’s not too early for a tour.” “No,” Emra returned. “It’s far too late. I now retire to my war room. Your ‘noble institution’ will not suffer my presence again.” “Where was the Commander apprehended, Queen? I’ll find out, with or without your assistance.” “Good day,” said the Queen, “Council Elder.” “Where?” At a brisk order, the Royal Guard turned cleanly and marched her out of Chambers. “Good riddance,” said the Elder, “Royd Queen.”

It wouldn’t be fair to perpetually harp on the flaws of Elis Royd without celebrating its one true success story. It’s a triumph that goes way back, with roots in the bowels of Earth, and with an ultimate destination among the stars. This was a destiny just gnawing to unfold, and its agent was none other than that headstrong visionary, the Earthman. And so it came about that the greatest, most flexible species of all rose to hold subtle dominion over the galaxies. When those waves of colonists laid claim to their armies’ conquered worlds, they brought a little bit of Earth with them: no single Earthcraft—be it domestic or cargo, large or small, local or outpost-hopping—did not contain a secret haul of that ubiquitous unbidden shadow, the cockroach. This gravity-defying, garbage-wallowing, feces-tracking scavenger transmitted so many viruses, lived and reproduced amongst so many extraterrestrial imports, and dominated so many unthinkable habitats, that it eventually became the true silent master of Elis Royd. Roaches evolved concentrically on the titanic asteroid (arguably a smallish planet sucked into the Greater Sirian Drift). The least-evolved bugs lived in, around, and under Earth Administration— rocketing little devils that ate anything under any circumstances, and weren’t about to surrender an inch of hard-won ground. Larger specimens lived in the barren, moat-like ring of crushed rock encircling EarthAd; essentially the communal cemetery—to their horror, the original Administrators found that a plucky Altayne flesher positively thrives on human cadavers, even as it gradually passes its dormant spawn into anyone close enough to infest. The passed spawn, they learned, vitalize and reproduce within their hosts, accelerating their demise for consumption by the tertiary generation. Faced with the prospect of turning Earth Administration into a vast crematorium, the disintegrating government of Elis Royd declared the affected dead, from then on, “In God’s Hands,” and had the bodies interred in shallow graves within that flat surrounding ring. Everybody turned their backs in those days, though they all knew the Terran Roach was rapidly cross-breeding with the larger Pukenian Slimesucker, 63

Elis Royd and that the old Earth phrase “In God’s Hands” had in fact become an EarthAd euphemism for “To The Roach Delivered.” This tendency of species to cross-evolve on the asteroid produced larger, sparer, and more aggressive breeds in the crags and caves. Sparer because, at least among the Cave Roaches, “omnivorous” now included cannibalism—on their living and on their dead, among the fallen in combat, and in spectacularly ferocious feeding frenzies every third hatching. Cave Roaches were therefore much larger, though much fewer, than the Locals. In the canyons and hills evolved the Great Roaches, the most aggressive and fearsome of all. Bigger competitors need more food, so Great Roaches supplement their diets with cadaver spoils won through savage hit-and-runs in the cemetery, with suspiciously well-timed raids on unsupervised pets and livestock, and with the occasional stolen royd child. Great Roaches hive in the deepest gorge crevices; some reaching eight feet high when propped on their vertebral buds (a cross-species contribution). Their antennae can number in the hundreds— but no longer as simple feelers. They’ve evolved into strong and versatile questing limbs that serve for propulsion, for climbing, and for fishing-out and eviscerating maters. A Great Roach will eat almost anything it can mount. Now, the Commander and his Guard, picking their way through a mushy field in the roaring twilight, might have been caught completely unawares had it not been for their little guide. The Cept boy knelt and demonstrated, by darting his sharp fingers along the spongy ground onto his passive other hand, that the predatory Great Roach was nearby. “And you know this?” the Commander whispered. “How?” “Royd put here.” “Why?” “Defend Maldea.” The Commander dropped to his knees. “You mean . . . you mean they’re trained?” “Not train.” The boy shook his head vigorously. “Hungry.” The Commander rose. “Why, you little traitor. You got us ambushed for dinner.” “No.” The boy rolled about in the muck. “You roll too. Cover Earth stink.” He squirmed about until he was painted head to toe. “Guard!” The Commander’s call was an unquestionably authoritative whisper—he was issuing a direct order sotto voce. “Copy my actions!” He dropped beside the boy and also rolled about, quickly becoming coated. His men obeyed without hesitation, rolling energetically in the sticky mud until the area appeared peppered with natural humps. “Stand slow,” the boy said. He, the Commander, and the Guard gently rose to their feet. Imported sub-soil adhesives were drawn up by the motion, and upon contact with air rapidly produced a ruddy, porcelain-like transparent veneer on their hulking figures, simultaneously sucking in foul pockets of barely breathable air. Far away came a scurrying that rattled the ground. In a minute the first antennae were dimly seen, feeling around some of the larger boulders. Ten seconds later the entire area was infested. The Commander watched them through a reddish film—it was the eeriest experience imaginable . . . to be standing rooted in a man-shaped bubble, carefully respiring one’s own body aroma, while one of nature’s ugliest and most successful concoctions scurried up to you with its feeler-arms waving hypnotically. And worried at the muck around your ankles. And tentatively pulled itself up your plastic second skin. And stopped to look you directly in the eye. The Commander didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. Though its pliant helmet was riddled with compound eyes, there was something in the hardened muck that made the Roach blind 64

Elis Royd to him. His view, however, was only slightly distorted: every supple bristle in that deep brown mask was luridly visible; testing, tasting, palpating. The Commander remained absolutely motionless. A limb lashed onto the veneer directly over his mouth—it struck him that his breath, however contained, was fogging the inner surface, and that this subtle activity had intrigued the Roach. One of its long hooked nails began to scratch at the veneer, patiently digging a diamond-shaped groove. After a minute of this it appeared to grow frustrated. The Roach slowly climbed over the Commander and down the other side. Two seconds later it was gone. He cautiously turned his head. There were no Roaches to be seen. A stirring caught his attention and he turned back: the Cept boy was digging around his own enclosure’s perimeter. In a minute he’d managed an airway. He worked his hands side to side, widening the slot, and, as soon as he could get both hands through, gripped the base and heaved. The whole casing toppled over and immediately began reconstituting with the muck. The boy grinned and dug out a space for the Commander’s fingers, then scampered off to free the Guard. Once all were reassembled, the Commander yanked the boy aside. “And you have to do this every time you move a load?” “Only when monster here.” “Good show. Where do you wash this stuff off?” “Come.” They followed him down to a large standing pool. In many places the asteroid’s pumped-up water does not filter back for recycling. It’s caught in surface depressions and, in non-steamfed regions on a world with nil rainfall, becomes rank— supporting only those gnarly specimens able to acquire food and oxygen during pool-to-pool migrations. The bulk of these creatures’ lives are spent in a sort of submerged hibernation, waiting for topside motions to signal a feast. The men could not have known this, of course, and the eager Guard were quite startled at the sudden rush of maniacal snappers, attracted by their footfalls in the gloom. “No,” the boy said. “Here.” And he showed them a royd sauna: an enormous hide tent over an old steam blowhole. Once inside, the men were instantly sopping; they could scrape themselves dry and wring out their uniforms. Although it was now fully dark, there was consensus for getting as far away as possible. The Commander twisted the Cept boy’s chain affectionately. “You get us all the way through this, son, and I might even adopt you. How does that sound? Eh, ‘son’?” “Father,” the boy whined. “You promise . . .” “Oh, don’t worry; he’s still waiting in EarthAd, I’ll guarantee you that much. But if we want to see him again, we have to get all the way to Maldea and back, don’t we, son?” “Yes, sir.” “Just call me Dad.” They rode on in the dark until the horses showed trouble negotiating their carts in the rutted earth. The Commander ordered a halt for the night. The men spread out in a rocky field, complaining of soreness, of muddled concentration, of a bone-deep weariness. The Commander felt it too. He reclined on an elbow, sharing his blanket. The boy pointed at a milky effervescence rolling in from the hills. The Commander slapped down his hand; it was a father-son moment. There ensued a quiet, ruminative pause. The Commander sighed. “Some day, boy, when you’re all grown up and have plenty of experience under your belt, you’ll learn something about getting along in the real world. Or maybe you won’t.” He looked off at the stars. “Perhaps natural wisdom is a trait exclusive to the human being. You see, son, as a supremely successful social species, humans have learned that one’s word is one’s password. And 65

Elis Royd not just one’s word—one’s gender, one’s race, one’s financial situation, one’s peer group . . . these are the standards by which Homo sapiens judges his fellow man. And this is why great men rise above small men, and why those great men are naturally entitled to the bulk of the best.” He tapped a fist on his chest. “Small men resort to talk in assemblies, and thereby enlist armed officials to legally oppress the mighty. Great men take what they want, and talk about it later.” The Cept boy cocked his head. “Royd share.” “Exactly my point. Royds are low beings. Your kind will always be our inferiors.” He stretched his arms and legs. “We’ll continue this little chat in the morning.” The boy urgently shook the Commander’s shoulder. “No sleep!” “Get your hands off me.” The Commander’s brain was turning to mush. “No! No sleep! Dream bad!” “Take your hands off of me!” The Commander forced open his eyes. He would have whipped him good and proper if not for the tremendous anxiety in the boy’s expression: his tongue was curled in and his eyes bursting in his skull. One hand covered his stubby proboscis while the other randomly stabbed the night. The Commander looked around groggily. A low mist was falling on the men and wagons. It congealed upon contact, clinging in wide sticky clumps. “Fog,” the Commander gasped. His chin dropped from the effort. “The pumps. The vents.” “No, not fog, not pump! No breathe!” “Hands off, I say! I’ll beat you bloody, boy . . . wrong with you—show respe . . . show re—” The mist painted his face and hands, forming a bubble over his gaping mouth, weaving his lashes and gumming up his eyes. The boy hammered his fists on the Commander’s chest; then, both hands covering his face, scrambled for higher ground. The Commander clumsily threw out a restraining arm, forced himself to his feet, and was absolutely blown away by the scene he faced. The field was ablaze. His men were sprawled on their bellies and backs. Stomping between them were armed grotesqueries—some unknown royd breed— and these monsters were stripping the fallen of their valuables and tossing the plunder into long wooden carts. The Commander shook like a dog out of water. Without a thought for his own safety, he grabbed his saber and ran it through the first he reached. At the sound of its scream three turned and came loping for him. The Commander lopped off the head of one, cut the next down the middle, and lost his footing with the impetus of his final swing. Rolling under one of these odd carts, he was thrilled to see a few of his men rise and successfully engage the enemy. The Commander was able to slice off the feet of one passing royd before the whole fighting mass toppled on the cart. He struggled upright and ran another through, then called to three of his men for assistance. All four heaved the cart over and smashed it to pieces with blows from their swords and rifle butts. They then systematically attacked all the visible carts, kicking savagely with their massive military boots, ripping off cartwheels, slaughtering the invaders’ strange violet steeds. A shot rang out and a royd keeled over. There were more shots, some screams, and then the sweet and giddy reward of his Guard’s victory cheer. He made to raise his saber in response, but all the smoke and exertion were just too much. The Commander woke to a disaster of his own making. Most of his men were lain out in a drugged slumber, but many were quite dead—shot, stabbed, hacked to pieces. The overturned wagons were all totaled. He gathered his wits and went staggering along the field until he found the Cept boy sleeping in a hollow. 66

Elis Royd “You didn’t run!” he managed, collapsing on his rear. “You didn’t want to leave me.” The boy rubbed his eyes while he was hugged. “Terrible thing,” the Commander gasped. “Men dead, wagons smashed. All in a dream, a dream . . . but no; it was enemy action! Our transport is shot. It’s what you wanted to tell me, isn’t it? The ‘bad dream’ is a royd ploy to protect Maldea, by making us our own enemy.” He sniffed at the memories. “Stuff in the air. A vanguard of some sort—living matter, sent to put us off our heads. That underhanded, ruthless queen of theirs—she wants us dead.” He gripped the boy’s shoulders. “But we survived her, didn’t we? That’s two walls, son. How many more before we’re there?” The young Cept was hyperventilating. “How many!” The Commander cocked his fist and checked himself. “Come on, boy. We’ve one hell of a mess to clean up.” There were eleven dead, six critically wounded; one blinded by a rifle butt to the forehead, one with his legs cut off below the knees. Four slain horses; the rest had bolted. The Guard were in the process of rounding them up now. The wagons were trashed, picks and shovels scattered. The Commander posed, undaunted: once the horses were contained he announced they were pressing on. The Guard would have to carry their loot on horseback. The wounded were put out of their misery, the dead buried in a brief and entirely forgettable ceremony. He displayed the Cept boy on his shoulder. “From now on we have but one guide! Our goal is nearly in our grasp—prepare to become very rich men! Guard, to your steeds!”

In the very heart of EarthAd’s Administrative Center, not a hundred yards from the Officers’ Complex, stands a huge, rotting, hemispherical building known as Applications. It’s a caving relic; most of the glass tarped over, the giant lobby a lonesome, tilted ghost town. But when first in service, the original Administrators maintained a very wholesome Welcome Station featuring brochures, posters, and a thousand family-friendly artifacts of Planet Earth. In the rear of this building are archived folders containing everything a model aspirant was expected to absorb, real and invented, about that distant dreamlike planet. Only two scholars have ever haunted this place; only two men know the various locks’ combinations: Here the Council Elder and Head Administrator became the savviest humans on the asteroid. Each, unbeknownst to the other, spent endless hours perusing files intended as civics propaganda for serious applicants. Here the Elder and Administrator learned of an Earth nation called the United States; a great and respected power that had succeeded in political globalization, and eventually galactic dominance, through an insidious system known as capitalistic expansionism. The bad news was that the system methodically ground up and regurgitated the planet’s cultures, its poetry, its feel; its very soul. The good news was that a radial aspect, democracy, smoothed out the inequities that surely would have accompanied a less egalitarian push. And the two dusty old men learned, from Elis Royd’s own archives, how the asteroid’s intended government of executive, legislative, and judicial branches had collapsed during the Second Great Pestilence, and been transmogrified into a mock-tertiary system of Council, Administration, and Arbitration, with the Arbiters perforce relegated and replaced in the Triad by a Guard. Elis Royd was a de facto oligarchy. To impress and encourage applicants, her warehouses had been “infinitely stocked”, her atomic plant vaunted as “eternally powerful”. These exaggerations weren’t all that far from the truth: the self-sustaining economy of Earth Administration was geared, just like its producers and consumers, for glomming rather than for survival. A man with real wealth could have anything he 67

Elis Royd desired. The basic citizen was ignorant, spoiled, and entirely lacking in vision. Only those in power possessed the stuff to dream big. The Elder possessed that stuff in spades. His dreams were fueled by exotic images, and kept at a high burn by an addictive personality: he had to have his daily fantasy fix, in a dark and private place. The Elder was approaching that private place now. Just outside Applications leans a mounted touch pad containing a universal translator, a gridmap of the Center, and basic emergency instructions accessible to over two dozen species. The Elder tapped out a sequence on the exclamatory icon marked Security, correctly entering the combination that unlocked the massive double doors. Graven on those doors was a gorgeous rendition of the planet Earth, looking down on the North American continent, with designs meant to represent bridges linking her borders with the globe’s perimeter. In the whole area outside the globe were uncountable hammered asterisks, symbolizing the millions of Terran-managed stations and outposts. The Elder stepped inside and reverently closed the doors. Once he’d breathed in the locked and lonesome rooms, the faded murals and webbed corners, and the tattered Terran blue and green, he padded under a lobby arch into an antechamber. Here the doors of one room featured padlocks as well as the original combinations. This was the Elder’s hidden haven, his secret chamber. He worked the locks with the practiced care of a boy thumbing through his pornography stash, crept inside, and gently latched the doors, triggering a reverse-dimmer. A soft white haze gradually filled the room, seeming to emanate from its very center. The North Wall was taken up by a giant full-color poster, one of Welcome Station’s original retro Earth memorabilia. It was an advertisement for a gorgeous, solar-powered luxury vehicle known as the Panthyr. The sleek, jet-black car was parked outside an Earth nightclub shining like a jewel-studded tiara. A coiffed and tailed playboy stood beside the open driver’s door; a wolfish grin on his face, a half-naked starlet on either arm. The Elder clenched his fists and ground his teeth, staring fixedly—he was born on the wrong world, at the wrong time. Earth, glorious Earth . . . ruthless, lavish, haughty master of the galaxies. Every attempt to mimic its glory only mocked his frustration. No EarthAd female could begin to approach the true honey of Earthwoman as depicted by that revered poster. No outfit conceived on this wretched asteroid, no matter how spectacularly tailored, had a prayer of competing with that shiny clipped tuxedo. And the Panthyr! No coach, no carriage, no wheeled litter . . . he took a deep breath and dropped his white old head. The East and West Walls were collages, photomontages, testaments to the wonders of Planet Earth. There were images of fat politicians in high-windowed palaces . . . herds of brainlessly grinning civilians . . . great cities standing proud and fair. Martial images stirred his imagination: invincible armies, staggering space flotillas, concubines nude and kneeling. The Empire of the Cosmos—no one else on Elis Royd even dreamed of living like these pictured lucky humans. And no one else imagined the Royd Hoard as the Elder conceived it—limitless wealth, hypnotic wealth, wealth on top of wealth. With such a trove he might realistically emulate those politicians, and belatedly approximate that smirking dandified playboy. The South Wall featured a huge profile of the Terran Bald Eagle. Fierce eyes, vicious beak: a merciless raptor. The Elder straightened and rocked on his heels; maybe he was growing soft with the years, maybe it was time to horsewhip a toady or two. He swept back his robes and crisply stepped from the room, locked the doors, exited the building, and marched the Administration corridors into the Grand Hall. Outside the Head Administrator’s rooms he twirled a hand over his head. A guard rapped smartly and announced him. The Elder stepped back to pace. 68

Elis Royd There came a muffled thumping, and what sounded like a curse. “Again,” the Elder growled. “Harder.” The guard butted the door with his rifle. This time the response was a threatening shout. “Give me that.” The Elder snatched the rifle and hammered meaningfully and repeatedly. In a moment the door flew open and a half-dressed Head Administrator peered out. He looked from the guard to the Elder. “Make it good.” “A matter of State. Put some clothes on. We’ll get you a fresh batch of boys tomorrow.” When the Administrator was dressed they dispensed with the Guard and marched back. “What is this all about?” “I need you as a witness.” They turned into a rear building and were promptly admitted by a trio of guards. Inside was a small, ramshackle radio room, probably the asteroid’s most efficient aboveground operation. All the wonders of consumer technology—communication, entertainment, computing— had been lost in the shuffle of building and stocking Elis Royd. On the asteroid’s surface only the electrical basics survived: fans and lights, simple home appliances, crude radios for receiving this single station’s broadcast news and ancient Terran music files—piped pre-curfew into homes and shops, and through outdoor loudspeakers during public announcements. The Administrator cuffed the operator. “Emergency broadcast.” The operator cut the music file and initiated a series of descending triple beeps. He studied a pair of gauges before nodding. The Elder leaned into a standing console microphone. “All proud men of Earth. “This day a declaration of war was delivered against Administration by a body termed ‘The Great Royd Coalition’. Despite all our attempts at mollification, the Royd Queen will not be swayed. She has used subterfuge to purchase a substantial armory from within these very walls—the men and women who sold those weapons have been duly punished, and their homes and valuables confiscated. They were traitors. “Supplying these animals with arms was an unspeakable wrong. They are savage, soulless, bloodthirsty predators committed to the destruction of all that is good and giving. They hate you, they hate me, they hate the very system designed for their betterment. They will stop at nothing to destroy us completely. So, as of this announcement, consorting with the enemy carries an automatic penalty of death. We are at war. “I do not need to remind you of all those stories about royds—about their stealing and eating children, about their hypnotizing our pets for bizarre nocturnal rituals, about their systematic violation of females—the recent spree of rapes and murders should be more than enough to galvanize we good men of Earth. “Administration will guarantee a solid gold Elis Eagle for the hide of each slaughtered adult royd male, five Eagles for each captured healthy pregnant royd female, and ten for each sturdy royd youth deemed capable of work into adulthood.” He paused for emphasis. “And, oh yes . . . half a million Premium Gold Eagles for the delivery of one Emra, Queen of Royds—alive, in one piece— and . . . voluble.”

They rode all that day; over treacherous swamps and through labyrinthine canyons, the Guard growing increasingly disgruntled at the poor food, bad water, and recurrent malaise. A persistent 69

Elis Royd swarm of leapers threw many into itching delirium, even as some unknown bacterium brought on coughs and chills. These were conditions royds had adapted to over many generations; to the softer humans it was living hell. When at last twilight forced a halt, the Guard were one step from mutiny. A fetid wind blew in from the northeast; a wind so foul the men were forced to seek refuge in a depression lost among the gentle hills and ancient gale-strewn boulders. They curled up in a tight, common circle, moaning and rolling about. Very soon they grew still, as though drugged. The Commander, suspicious of their conspiratorial rumblings, stationed himself well to the rim. The Cept boy lay beside him like a faithful dog, and every now and then the Commander couldn’t help but reach out and stroke his scaly cheek. Once, only once, that long tongue rolled out and gave a rasping lick in return. Sometimes once is all you need. “We are all alone up here, son,” he whispered. “I don’t trust this lot for a minute. How much farther to the treasure?” The boy patted the ground with both palms. The Commander just stared and stared. Something landed on his cheek. He swatted it off and seized the boy’s arm, preparing to shake a little data out of him. Another landed on his temple. The Commander angrily smacked himself upside the head. There came a determined tugging at his ankle. That did it—he sat up straight, vividly alert . . . pallid tendrils were slapping at his arms and knees, squeezing up between the rocks, ejecting pearly-white slugs of protoplasm in all directions. The whole depression was full of them. “Guard!” he hollered. “On your feet! That’s an order! Everybody up!” But the sick men were slow on the uptake, and slower to react. They rose to find themselves surrounded by long drifting clumps; slow-motion projectiles that accelerated upon approach and smacked into anything moving. The poison was fast-acting; some were succumbing with barely a struggle. The Commander looked all around: the Cept youth was nowhere to be seen. He walked back on his palms and heels, using every rock and root for leverage, until he’d reached a dozen feet below the depression’s rim. All beneath him were his calling men, some fighting vainly, some surrendering outright. There came a scraping noise above and to his left. The Commander spun around. “You!” The boy gave a little cry and scrambled over the depression’s lip. “Turncoat!” howled the Commander. “You set us up! You’ll pay for this, goddamn you—I’ll see your old man cut to pieces! I’ll kill—” he clawed his way up like a spelunker “—when I get my hands—I’ll kill you, I’ll—” The Commander pulled himself onto flat ground in time to see the boy flitting between outcroppings. He looked back. The depression was now half-obscured by mucilaginous streamers. Once the men were immobilized by poison, the pale goo immediately foamed over their exposed flesh, drying within seconds to cut off the breath and initiate the digestive process. To the astonished Commander, it was like looking down on a frothing pond, the surface broken here and there by the flailing limbs of drowning men and horses. His command was being eliminated, right before his eyes. He cursed and pushed himself to his feet. He pursued the Cept boy in a crouch, pausing every dozen yards to catch his breath and get his bearings. Too dark to be certain of anything. It was just a matter of flushing him out, but the boy wasn’t about to be caught in the open. After way too much of this hide-and-seek, the Commander hunched behind a large spiny boulder and called: “Son! Don’t be alarmed! I won’t hurt you. We had a bargain, remember? Now, if you want to see your father again, you’ll hold up your end.” He caught a deep breath. “Think of it! When we find the treasure, it’ll be just you and me, the wealthiest guys on the asteroid! We’ll buy your dad’s freedom, and we’ll set him up in the fanciest house money can buy. You can have anything you 70

Elis Royd want, and you can bring all your friends.” He advanced a few dozen feet, carefully modifying the amplitude of his calling voice. “Don’t worry about those two old Councilmen. They won’t get a single stone. With our kind of wealth, we’ll be able to hire assassins. It’ll look like somebody else did it! Eh? Why, we can even buy our own army! You and me, masters of Elis Royd! And your dad of course. What do you say? Son?” He crept on hands and knees until he was among the outcroppings; actually a kind of natural rock garden, some stones fifteen feet high. The Commander wormed around on his belly, making very little noise, pausing to pick up a scent and, finding none, worming along. After a while he began to mutter to himself; a labored, halting whisper. He was shot, and he knew it. The chase was out of him. At last he found himself splayed full-out; his right cheek buried in the dirt, his eyelids fluttering, his crimped fingers gradually relaxing. He could have slept there forever. But then he picked up a movement from the corner of his eye. On a low, dune-like hill some two hundred yards off, the Cept boy was creeping along, silhouetted by a billion stars. “You . . .” the Commander whispered, and hauled himself upright. He slid between stones, moving to his right and away from the boy, tailing him. When he emerged he was directly to his rear and so low as to be practically on his hands and knees. He followed quietly, testing each rock before trusting his weight. The boy and man moved up the hill like crabs. The Cept passed from view down the other side, and when the Commander reached the summit he was alone. But there was some kind of cave opening at the bottom. He tiptoed down until he was right alongside and listened carefully. After a few seconds he picked up a scuttling. The Commander slipped inside and began feeling his way along the cave wall. Beyond the initial bend the darkness was utter. He stopped, listened, and whispered, “Boy!” No answer. The Commander froze. In a while he heard a scraping maybe thirty yards ahead. He quietly slipped out his flashdisk and held it directly above his head. The light showed a broadening tunnel moving inexorably downward. Guided by that one glimpse, the Commander picked his way, moving side to side, pausing every ten feet to perk his ears. The blackness played upon his other senses, so that his own voice seemed to shout back at him when at last he’d summoned the focus to call out: “Boy!” He waited in the echoes. “I know you’re in here, and I know you can hear me. This standing gets us nowhere. I only ask that you make your whereabouts known. I won’t harm you; I swear. Talk to me, boy—you must realize I am the sole link to your father.” Complete silence. “Boy. We must remain a unit. Do you understand? For both our sakes. We’ve come too far together, son, to grow too far apart.” There was a slight rustle a dozen yards off. The Commander soundlessly rose to his full height, his face dead-set on the spot. He raised his flashdisk, took a deep breath, and thumbed the wheel. A small figure hopped out of the brief pool of light. The Commander immediately began a pursuit, and almost at once caught his foot. He flicked his disk again. The tunnel floor was grooved, the walls ragged and showing occasional roots. It appeared to be some kind of crudely-worked shaft, bearing downward at maybe forty degrees. Not too steep to navigate with little leaps aided by guiding flashes. But he quickly lost his footing on a broken stone, and turned an ankle upon recovery. The next thing he knew he was kicking and thrashing downhill. A collision with the wall knocked the flashdisk out of his hand, but it wouldn’t have served him—he was sliding, ricocheting, tumbling—he was plunging headfirst into abyss. The Commander did a belly flop on a rock pile, knocking out his wind. When he could breathe again he flailed his arms in all directions, searching for the flashdisk. Nothing but rocks and cold metal. That stopped him. It took a minute to put the pieces together, then he was wildly running his 71

Elis Royd hands back and forth on the rocks. He chanced upon the disk, and when he thumbed the wheel reality almost knocked him over. He worked the disk frantically. Emeralds. Sapphires. Diamonds. The blood-tinge of rubies. Some rough cuts, some fine stones. And here, a gold urn. Here a silver ladle. And there . . . there the most beautiful weapon the Commander of the Guard had ever seen. A tempered silver sword, an astonishing five feet from point to pommel, its solid gold hilt stellar with spectrum-running gems. It seemed to warm in his hand; seemed to caress his fingers rather than the other way around. Each thumbing of his disk revealed greater intricacies of craftsmanship. It was almost as if—there was a muffled rumbling deep to his right, accompanied by a slight but growing glow. The Commander, up to his knees in treasure, quietly stuffed miscellaneous pieces down his cassock. As the light increased he dropped the flashdisk in with the precious stones and metals, now supported at the waist by his left forearm. The approaching light played upon the ceiling and walls, revealing a wide pit overflowing with gems and gold. He was in a halfway post; a natural storage room. Narrow rails ran past this post through a low tunnel; the rumbling was coming from an empty cart banging uphill along those rails. The light was a little lantern swinging from the cart’s front end. The Commander gently walked on his knees to the right-hand cave wall, out of the rocking yellow haze now filling the tunnel. The rumbling became a clatter, and the little wood cart appeared, pushed by two tiny old royds, a husband and wife team by their banter. They were yrts, gaunt and down-frosted quadrupeds using the cart like a walker. The moment light struck the pit the Commander came out of his crouch. The yrts, turning at the sudden movement, threw up their arms in dismay. The Commander ran them through with a couple of bolo thrusts and immediately bent to the pile. It took him a good half hour to fill the cart, spilling treasure by the armful, passionately picking out and replacing gold, silver, and uncut stones with a kind of hysterical whimsy. He couldn’t bear to leave a single piece, so he carefully peaked the cart’s load one gem at a time. When it wouldn’t hold a stone more he slowly rolled the cart back down its track, his cassock again stuffed to the breast, the sword balanced on his forearms. As he progressed, the over-laden cart gradually picked up momentum, controllable only by braking hard left and right with his heavy riding boots’ heels. The tunnel began to curve and broaden, simultaneously brightening from a source not far along, and, as the light grew, the load sparkled with the bucking cart until the Commander became half-dazzled. The heap inside his cassock shifted and tumbled—he nearly lost a sapphire. Abruptly the Commander was fighting two losing battles: the cumbersome pile of gems and metal at his midsection, and a top-heavy cart threatening to careen out of control. A stumble, and those off-setting forces combined in a heartbeat. The Commander’s boots hammered against opposing walls like pistons as he struggled to brake. He hauled back on the hurtling cart, causing his legs to slide further down. The wheels clipped his boots, his whole body jackknifed back, and then he was tearing along on his toes. The Commander shot into a huge, brightly-lit chamber in a spray of precious stones. Dozens of frozen royd workers stared in astonishment. By the ominous drum roll of his approach, they’d been expecting a rockslide, or worse. But their amazement was nothing compared to the range of emotions assaulting the Commander as he flew in headfirst like some misguided superhero, his robes billowing out behind him, his sword gripped instinctively by the hilt— The immense chamber was filled wall-to-wall with a vast pool of raw gemstones, with gold and silver urns, with goblets, with pendants, with gold chains and jewel-encrusted frames. Tables and shelves were heaped high with crude ingots and piled jewels for cutting and finishing. Half-filled 72

Elis Royd carts and cases were lined against the far wall, large smoky lanterns dangled from the chamber’s ceiling. The Commander hit the pool in fine form, then went skimming like a stone, the plowing blade saving his face a major drubbing. He wobbled to his hands and knees, rocked back on his haunches, lifted his arms so that gems dribbled down his sleeves. Shouts rang from the royd workers, and the anxious Commander immediately began scooping treasure into his emptied cassock. The voices were approaching; workers were tentatively making their way out onto the pool. He bundled up his pickings in his left arm and reached for his sword. The Commander decapitated the first while still on his knees, then pivoted on his left knee, halfrising with a slice to an approaching belly, pushing off with a jab in a retreating back. Now hunched on his feet, he stumbled across the pool to the chamber’s main entrance, constantly pausing to retrieve dropped stones. The workers’ shouts were answered by a great hubbub. The Commander halted—cut off, front and behind. Somewhere in there he must have snapped. Heedless of his bundled cargo, he took the sword’s hilt in both hands and, with an ongoing bellow, met all comers full bore; hacking and stabbing, swinging, thrusting, and bludgeoning. He went through them blindly, his madness agitated by their screams, until daylight struck his eyes. He puffed up to the mine’s entrance and burst out into the world. The Cept boy, having followed quietly, snuck around the entrance and scrambled up the hillside. He watched from behind rocks while the gasping Commander stood propped up by his gleaming sword. Sounds of pursuit blew out of the mine. The Commander swung about and assayed his circumstances: the entrance was shored up by crossbeams secured with taut ropes wound thick as cables. These ropes were tethered to massive spikes set deep in the rocky earth. He stalked over and hacked at a rope until it split, then leaped back. The beam shifted and slipped. Half a second later the entire roof came down, effectively sealing the shaft with a rock pile lost in a huffing plume of dust. The Commander swayed there; staring, exhausted. Finally he picked up his few remaining stones, rested the blade on his shoulder, and staggered for home.

73

Chapter Seven

Three Raun: two males and a female. The males shot execution-style; a single round to the backs of their necks. The female strangled and bludgeoned. The Elder grimaced—and apparently violated. He used a poker to turn them on their tethers: all the displayed royds were hung upside-down; stinking, oozing, crawling with grymps. An elderly mahgl’n, all but quartered . . . a pre-pubescent female, butchered in her sleep . . . sloppy, sloppy work . . . a pair of hrmpts: difficult to determine the gender; badly lashed and partly skinned—swarming with grymps, heads to hooves. Farther down, the earlier displays were now smothered in grymps—they’d become shapeless, pallid, wriggling mounds suspended some three feet off the ground. “Glove,” said the Elder. His aide held up a black leather hand-and-forearm cover. The Elder slid in his arm and rolled the poker’s tip inside a hrmpt’s split belly. Instantly the tip was squirming with pus-colored grymps; winding around the shaft, working their way toward his protected fist. Taking his time, he pulled the poker away and held it upside-down. He kicked his aide. The aide immediately pushed up a little wheeled keg half-filled with scalding oil. The Elder dipped in the poker and stepped back. The oil frothed wildly, emitting a protracted shriek that petered erratically before blowing away in the pale Sirian sunlight. The Elder pulled out the poker and wiped it on his aide’s cloak. They moved along, pausing beside an obviously pregnant marsh sprenk, now decapitated and dangling low between a pair of horribly maimed, terrified royd youths. 74

Elis Royd The Elder turned with a frown. “Whose kill is this?” A man kicking back on a wagon got right to his feet. “That would be me,” he said. “Sir.” The Elder pointed the poker right between the man’s bloodguilty eyes. “You can’t spot a pregnant royd? The deal was five Eagles for a healthy—meaning living—preg. You just screwed yourself out of four Eagles, pal, and you’re lucky to get the one.” He looked around. “Drawer!” A thin man in his wake raised an eyebrow. “Give this fellow a single Eagle. And don’t make it too shiny.” He and his aide continued down to the end of the line, where the grymps were so heavy they completely obscured the hanging dead. The Elder repeatedly slammed his poker on the ground. “I can’t see a thing! Why weren’t these kills properly dressed?” A small group of men rose in concert, pushing forward a spokesman. “We’ve been waiting,” this man mumbled. “I mean, very patiently. Like all day.” “But you could have kept them clean!” the Elder barked. “Couldn’t you?” He shook his head. “Drawer, I’m not paying good Eagles for these casualties. Give each of these men a dozen Alexanders for waiting. But that’s all.” He looked at the milling Earthmen half-filling the courtyard. “That goes for all of you! Clean kills only!” He hammered the poker on his aide’s shoulder. The aide immediately splashed oil on the cadavers. The Elder backpedaled as the aide dipped his brand in the remaining oil, lit the brand, and torched the corpses. The dead royds erupted in smoky clouds of immature grymps, desperately beating their gossamer wings. Before they’d managed a foot they were thrashing, spiraling sparks. The hanging bodies shimmied and swayed with dying adult grymps. The Elder felt a hand on his shoulder. He raised the poker and paused, recognizing the Head Administrator’s sepulchral bass baritone: “I have something you surely want to see.” They walked back to the complex and into the Grand Hall. “Don’t tell me . . .” the Elder moaned; “is it green and scaly and smelly all over?” “Pretty much. It is in very bad shape, to be sure, but I am certain you will recognize it.” They strolled into Chambers, where a filthy tramp lay on his face, apparently dead. So dirty and mangled were the robes and cassock that they came off as completely unfamiliar to the Elder. He hooked the poker’s tip in the man’s collar and yanked the head around. The Elder dropped the poker in amazement. “No! He’s back!” “What little remains,” said the Administrator. Every visible inch of the Commander’s flesh was pocked, puffed, scarred, and inflamed. His eyes and cheeks were sunken and bruised, his purplish lips bloated and split. He’d been stung and bitten, made sick by radioactive water and poisonous roots, and served as a shambling mobile home for too many intestinal parasites to enumerate. Tympanic rot showed above his lobes, walking eczema made a matted disaster of his scalp. Truly he seemed dead; an appearance belied only by the slight flaring of his scab-filled nostrils. The Elder went down on one knee. “Get him some clean water. Make him speak.” “He is beyond that.” The Administrator used his boot’s toe to pry open the Commander’s mouth. The black tongue was so swollen it completely blocked the airway. The Elder looked up. “What did he tell you? Did he find it?” “As to your first question: he is beyond even delirium. He could not speak, and was indeed unconscious when the sentries dragged him in. You may check my word against theirs. As to the second—” and he reached under his cloak to draw out the long magnificent sword. The jewels in the hilt gleamed like party lights. 75

Elis Royd The Elder’s jaw fell. He reached down, snatched the Commander by the lapels, and vigorously and repeatedly slammed his head on the floor. “Where did you get this, damn you? Where! Friend! Good Counselor! Commander of the Guard, to the fore! Remember your vow!” The Administrator grabbed a bicep. “Cease. You are too late.” The Elder stared at that dead face, grimaced, and wiped his hands of the man. He stood and caressed the sword top to bottom, his fingers resting longest on the gem-studded hilt. His eyes were distant and glazed, and when at last they dreamily rose it was as if the flecks in his irises had been replaced by stars. “You were wise and good to bring this to me—you are a true friend and compatriot.” He placed the sword’s tip on the Commander’s rigid chest and gradually applied his weight. “The Triad is dissolved. We are now two.” He plucked out the sword and offered his arm. The Administrator clasped it. “We will groom a puppet commander for the Guard, we will renew our vow in blood, we will be richer than—” the Elder passionately shook the Administrator’s arm. “He has brought us the proof we need! The Royd Hoard is real!” They stood like that for a long awkward minute, locked in a private salute, nodding and studying each other’s expressions. At last the Elder segued: “What of the boy? That little monster who accompanied him?” It was aloofness by tacit agreement; the men let go and relaxed. “The good Commander,” the Administrator intoned, “returned alone. The royd youth must have succumbed en route.” The Elder polished a gem with his sleeve. “Our one lead . . . gone . . . yet his father can’t know.” “Worth a try,” said the Administrator. He turned to lead the way and stopped. “And the sword? It cannot be split in half.” The Elder brushed off the insinuation. “Sure it can. Figuratively, anyway. We’ll melt it down and split the jewels fair and proper.” They sauntered to the interrogation crypt’s hidden stairwell. “I’ll take it to the smithy straightaway.” “Uncanny that I happen to be going that way.” “Y’know,” the Elder parried, “‘uncanny’ is just the word that’s been eluding me. How royds can withstand every form of physical torment developed by man, and still maintain their common vow of secrecy, is a staggering puzzlement.” “Oh?” countered the Administrator as they wound down the stairs. “You are privy to such an encyclopedic knowledge of torture? And where might you have come by this information?” “Oh, you know;” the Elder said, “here and there.” He unlocked the crypt door and they walked in among the cells. The Elder was indeed well-schooled in pain. “I and the carpenters have been busy,” he boasted, “while you were juggling facts and figures.” A pair of racks held a pair of royds, both too far gone to acknowledge their visitors. A number of others were slumped chained to the walls, starved by the looks of them. There were prisoners bound upright and supine; flogged, burned, stabbed, gouged, tormented to the very limits of their endurance. “Amazing,” the Administrator breathed. “I will admit to being impressed.” “Not yet, you aren’t. Allow me to present the ultimate marvel.” The Elder indicated the main cell, where the Cept boy’s father hung impaled through the back by a huge, freshly-chiseled iron meat hook. The implement was in fact an instrument: a single piece attached to a chain and incorporated into a wheel and pulley system. Over the days the hook had torn through so much muscle that the Cept was now only a few inches from coming apart at the shoulders. The Administrator leaned in. “Does it yet breathe?” 76

Elis Royd “Oh, he’ll puff soon enough.” The Elder splashed a bucket’s worth of foul water on the Cept’s hanging head. The prisoner shook languidly. After a moment the bloodshot eyes rolled up. “G’morning!” the Elder called pleasantly. “I’ve brought company. You remember the Administrator, don’t you? Well, he’s been off leading a search party for our dear departed Commander, who brought us this fine weapon as proof of the elusive Hoard Of Maldea. Along with this sword and that very dead Commander, the Administrator here also retrieved one healthy young royd, who bears a remarkable resemblance to you. That was not a compliment. Anyway, he’s upstairs, right now, and boy, is he ever dying to see you.” The Cept found the strength to raise his head for an aborted appeal. The Elder slipped the sword between the cell bars until its point was supporting the chin. “Tell me the treasure’s location, you ugly royd bastard, and I’ll let him live.” He pushed the tip upward, breaking the hide. “Hold out on us now and we’ll torture him in ways that make this room look like a pleasure dome.” The Cept gagged. A long shudder ran up his frame, causing his broken arms to flap about and his head to kick back. A dry heave doubled him up, and a moment later he was hanging limply. In a weird anticlimax, the hook slowly tore out his back with a wrenching spray of blood and gristle. The Cept dropped in a heap. “What!” The Administrator stepped back. “Muted! We are in the dark!” The Elder appeared stunned. He looked around: nothing but shadows and stains, nothing but wrack and ruin. And silence. “So close . . .” he whispered, raising the blade directly before his eyes. “We’re wasting our time rooting around at the bottom. There’s only one party who can give us the hoard’s location. And the day I pull out my first cartful will be the day I see her squat crowned head mounted on the tip of this bright eager blade.”

The Curio brothers never missed a beat. They were indefatigable trackers; relentless in their study of patterns, merciless in their persecution of prey. Add to this the restlessness of youth, the natural bully-dummy give-and-take, and the fact that their father would whip them raw at the first scent of disappointment, and you had a team that wasn’t about to come home empty-handed. Right now they were sitting in a field, sharing the membranous shade of an imported crossevolved ghritchn-willow. They’d been scouring the horizon for anything moving, but the singing quiet of the dull outdoors produced a swollen, soporific effect. It was a sleepy scene. A twigfrigger poked up its rump, gawked at the brothers, and popped back in its burrow. The tedium grew. Finally the younger Curio boy rolled his head. “What would you do with a solid gold Elis Eagle?” Wiles didn’t bat a lash. His eyes remained twin periscopes over an alien sea. “Shut up, Dickie. You asked me that a thousand times, and I told you the same answer a thousand times: Pops says he wants the big money, not the pickings. We’re Curios; we’re coming back with the Queen or we ain’t coming back at all. Now shut up, Dickie.” The younger boy let his head roll back. While digesting this thousandth answer for the thousandth time, he noticed a tiny figure run skipping along a ridge and vanish. “Wiley!” “Shut up, Dickey.” “But Wiley, you said I was to sing out if I seen something. Well, I seen something, Wiley.” Wiles rolled onto his stomach. “Talk to me, Dickie.” Dickie imitated his brother’s posture and pointed. After a minute the little figure again showed against the skyline and disappeared. 77

Elis Royd “On the other side of that ridge,” Wiles whispered. “We can’t see what’s going on from here.” He rose to his fingers and toes like a sprinter and spat, “Go!” The boys scurried across the field in the manner of commandos, swinging northeast as they ran. They sprawled on their bellies and looked down. It was a bowl-shaped depression peppered with little structures created of criss-crossed branches and marshpillows. Maybe two dozen royd children were occupied therein, tumbling and climbing and rolling and wrestling. “Gosh . . .” Dickie drooled. “Don’t zone out on me now,” Wiles said. “You know the game plan. Let’s go!” They leaped to their feet and charged. The royd children, picking up on the sound of running, threw up their arms and scattered. “Earthboys!” they screamed, “Earthboys!” The Curios raced along just behind, puffing and cursing; Wiles in the lead, Dickie pulling up the rear. One of the smaller males, a kryml, had been defecating in his sandpile, and was literally caught with his pants down. Wiles hit him running—the two went rolling like a tumbleweed in a gale. By the time Dickie came loping up, Wiles already had the child in a headlock and was vigorously punching his snout. Dickie took the hindlimbs. “Quit crying!” Wiles snarled. “You’re just gonna make it worse for you. Now stop wailing and tell us what we want to know.” “Where’s the Queen?” Dickie panted. “Where is she, you little punk?” “Shut up, Dickie . . . where’s the Queen, you little punk? Where is she?” The royd child was screaming out of his mind. “Shut up!” Wiles grabbed the child by his tail and hammered him against the ground like a man beating out a rug. At the same moment there came the sound of an adult calling nearby. “Cripes!” Wiles said. “Let’s get the heck out of here!” Dickie scooped up the child and took off full-tilt, but Wiles caught up and punched him twice on the ear. “No, you moron! Leave him here!” Childless, the boys dashed back the way they came. They scrambled to the other side of the ridge, dropped on their bellies, and watched as a female royd rushed onto the scene and began soothing the wailing kryml. “Strike one!” Wiles whispered bitterly. He slapped Dickie across the face. “When I say ‘run’, that means run! It means the caper’s up, okay? Don’t try to stretch it out.” An hour later they were watching a different group of royd children, unsupervised like the last, in a very similar setup. “I’m gonna circle around to the other side,” Wiles explained. “I’ll throw a rock as a signal. That’s your cue to come out like before. But this time I’ll be waiting, and I’ll snag the first little devil what comes running by.” He crept around a boulder and vanished. In a minute Dickie could see him wriggling through the underbrush like a snake. Soon a stone came zipping by his head. Dickie jumped up and stomped toward the closest children. He chased a whole bunch straight into his brother’s ambush, and when Wiles came out of his crouch he was bowled over by the sheer brunt of their panic. Dickie, grabbing a child in each hand, was unable to control two hysterical forces at once. He ended up on his butt in his brother’s lap, watching the little crowd stampeding to safety. “Earthboys!” they screamed. “Earthboys!” Wiles bit Dickie’s ear until the younger Curio wept like a baby. “Serves you right!” Wiles declared. “That’s strike two, thanks to you. I should of brought along a dog instead. At least then there’d be two brains working on this.” He smacked him on the back of the head. “Now think about it: what’s the good of all my cogiplating if you’re just gonna mess things up!” “Ow,” said Dickie. “You don’t gotta hit me all the time, Wiley.” 78

Elis Royd “If Pops was here he’d whup you all the way home.” They were quiet for a time. Finally Dickie said, “That was a playground those kids was in, wasn’t it, Wiley? How come they was doing that? I thought royds wasn’t supposed to play.” “Something,” Wiles said absently. “Maybe picked it up from watching people.” He stabbed a warning forefinger. “Now this time I want you to get it straight!” An hour later they were standing in a clearing, not far from a just-observed group of royd children. “You messed us up for the last time!” Wiles shouted. He kicked Dickie in the shin, bringing down a fist on his crown when the boy bent over. Dickie yelped and curled up in the dirt. “I’ve had it!” Wiles hollered, kicking any soft spots he could reach. “I mean it! I hate your guts!” The louder Dickie cried, the more savagely Wiles responded. At last Wiles just snapped, kicking and punching with a ferocity curtailed only by exhaustion. Dickie retched and wept as Wiley caught his breath. In a minute the older boy yelled, “I’m serious! I disown you! You’re no brother of mine!” and stormed across the clearing and down an embankment. “Wi—” Dickey sobbed. “Wiles. I’m sorry; really I am. Please, Wiley. Don’t leave me. Wi—” He broke down entirely; a pathetic, heartbreaking pile of pummeled and forsaken humanity. So wrenching were his cries that the hiding royd children poked their heads up one by one in the underbrush. “I can’t take it,” whispered a wide-eyed knurt. “He’s dying.” A little Cept shushed him. “Are you crazy? You wanna get beat up too?” “But the bad boy left,” the knurt insisted. Dickie howled to the heavens. “Don’t be a total zobb. He could come back any minute.” A tiny sprenk leaned her muzzle in between them. “I wanna go.” Dickie wailed from the bowel. “I have to go!” “Maybe we should call someone.” Dickie flopped up and down and back and forth, shrieking like a banshee in labor. “I have to go! I mean it!” “No more,” the knurt boy whined. “I’m gonna try and help him.” Dickie screamed bloody murder. “Don’t look, don’t look! I’m going!” The knurt boy stood up. With his friends whispering urgently behind him, he crept over to blubbering Dickie and leaned down. “Is there—is there anything I can do?” One eye opened. “My tummy,” Dickie gasped. “I think he broke it.” The knurt’s face fell. “What should I do?” Dickie’s expression twisted into one of unfathomable suffering. “I . . .” he tried. “I . . . oh, please . . . I . . .” “What?” The knurt boy knelt nearer. “Blubduh,” Dickie coughed. “I . . . mumsa hebe diwa . . .” “What?” The boy turned his head so that his ear was almost on dying Dickie’s mouth. In one move Dickie threw an arm around the boy’s neck and legs-clutched the midsection in an unbreakable scissors hold. “Wiley!” he howled. “I got him, Wiley, I got him!” The hiding royd children threw up their arms and ran. “Earthboys!” they screamed. “Earthboys!” 79

Elis Royd His brother came stomping across the clearing. With Dickie maintaining his hold, Wiley beat the holy tar out of the child until he was plumb tuckered out. He rocked back on his haunches and wiped his forehead with an arm. “You done good for once, Dickie. Now just conk him on the head and we’ll get on with this. Conk him proper, but don’t break him, you got that?” The little knurt stared up out of pleading eyes. Dickie grinned into his face, picked up a fistsized stone, and smashed it on his scaly head. “What should I do now, Wiles?” “Shut up, Dickie.”

Although Council Chambers was closed for the weekend, its two highest members were more than happy to be working overtime. The Elder and Administrator sat at opposing sides of a small, cloth-draped table, like men playing cards. In the center of the table were two tiny piles of cut gems, two tiny piles of cubed metals, and, in the very center, a small weighing scale. They might have been buddies divvying up a dope deal. Each man’s actions were being covertly overseen by a group known as the Inner Guard—a newly recruited body designed to take over the late Commander’s hush Triad functions. This Inner Guard consisted of four of EarthAd’s biggest, dumbest, and most venal soldiers, sworn to serve up their lives at a moment’s notice to protect the Elder and Administrator. Additionally, they were given vital duties in the interrogation crypt; duties too gruesome for even the seasoned stomachs of their bosses. They took to their tasks with a will, sometimes working deep into the wee hours, savagely competing for the dangled rewards of extra meat, an occasional strumpet, and pretty badges of no value to anyone other than the wearer. They were utterly without sympathy, conscience, or higher aspiration: excellent men to have around. They even spooked their puppet commander. Now the Elder neatly placed his equal share on a silken black handkerchief. He lifted and pinched the corners, knotted it up with a bit of string, and drew the bundle into the harbor of his arms. He turned to face an Inner Guardsman. “What the hell are you looking at?” “Half,” the Administrator commented, “has a far nobler ring than third.” The Elder turned back. “Half . . . of what? How many lost nights—calculating the size of a fable . . . and now that I know the Hoard is real I dare not dream too large.” “Rumor, hearsay, talk . . .” the Administrator placed his property in a wooden jewel box. “Fables, my friend, are not without foundation. The Lore of the Hoard concerns not a minor trove—it speaks of an underground mountain of wealth, deposited generation upon generation by countless royds of every species. It speaks of riches inconceivable to those born behind walls.” “Inconceivable . . .” “Save by she who rules over it.” The Elder drummed his fingernails. “Any time now. Her headquarters are certainly stormed, the witch captured, and the command on its way back. I’ve been preparing a room for her.” “Oh?” “I’ve had the executive suite cleaned out. Just go on with your paperwork and rabble-rousing.” The Administrator chuckled. “You, sir, are the most persistent man I have ever known. And you shall find the knowledge we require. Why, I will wager that—” He was cut off by footfalls in the Hall. “Speak of the devil.” The Elder waved aside the Inner Guard. 80

Elis Royd The acting Guard Commander, still too intimidated to enter directly, knocked meekly and waited. The Elder’s voice was the crack of a whip. “In!” The end Guardsmen swung open the doors and the new Commander stomped up with due click and wiggle. The Elder sighed. “At ease. Where’s your prisoner?” The Commander remained at attention. “Her headquarters at the Maert’n Inn: quickly surrounded and taken, without a single casualty to my command. All royds inside: promptly sequestered in the inn’s kitchen. Those escaping: soon rounded up and brought in with the rest.” The Elder smacked down his palm. “Excellent! And you thoroughly torched the inn and cremated the bodies.” Sweat was creeping round the Commander’s hairline. “Actually, sir, we did burn down the building, but the prisoners were not burned with it. The men felt, you know, that with the bounty for royd prisoners still current and all . . .” The Elder wagged his head dismally. The Administrator nodded gently, reached out a hand, and patted his forearm. The Elder double-clenched his forefinger. “Bring in their queen.” Now the Commander was really sweating. “I’d like to, sir, but she was nowhere to be found. I can only assume she was tipped off.” “Get out of here,” said the Elder. “There were three pregnant royds taken with the children and adults.” “Go.” “Sir!” The Commander did an about-face and marched out. “Console yourself,” the Administrator said, “with the knowledge that our map is yet alive. She has certainly relocated, and it will only be a matter of maintaining a vigil on her followers.” The Elder shifted the precious bundle directly over his heart. “Only one thing will console me.”

The knurt boy carefully peeped through the one-way shields of his eyelids. He’d spent the last fifteen minutes exploring his circumstances, using only his inverted periscopic ears and sensitive down-like scales, and knew before looking that he was alone with the resting Curio boys. The eavesdropping was disheartening; he now understood that the brothers were some kind of bounty hunters, that the object of that hunt was an older female royd, and that his potential for attaining adulthood was the equivalent of something called Ten Gold Eagles. He was in a small aboveground cave, peering at a jagged window of daylight. It was chilly. The Curios were stretched out on either side, staring at nothing in particular. Finally Dickie said, “We can buy us a playground when we get back, huh, Wiles? Do you think Pops’ll go for that?” Wiles considered him disdainfully. “Aw, you’ll get your danged playground, Dickie. Now just shut up, willya? I’m trying to exercise my thinker here. We’ve got to get going before it’s too dark, and we’ve got to make sure this kid’s on our side.” “Maybe I should twist his tail? That oughta wake him up.” “Aw, for the love of—oh, go ahead then.” The knurt peered out at Dickie’s dully grinning face as long as he could. The instant he felt those clammy hands on his tail his eyes popped open and he cried out. Immediately Wiles scooted over, his expression intense. “Hey, kid! How ya feeling? Sorry about my dumb brother here—remember; he hit you on the head, not me.” Wiles snarled at Dickie 81

Elis Royd and socked him flush in the eye. “There! That’s for hurting this poor kid, you big stupid! How you expect to make friends like that?” Dickie rolled away, yowling and nursing his swelling eye. Wiles turned back. “Don’t trust him for a minute. If there’s anything you need, or anything you want to tell us about, just talk to me, okay? What’s your name, kid?” The boy sobbed quietly. “Well?” “Fyrtyl—” the boy sniffled, “Fyrtylym.” “Cool. Well, we’ll just call you ‘Farty’ for short. That’s what friends did way back on Earth— they gave each other neat nicknames, and, doggone it, what was good enough for them is good enough for you. I’m Wiles, and this idiot’s my little brother Dickie. You can call me Wiley, and you can call him anything you want. If he busts you on the head again, you just tell me right away. I know exactly the best place to do him. So-o-o, Farty, how’s they hangin’, anyway?” “I’m . . . I don’t—” “That’s an old Earthman expression. It’s how friends talk, and we’re all friends here, right? Aren’t we buddies? Okay. Now, because you’re our friend, we want to cut you in on a straight-up deal that no one else is even close to. The good folks over at EarthAd have set up a special reward for bringing in the queen of royds. They just want to treat her to dinner and a chat. Everybody knows you royds don’t keep secrets from each other—c’mon, Farty, you know where she is. The reward’s all the candy you can eat, right out of our warehouses. How’s about that, Fartster? All you can eat— when’s the last time you ate something you didn’t have to gnaw? Well, let me tell you: melts in your mouth, man, melts in your mouth. So. What do you say?” “I . . . um . . .” “Take your time.” “Well, I . . . um. No.” Wiley’s fist came at him like a rocket. “You punk! You led me on!” Then both brothers were all over him, beating him into a squealing pile. At last Wiley sat back. “If you don’t wanna listen to reason we’ll have to do this the hard way. But don’t never say we didn’t never give you no chances. Dickie, hold him down good.” Once poor Farty was restrained, Wiley whaled on him until his arms went dead. “Now,” he panted, “are you gonna take us to your queen, or do I have to start all over?” But the boy was hyperventilating so rapidly he couldn’t get a word out. Dickie sank his teeth into his neck. “Yes!” he screamed. “Yes! I’ll show you, I’ll show you!” “It’s about time. Now, Dickie’s gonna hang onto you, and I’m gonna walk in front just to make sure there’s no ambushers waiting. When we get there, you can have some candy: that’s a promise, and a Earthman’s word is all they talk about in this here galaxy. But if we don’t find no queen, we’re taking you to meet Pops, and he’ll whoop your sorry royd butt from here to Alpha Centauri. And that’s a promise too. Dickie, stay behind me, and don’t give Fartface too much stretchroom.” “What about me? Do I get some candy too?” “Shut up, Dickie. Which way, Farty?” The boy pointed southeast. He wept as Dickie prodded him along, making enough noise to compel an occasional tail-stomping. They hiked into a deepening twilight; over a bog and fields, and so came to a low line of craggy hills. “You’re sure this is it?” Wiles said. “Yes,” Farty whined. “It’s the royd gatherplace. Everybody knows. It’s famous.” “I don’t see nothing.” “Caves,” Farty mumbled. 82

Elis Royd Dickie’s face lit up. “The treasure!” “Shut up, Dickie. Is this the treasure?” Farty shook his head. “Do you know where the treasure is?” He shook his head again. “That’s okay,” said Wiles. “Half a million Eagles is good enough for now. Show us how to get inside.” Farty led them to a hidden crevice in the hillside. The opening was well concealed, but it didn’t matter; there were enough foot/hoof/paw prints to make its location obvious. Once they’d wormed through, they found the hill’s innards highly illuminated by torches and lanterns set into wall niches. The whole hill, like much of the asteroid, was honeycombed. This particular cavern had been further worked to form a vast convention hall, with several corridors leading off into living quarters. The place was packed, and the Curios’ timing impeccable—Emra was poised for one of her mustering speeches. “Wow!” Wiles whispered “That’s her; I just know it! Oh, man-oh-man-oh-man, if Pops was only here!” They inched through the shadows. There must have been two thousand royds jammed inside, all eyes fixed reverently on their regal leader. Emra’s station was a squared rock platform, lit all around by torches. The knurt gasped as Dickie stepped on his tail. “Dang you!” Wiles whispered, and popped little Farty a good one. “Dickie, you keep him quiet!” Dickie embraced the boy from behind and clamped a hand on his mouth. The more Farty struggled, the tighter Dickie made his hold. “She’s gonna give a speech,” Wiles hissed, motioning for the two to keep low. Dickie sank to his rear, pulling Farty’s head down between his knees. He squeezed and squeezed until the boy went into convulsions. Finally Wiles turned around and kicked Farty savagely. When he saw that his brother had suffocated the boy, he kicked Dickie too. “Dang you, Dickie! Having you along is worse than getting grave roach fever! Now let’s go. Just leave him there. Like I told you before; don’t try to stretch it out.” They crept from hollow to hollow, approaching their quarry in as roundabout a manner as possible. When they were in the crowd’s line of view they got down on their bellies and slithered, a few inches at a time, until they’d reached an eaten-out rock wall almost directly behind the platform. Here it was possible to view Emra in half-profile, through a ragged aperture now serving the brothers as a peephole. “Half a million Eagles!” Wiles marveled. “That’s a lot of candy.” “Shut up, Dickie.” “‘The Great Royd Coalition’,” Emra said. “A noble title for a great people—a great people who were once scattered tribes with allegiances to nothing higher than their base appetites. I actually see this war, this outrage, as a boon. It has wakened us, and determined us to make the sum greater than its parts. “We are becoming organized: we have built us a chain of command. In the matter of personnel, we outnumber the Earthmen a thousand to one. But we are no army; we don’t possess their training, their arsenal, their technology, or their fortifications. What we do have is diversification. We have many abilities, imported from many worlds, that must seem altogether strange to the army of EarthAd, and this will be to our advantage. Tonight I want you to pay close attention to our field commander, Mhendu, who will describe plans for an assault on the walls and 83

Elis Royd fences of Earth Administration, and for an internal takeover once those walls and fences have been breached. Every one of our unique abilities will be of paramount importance, so please listen attentively. Mhendu?” A strapping royd stepped up on the platform, bowed to his queen, and turned to address the crowd. Emra had chosen well; every aspect of his appearance and manner radiated trust and command. The Queen stepped to the wings, so to speak, and watched from the partial cover of a perforated half-column. “Jeez!” Wiles hissed. “Would you look at that? She’s close enough to put in my pocket.” “What you want me to do, Wiley? You want I should conk her?” “Shut up, Dickie. What I want you to do is conk her. But this time I don’t want you to just hit and run. Can you handle all that information? Do stretch it out this time. Conk her, grab her, and sprint like Pops is after you. I’ll be way up ahead, making sure the coast is clear.” He took off, running almost soundlessly on his hands and knees. Dickie selected a rock and snuck up on the Queen with one arm outstretched and his back scraping the wall. When he was inches from exposing himself to the light, he drew back his arm, pulled himself up to striking distance, and almost knocked her head off. There were gasps and shouts from the audience. Dickie scooped up the little queen and lurched along the wall, burst through a fence of startled royds, and scrambled back up the way they’d come, bashing her up and down as he went. After a minute he saw Wiles waving frantically. Snarling and gnashing, Dickie dragged the queen from one foothold to the next while mobs of mortified royds formed in his wake. When he reached his brother he handed over an arm and a leg, and together they swung her through the opening. With their precious cargo manhandled into a workable bundle, the Curios leaped out and raced through the dark like rats.

“Begging your pardon.” The dirty unshaven man stank of cheap bourbon, old sweat, and homemade deodorant. The First Hall Guardsman ignored him completely, but his dead-steady eyes burned into those of Number Two, facing him directly across the Grand Hall. “Name’s Archibald Curio,” the dirty man said. “I believe I have a ’pointment with anyone in the Council, the higher the better.” He leaned in and whispered, “It’s about the reward. You know, the Big One.” The Guardsman’s professional stare remained unbroken. Curio followed his gaze across the Hall to Number Two. His own eyes narrowed. He looked one to the other, then quietly turned and tiptoed over to Number Two. “Begging your pardon. Name’s Archie Curio. I come to collect my reward money, and I might be peculiarly generous to anyone wants to, let’s say, help pave my way.” The Hall was silent as a tomb. Curio’s eyes shot back and forth down the twin lines of rigid soldiers. He silently crept back to the great open arch, went into a crouch, and signaled furiously to his waiting sons. The boys picked up what looked like a knotted body bag. Fighting for lead position, they dragged it up the final flight of steps, banging the sagging center all the way. When they reached Pops they dropped the whole bundle outright. All three went into a huddle. Wiles popped his head up and down. “What’s with them?” he whispered. 84

Elis Royd “I dunno,” said Pops. “Seem to be under some kind of spell.” “Spooky.” “Shut up, Dickie.” “Don’t rile ’em!” Pops warned. “Keep cool and nonchylant. Act like you does this ever day, and we just might pull it off. Now pick her back up and don’t drop her back down!” The boys heaved the bundle to their shoulders and walked two paces behind their father, who smiled and nodded personably to each passed Guardsman. Their greeting at the Chambers archway was not so static—here the four burly members of the Inner Guard swung to block their entrance with crossed rifles. “Good mornings, sirs,” Pops said affably, “and begging your pardons. Me and my boys here would like a word with your boss or bosses, as it were, concerning a matter of the highermost importance.” “Council Chambers,” boomed one Guardsman, “is closed to all but official business.” Curio bowed to the waist. “Well, I’ll be begging your pardons again, sirs, but this is busyness of the most official nature. It respects a present we’ll be bringing to the High Council Hisself, and it respects half a million Eagles what’ll be coming right to my person straight and proper.” “The Council is in Session,” rumbled the Guardsman. “Now leave.” “I’m bringing ’em the Queen!” “Get out of here!” “The Queen!” Pops called. “I gots the Queen!” “Shut up, you!” The two end Guardsmen made to close the huge double doors. “Queen!” Pops screamed. “Queen! Queen! I gots the Queen!” There was a bustle behind the Guardsmen. “What’s that?” called an elderly voice. “Out of the way, you lummoxes. Who said something about a queen?” The Inner Guard parted and the Council Elder peered out; scarier than Pops and the boys had ever imagined. “The reward,” Pops fumbled. “The bounty money.” “Yes, yes,” the Elder fumed. “Yes?” “Here!” Pops smacked Wiles, who smacked Dickie, who immediately untied the lead knot and lifted the rear so that Emra slid out headfirst. The Elder grabbed the doors and hollered, “Guards forward!” Those Hall Guards caught peeking instantly faced their counterparts. He gestured irritably. “In, damn you! Drag her in!” The brothers did so. Pops waltzed around the big room alone, wringing his hands. The Administrator watched closely. “Lock the doors, you idiots!” The Inner Guard obeyed with robotic precision. The Administrator joined the Elder beside the unconscious Royd Queen. Pops and the boys squeezed into the huddle. “Looks good, don’t she?” Pops tried. “Hard to keep her fresh as you might like, being as we had to tote her halfway across the grounds and all, but I’d say, all being done and fair and all, that we upkept our part of the bargain.” “Bargain?” The Elder cocked his head, as though noticing him for the first time. “Oh yes. You’re making your claim.” “That I am, sir,” Pops said, draping an arm around either son and smiling humbly, “and that we are!” 85

Elis Royd “Oh, you’ll get your reward, all right. Guard! Take these three gentlemen downstairs for their reward.” He handed the head Guardsman the crypt’s keys. “Make sure they feel right at home.” Still embracing his sons by their shoulders, Pops was escorted across the room to the secret stairwell. As the Guardsman worked the key in the lock, Pops looked back and smiled uncertainly. The Elder returned the smile and nodded. The Inner Guard ushered them through and locked the door behind them. The Elder and Administrator bent to their task. “She must have air,” said the Administrator, fanning Emra’s puckered face. “Those buffoons nearly suffocated her.” “She’ll live.” The Elder stepped to his desk and brought back a glass half-filled with water. “Do not splash it!” the Administrator warned. “A little on the lips, and by degrees on the tongue.” “In we go.” Emra’s mouth contorted at the water’s kiss. Her expression twisted and her head slowly lifted from the floor. The men brought her round with staggered applications of irrigation and ventilation, eased her to a sitting position, helped her to her feet. They walked her twice round the room before making her comfortable on a bench seat. The Elder pouted. “Let’s get some ice on that lump.” He cracked the doors, spoke a few words, and a minute later came back with a full ice bag in a little wooden bowl. The Administrator applied the bag to Dickie’s handiwork, clucking all the while. The Elder leaned back on a bench, his hands folded against his lap. “Well, then. Our little war’s first casualty. In you come. Out you go. In you come . . . really, Madame Queen, maybe for once you’d like to just hang a while.” Emra fought her spinning head. “I find your accommodations . . . wanting.” “You haven’t seen the whole floor plan. I’m hoping you’ll find the basement particularly enchanting.” He sat squarely on the bench. “Now let’s get down to business. No one is interested in your silly war, though, I must say, I do admire your pluck. Perhaps your world’s ancestors and mine existed in a state of concordance, in philosophical equipoise, ah, so very long ago. Tell you what, Emra, if your cause is so central to your being, we’ll sign any accord you wish. I’m ready to turn over the keys to the whole damned city, right now, for directions to that one place central to my being.” “The entire Hoard,” Emra retorted, “would be entirely valueless without that ‘whole damned city’.” “Where is the treasure, Queen? You must understand that you will tell us, one way or another, sooner or later. Visualize these words ‘sooner’ and ‘later’ as opposite ends of a pain endurance scale. The sooner you divulge the treasure’s whereabouts, the less agony you will be obliged to withstand. Speak it now, and you are free to go, with our blessings. There is absolutely no point in needless suffering. How do you serve your people as a martyr?” “How do you serve yours, as a tyrant?” “Bah! ‘My people’ wouldn’t live for a minute like these maggots! ‘My people’ dance on stars and neon.” “Interesting,” said the Administrator. The Elder shot him a glance. “Help me with her. Take an arm.” Emra put up no resistance as they escorted her to the stairwell; she was a bitty thing gripped by two determined men, and her head injury was playing tug o’ war with her equilibrium. The small party of three passed the ascending Guard on the steps. The Elder flicked a cursory salute. All four Guardsmen, sweaty and disheveled, flattened against the wall to make way. Just inside the crypt 86

Elis Royd proper were the waiting Curios. The Guard, using shelved carpenters’ tools, had nailed Pops and the boys to a set of standing wood I-beams; by the fingers, by the toes, by the ankles and wrists. They shuddered like icicles in the sun. “We’ve taken the liberty,” the Elder explained off-handedly, “of admonishing your kidnappers for you.” Emra almost heaved at the horror sprawling throughout that room: dozens of dead and dying, torn and strung on every cruel device imaginable. The Elder swung open the main cell containing the enormous iron meat hook. “Only recently vacated,” he apologized. The stench of death and suffering was overpowering. “He was one tough lizard, I’ll give him that much; didn’t leave us a clue.” He waved an arm around the room. “As well as the rest of your kind. Now, Royd Queen, you can spare your subjects endless suffering by just being up front with us. Believe me, I possess the tenacity to squeeze every living royd on this asteroid until the last is wrung dry.” “I believe you.” “Get in there.” He and the Administrator each took an arm and walked her back. The Administrator tied her hands and pulled the hook down to just above her wrists. The Elder grabbed her dress at the throat, said, “Pardon me,” and ripped it to her knees. “Now—where is the treasure, Queen?”

No getting around it: war fever had definitely left the cavern. The crowd, made numb by their loss, seemed to be taking the bad and the ignominious as their due. Mhendu’s abashed investigative party laid it down plain—the Queen had indeed been abducted from right under their noses, and a knurt child murdered in that very cavern. What was considered a secret fortress had in fact been breached by a pair of dysfunctional human children. Their trail was followed two miles through the fields and bogs, and no one was less surprised than Mhendu to find it led straight to West Gate. Once the royds were out in the open air—milling without direction, seeing each other as useless victims—the hard truth of their passivity sank in, and from that shameful realization erupted an outrage held in check for years. The vanguard aspect of the Queen’s battle plan—all they had to go by—became the blueprint for her rescue. Suddenly they were in no mood for tomorrow. Mhendu, now de facto Coalition Commander, realized he had to lead immediately or risk everything in a general rush—archers and marksmen were already mounted by the time he’d ridden a wave of passion to his own steed. A dizzying rally, a mustering of locals and vagrants, and then they were off as an unruly force, carrying torches and spears, clubs and slings; any old weapons they could improvise. The mob hurried down the beaten way to Administration, their ingrained rivalries now far outweighed by their common hatred for humans. And it was in this spirit that they broke as a unit upon the white haze of Earth Administration, prepared to do in one clean sweep what should have been accomplished time out of mind before.

The Elder’s personal enthusiasm for the technical could at times be a real threat to his professionalism. But guys do love their gadgets. “The beauty of this device,” he told Emra, “is that it works on a notched pulley system. By that I mean it can be regulated so as to raise the hook itself, 87

Elis Royd one inch per application, by pressing down on this lever.” He demonstrated with a single gentle depression, observing her controlled grimace. There came a clean click as the first gear found a notch. “As your body becomes suspended, more strength must be applied to the lever to meet the additional strain. Eventually the tip will split your cervical vertebrae—assuming royds are thus equipped—causing exquisite torment to radiate throughout your central nervous system. The tip will then enter your midbrain and work its way, very slowly, through the gray matter itself. I’ve no idea what outrageous effect that will have, but I can guarantee you the Administrator here will be taking notes. Where is the treasure, Queen?” “Why are Earthmen,” she grated, “so infatuated with the possessions of others?” “Y’know,” the Elder said ruminatively, and he gave the lever another press, “I’ve given that considerable thought. There’s a vast compendium of digitized literature describing the history of Earth, including the biographies of her many movers and shakers. And all my research indicates a persuasion of single-minded covetousness in those born to lead.” The Administrator raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.” “Absolutely. There were men—Atilla, Croessus, Nero—great men; men who risked everything and stopped at nothing. Additionally, there were specimens capable of tremendous undertakings. Alexander the Great, for example, the namesake of one of our coins, razed cities and massacred whole populations. A fellow named Hitler nearly extinguished an entire race. Calhoun, Emperor of the Outer Giants, sold half the Martian Third Wave into slavery—and blamed their disappearance on a rival! McMillan, using only sixty-two regiments of kidnapped mothers and their explosives-wired children, was able to—are we getting light-footed yet, Emra? How do we reach the Royd Hoard?” His fingertips danced on the lever, sending augers of torment up her spine. In her quivering squeals’ echoes, the Administrator said, very quietly: “I believe it was actually the Fourth Martian Wave.” The Elder froze. He didn’t budge for an excruciating half-minute. Then his head turned slowly, an inch at a time, until he was looking the Administrator dead in the eyes. A peculiar breed of animal electricity arced between the two, powered by the sudden shared realization of each man’s sneaking rendezvous with knowledge—knowledge they both understood to be the ultimate key to mastery over their backwater world. Little by little, the Elder’s grim frown worked its way into a savvy smile. The Administrator offered his arm. The Elder clasped it in their private salute. No more need be said. The Elder returned to his pupil. “This notch should be the one that gets your attention. Ah! I see your pointy little toes have begun to twinkle. Not long now, and you’ll be virtually airborne. Where is the treasure?” Emra’s scrunched expression fought to relax. Her pinched eyelids opened and she shook her head. “Where!” The Elder pounded down on the lever. “Where? Where! Where, where, where!” Now the little royd queen was hanging six inches off the stone floor, flapping like a fish out of water. The Administrator placed a hand on the Elder’s shoulder. “You will go too far!” He stepped out the open gate and returned with a coiled horsewhip. The Administrator tested it against the cell’s bars and stepped back. “Now.” The Elder hurled a bucket of water on the prisoner and moved aside. The Administrator gave a tentative snap to the forehead before really laying into her. When her hide was raw and bleeding, he crouched to catch his breath. The Elder stepped over curiously. “Emra? Queen?” He moved his ear close to her mouth and listened a bit before turning to the Administrator and nodding. The Administrator composed himself while the Elder went for another 88

Elis Royd bucket of water. When he’d returned and the water was poised for hurling, the Administrator nodded back and grunted, “Now.”

By the time the Coalition reached the stony ring surrounding Earth Administration they’d come to resemble a genuine fighting force. The approach was essentially a broad phalanx, with Mhendu and selected representatives of each species at the center fore. Archers rode the greenspotted plains ponies in identical groupings left and right, while sharpshooters on larger mounts wove in and out of the Coalition’s midst. There were, additionally, makeshift battering rams for the Gate and an assortment of ladders and grappling hooks. But the Coalition was more than a simple medieval assault operation—its real genius lay in its broad extraterrestrial prowess: The whoopseem are a clambering species; it was their job to scramble up the walls once the actual battle for West Gate was in progress. Tumtams are known to withstand a dozen rounds off a medium-bore rifle and still retain the energy to take down an opponent. They were to be the first wave once the fortress was breached. The Rauna, mentioned earlier, are precognitive; as sensitives, they’d never been tested in an electric situation such as battle, but Mhendu figured they just might prove an ace up the sleeve. And zobbs are always good for shields and general-purpose projectiles. It was now a black, black night. West Gate’s main searchlight played back and forth over the advancing army, bright floods burned round the base of the fortress wall. Along the bulwarks scurried crouching soldiers. Marksmen knelt every fifteen feet. The Coalition vanguard was restrained by Mhendu at its head; he was still going for an opening gambit of diplomacy-overgauntlet. Torch in one hand and spear in the other, he paced his horse ahead and called out for the immediate release of the Royd Queen. In a minute the soldiers atop the bulwark shouldered their rifles and stepped back. There was a confused exchange beyond the searchlight’s pool, and then the Council Elder parted the standing Gate Guard, moved up to the parapet, and threw wide his black-cloaked arms. He appeared very energetic and commanding for such a scrawny old man, and his voice, while it may have piped during Chambers outbursts, carried well in the night. He used his scary, Reaper-like mien to his immediate advantage—seizing a light and turning it upwards under his chin, lending his face a quick Halloween countenance. “Don’t you freaks know how to petition? Can’t you voice your demands by emissary? Can’t you produce some legitimate evidence before you stampede all over the place with your specious claims? Watch how we work once in a while. You might learn something.” “We come seeking the release of our Queen,” Mhendu called. “We don’t need an emissary, and we have all the necessary proof as to her abduction and whereabouts. You are in no position to be critical. Open this gate or we’ll open it for you.” “Freaks,” the Elder repeated. “Freaks and one-eyed fools. Ah—but what is a circus without an act that’ll wow ’em in the aisles? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Amazing Emra, High-wire Queen.” And with that he stepped aside and motioned furiously to a glare-obscured team. A long pole, festooned with multi-colored streamers, peppered with burning brands, and guided by four strong men, peeked over the bulwark. The Elder himself commandeered the searchlight to illuminate the spectacle. Gleaming in the light was Emra’s flayed and naked body, hung dangling by the feet, torn practically in half from the small of the back to the rear of the skull. 89

Elis Royd The whole Coalition gasped as one. Mhendu fought for voice. “You . . . you are—” The Elder nodded. “Indeed I am.” With a savage kick, he booted the pole out of the guards’ hands. The entire apparatus, dead queen and all, plummeted spiraling to the ground and crashed in a mini-explosion of twisted streamers and billowing sparks.

90

Chapter Eight

The Coalition was stunned. Their dignified queen’s crash-and-burn, before a single shot had been fired, along with that surreal black scarecrow standing with one foot on the parapet and one fist raised high, was so emblematic of utter defeat . . . Nothing in the annals of royd conflict—no brilliant strategy, no relentless mob, no screaming revolution—nothing could match the all-trumping audacity of good old Terran testosterone. So finalizing was that characteristically brutal act, in fact, that the two sides might have simply returned to their well-defined realms—the Earthmen to their feast and security and the royds to their wasteland and want—had not an unseen archer let fly a single shaft that appeared to soar in slow motion through the fluttering patches of dark and light. The arrow pierced the Elder’s left upper chest. One hand shot to the spot, the other went out as though to ward off a second impact. The illusion of slow motion immediately leaped into fastforward: the old man fell back like a struck arcade target, the searchlight jerked up to search the heavens, the bulwark’s nearest guards raced to his aid. A great cheer went up from the Coalition, followed closely by a series of war cries and a protracted battle chant. Mhendu signaled the charge. First to hit the wall were the whoopseem. They scrambled up in jerky, stop-and-go fashion, mindful of both the positioning riflemen above and the anxious royd archers below. The lead climber had his head blown off even as he popped into view, and a royd sharpshooter immediately took out the offending guard in response. 91

Elis Royd This quick exchange triggered a call for a general volley and rally: the whoopseem made the top in a rush and engaged the Gate Guard tooth and nail, while royd archers picked off the nervier bulwark guards, and royd sharpshooters kept the wisest behind cover. Beneath the great arch the thickset tumtams maniacally worked their ram against Administration’s heavy wood Gate, then, growing frustrated, doused the whole thing with oil and set it ablaze. Amid the smoke and flames it was difficult to see if any whoopseem had survived to man the Gate Wheel from within, and then it was purely academic—the burning Gate split laterally, a huge chunk blew in, and seconds later the overhanging masonry came crumbling to the ground. Mhendu urged his steed left and right, leaned in tight, and cleared the Gate’s flaming remains in one mighty leap. The Coalition poured in behind him. EarthAd’s grounds were unfamiliar to all but a few royds: a vast cobbled courtyard surrounded by looming contoured buildings, partitioned here and there by broad brick paths leading to streets fringed with fine shops and official residences. And steps, steps—steps everywhere. Those streets, now active with sprinting soldiers and civilians, seemed to extend forever, and that courtyard, far too grand for the soles of a common royd, was alive with guards and awkward new recruits. The Coalition went in as a single-minded wave, heedless of their own safety. In half a minute it was all a blind reeling brawl. Mhendu understood that the Coalition’s sole goal was to humble the master. There wasn’t a reasonable hope of working things out; humans had demonstrated their arrogance was incurable. And the queen’s murder had sealed the issue beyond all redemption—no longer would royds allow rule by intimidation. Suddenly Mhendu found himself prey to a lifetime of vengeful fantasies. He temporarily overcame his species’ ethos, shooting a pair of crouching guards in the back and setting a large shop ablaze while his Closest rode in a shifting swirl. The human soldiers about them were completely unprepared for the royds’ unflinching will to engage, even when outnumbered and unarmed; these Earthmen intuitively took to sniping, ambushing, and playing dead. It was subterfuge for naught: their shops were gutted by fire, their official buildings made into dark badlands of guerrilla warfare. Soon it seemed there were more fallen than standing, and no participant willing to come to another’s aid. But humanity is indomitable—barely visible in the lancing shadows, two men were busy with a limp fading form: Leroy and Rat had propped up a winged Rhydsylmn, determined to keep him alive. “Where’d you hide your gold?” Leroy panted. “Where? Don’t you die on us! Rat, check him again.” “He don’t wear proper clothes!” Rat snapped. “What you want me to do, go up his crap hole?” “If that’s where he keeps it, then, damn it, that’s where we’ll go!” “Aww . . .” Rat dug his fist into the belly wound, hollering, “Where? Where? Where?” while the dying royd choked out abbreviated screams. “Outta my way!” said Leroy. He whipped out a blade and stuck it in the Rhydsylmn’s single nasal aperture. “You wanna die, monster? Clean and quick? Or you wanna go just as slow as we can make it? Either way, you’re nothing more’n a bitty bounty to me and Rat. But if you make it sweet for us, we’ll do you like a human, instead of like a damned wiggly royd. Where’s your gold? Where?” He dug deeper, until blood foamed out the opening in panting syncopation with the Rhydsylmn’s gurgling screams. “Where?” “Earthman.” Leroy froze. A snarl took his face and he whirled. “What the—” 92

Elis Royd The first arrow caught him between the teeth. The tip plowed off the roof of his tongue and pierced the glottis, ripping a hole into his midbrain. So powerful was the archer’s thrust that the shaft tore out Leroy’s nape and pinned him to the backing wall. The second arrow went into his left eye even as his head was rocking back. The third and fourth took out his Adam’s apple and right cheek bone, respectively. “Enough!” Mhendu raised an arm, and with the other quivered his bow. The royds, seven strong, clopped up and bent over Rat. “Please, sirs,” Rat whined. “Don’t hurt me! I was trying to save your friend, that’s all, I swear! But this dirty swine human—” and he kicked at Leroy’s body, “I couldn’t overpower him, sirs! No way. He was just too strong. Let me go, oh please. I’ll tell everybody how wise and merciful you are, sirs. I’ll tell the Council!” The mounted royds leaned closer. “They’ll give you more gold!” Rat gasped. “Honest! They wanted to give it to us, but I’ll tell them it should go to you. You can have all our gold; lovely, lovely gold! We don’t want it—we don’t even like it. Please. Just take it all, okay?” He choked on his own backwash. “Sirs?” The riders slowly sat upright. After a minute Mhendu turned his steed and the royds clopped off. Rat scrambled to his feet and vanished in the shadows.

“I got here as fast as I could.” The Elder opened an eye. His physician was watching closely, sterile pad in gloved hand. Outside the high room’s open window came shouts, followed by a brief cannonade and the stately arc of a flaming arrow. “You were rushed to your quarters by litter. The shaft has been excised and the tip examined. It’s deeper than a flesh wound, but nothing to lose sleep over. You’ll live.” The Elder grimaced. “It feels . . . much worse than you describe. But thank you.” He steadied his breathing. “I must have lost consciousness rather quickly. How goes that awful little disturbance at the Gate?” “Most of the wall stood the test, but the Gate was completely destroyed and the courtyard infiltrated. Our entire military is now invested in the complex, and to the best of my knowledge the invaders are at an impasse. The fence has been assaulted in several places. Royds don’t have the good sense to back off, even when they’ve been cut to pieces on razor wire. The Council’s Head Administrator, your colleague, ordered the fence electrified wherever there’s suspicious royd activity, and a number were fried before they got the message. But they’re clever devils, and don’t give up easily. While you were drifting the Administrator took executive command of the military and police, and relegated your new Guard Commander to Chief of Recruits. If the whole population is mustered, the fence proper can be held using a regularly spaced civilian guard.” The Elder, attempting to sit up, fell back with a sigh. “My ‘colleague’ . . .” he grated. “I—I am emasculated in bed.” The doctor reached into his medicine bag. He leaned close, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “This is morphine, from the original stock locked away in Warehouse 17.” He injected the Elder and leaned back. “You are fortunate on two accounts. First, you’re lucky the arrow’s tip was not poisoned. At your age even a less than generous dose could prove fatal. Second, be glad the archer was at a considerable distance, and that the projectile struck well away from important vessels. There was only minor bleeding, and I anticipate little or no infection. You’ll be 93

Elis Royd sore. I strongly advise bed rest, and that you keep the affected area as stationary as possible. Your aide has received brief but thorough instructions on the methodology of cleaning and dressing wounds.” “Thank you, Doctor.” “The opiate should be taking effect any minute now. How do you feel?” “Lovely.” “Good sign.” He checked the pupils and pulse, waited, leaned back down, checked again. When satisfied he said, “As these are off-hours in a crisis situation, my usual fee will be increased accordingly.” “Of course.” “Your health is my one worry. Now, it breaks my heart to have to discuss money, but there will be an additional charge for going out during a siege.” “Certainly.” The doctor raised an eyebrow. He continued studying the pupils while speaking in a dreamy monotone: “This emergency visit forced me to cancel three appointments. That’s lost revenue, and these are lean times, but we men of medicine are an honorable breed—my profession vigorously embraces the concept that a patient’s health is his physician’s principal concern. Therefore my obsession with your well-being completely overshadows all monetary considerations.” He leaned back. “I understand, and deeply appreciate your faith and dedication. Administration will cheerfully cover your financial needs.” The doctor licked his lips. “You are prepared to place that in writing?” “Just show me where to sign.” “There is, of course, the added expense for tutoring your aide.” “Naturally.” “I might append the considerable wear and tear on both mine and my horse’s shoes.” “It’s only money.” “There were extra costs related to new medical equipment, reupholstering the carriage seats, and a proposed deck.” “It’s always something.” “The kids really should have their own rooms.” “A big house is a happy house.” The doctor pulled a sheet from a folding file. “Your signature on this line. Don’t worry about all this fine print.” “Never been one to worry. Ouch. There you go.” “Keep that arm steady. Indulge in a sedative only should the need arise.” Once he was alone, the Elder took his physician’s advice by ordering a tall bourbon and water. The aide brought him both and a glass. The Elder giggled feebly and, even minus a wing, managed to pour a stiff one. He was soon complimenting the remedy. Amazing: there were anomalies popping in and out of the mundane—he’d have sworn his black shirt had just waved a sleeve. The light’s reflection on his window performed a kaleidoscopic pirouette—but he was seeing things! Featherflies wove patterns through the air—all in his imagination. And there, seated at the foot of his bed, was an ugly little green monster, staring right back. He looked very solid. Moreover, the Elder recognized him! He sat up straight and pushed the cobwebs from his brain. “You!” 94

Elis Royd The Cept boy lowered his head and peered up shyly. “Where Father?” “How did you get in here?” “Through door.” The Elder fell back. “Makes sense.” One minute his mind was wool-gathering, the next it was a cauldron of inspiration. He sat up again. “Your father, sweetheart, was freed to go back to Maldea. He asked me to look after you when you returned, and begged me to escort you to him. He’s waiting there for you now, and wants to make sure I get plenty of treasure as a reward for being your mentor, and for being his wonderful, wonderful friend.” He expression melted. “We’re all just so glad you made it home safely, son.” The boy considered. “Here not home. Maldea not home. Where Father?” The Elder, pain-free, swung his legs off the bed. “Like I said, darling, he just wants to give me all the treasure I can handle, and he wants you to bring me to him so he can give it to me! You don’t expect him to carry it all the way back here by himself, now, do you? Of course, you don’t—oh, you’re such a cutie. So let me just write a nice little bye-bye letter to that mean old Mr. Administrator, and I’ll be right with you.” He tore a scrap from his nightstand drawer, dipped his quill, and wrote: Dearest friend and colleague. It pains me profoundly to have to say farewell in this way, but I fear my time is at hand. As you are well aware, I was gravely wounded in battle—I do not regret my reckless courage under fire; war fever has taken far braver men. My physician has offered me an encouraging prognosis, but he cannot sense that which my soul far better knows. So this is my end. Yet I refuse to waste away like some lovelorn spinster while the battle rages without! Rather than self-commiserate, I intend to walk out into that savage wasteland I have so long endeavored to tame, and take out as many of the enemy as my waning vitality permits. Do not bother looking for me; I shall face the world of men no more. The you-know-what is hereby dissolved, and there is certainly no sense in your seeking the youknow-what-else. I leave you now, good soldier, to maintain this fair enclosure as you will. Yours even in passing, You-Know-Who. “Now,” he said. “Out that window you go. Take this note two windows down and slide it under the frame. Skedaddle back here and away we’ll fly.” The boy scooted out and the Elder dressed: black shirt and cassock, black robes, black cloak. Black boots and a wide-brimmed black hat, the better to disguise himself. He sheathed his saber and tried the shoulder; it was only sore when rubbed, and even then the pain was mild, transient, and somehow unreal. The boy scampered back in and they snuck out into the Grand Hall; the Elder had him walk under his robes as they passed the standing Administration Guard. Signs of battle were everywhere; the Cept boy led him deep into the city, past shops still open under siege, down dark streets and bright, and so into a long-abandoned warehouse. They clambered through the gloom, over mounds of shattered cinder blocks and around fallen shelves. “This is laborious.” The Elder said, and sat to gather his breath. He tenderly massaged the wound area. “You’re sure this way will lead us to safety?” “Under here,” the boy piped. He squeezed behind a sprawling heap of broken timbers, cracked pipes, and torn chain link. The Elder had to follow on hands and knees, and then barely escaped a plunge into what he first imagined was a hidden sinkhole. 95

Elis Royd The space beneath him was the asteroid’s natural honeycombed interior: countless pitted taffy-like columns joined in seemingly impossible formations, twisted, curved, and coiled by the world’s earliest expanding gases. It was rather like looking into the body of a highly perforated meteorite. Deep, deep below reverberated a muffled roaring, as of tremendous volumes of water spilling into a basin. The realm was fuzzily illuminated by a soft amber light filtering in from miles away. From that unseen place came, too, a thudding of heavy machinery and the long gasp-and-sigh of pumps. The Elder stared down at the boy beaming up five feet below. “The power plant,” he whispered. The boy nodded, grinning. The Elder felt his way down feet-first, using his knees and elbows as points of balance. He hunched on a ledge and nursed his shoulder. “How did you come upon this place?” The boy shrugged. “Follow light.” For a moment the Elder was certain the morphine had kicked back in: those twisting pocked columns were melting before his eyes. Then he understood: mottled gray footlong cockroaches, millions of them, were on the move, having frozen at his and the boy’s entrance. With a start he realized they were everywhere—on the ledge, on the rock walls around them, on his shoes and cuffs. The boy giggled and squashed a fat one with his stubby tail. The Elder shook himself up and down, then stamped and kicked while the boy danced along with delight. When the area was clear they cautiously followed the ledge, keeping low. Subterranean roaches are not aggressive; they picked up on the footfalls and scattered correspondingly, allowing the Elder and boy a narrow ongoing carpet of lifeless rock. After a while the ceaseless flow of roaches became just another harmless feature. A nasty breeze wafted in and out as they scrambled along: the distant pumps’ residue. The sound of falling water and a massive spillover continued to grow below, and a humping oppressiveness took the Eustachian—it was possible to imagine great falls, hammering on some monstrous heaving contrivance. Administration was certainly powered hydroelectrically; the steam must be fanned and chamber-vented. The fuzzy light remained constant, the air acrid and suspicious on the palate. In places the ledge broke away from the wall, becoming a scary narrow bridge before reconnecting. On one of these perches the Elder, fighting to retain his balance, found himself nevertheless peering down at what looked to be miles and miles of interwoven columns and bridges. It was a gothic, dwarfing view, built of deepest black and hazy shadow. For one crazy moment he had a horrifying notion something enormous had squeezed out of the dark to stare back at him, and then he was scurrying like mad for the adjoining wall, hundreds of equally busy roaches moving before and behind him, thousands more streaming up the walls just below. The Cept boy looked down at that huge black shape, appearing to pass column-to-bridge-tocolumn by way of long grasping tentacles. He carefully pitched a rock, and two gray dully glowing eyes vanished. “Grandmater,” he explained. The Elder collapsed, clutching his chest. “How much more of this? How much more?” “Look!” the boy whispered. Not thirty yards ahead the ledge began to climb, and a hundred yards farther shone the unmistakable beauty of night. “Thank” the Elder coughed, “god.” He walked his back up the wall and immediately commenced a ribs-hugging hike. They managed the last few yards on a segment only a foot wide, pushed aside some gnarly roots, and forced their way out. The night air was sweet as nectar. The old man rolled on his back, then, mindful of his cloak and robes, forced himself to sit. 96

Elis Royd “Never again,” he wheezed, and glared at the boy. “How long have you known of this hidden highway?” The boy shrugged: the Elder was to get used to that non-responsive response. But he was too exhausted to whip him proper. Instead, he merely smiled and gently wagged his head. “Y’know, son, what’s important is we made it out okay.” He gazed back at the series of mounds hiding West Gate, now outlined by the glow of battle fires. “Though it’s beginning to look like your funny route may be the only way back in.” He flicked his hand disdainfully. “Good riddance, then. It’s time we got busy.” Yet his injury, exacerbated by his struggle and with the morphine worn off, quickly grew unbearable; after only a hundred yards he was all-in. The boy eventually walked away, returning with his steed. It was a thymrn pony: tiny purple creature with ash-white mane and short puffy tail. Thymra are a sturdy breed—low wide bodies, tunnel vision, phlegmatic dispositions—and this one was certainly tough enough to accept a scrawny, fagged-out old man. The Elder rode on his stomach while the boy walked alongside, cheerfully guiding the pony over fields, up and down gullies, and so to the brink of that cracked, unmapped desert east of EarthAd. Occasionally the Elder shifted his position to favor the wound, but as the hours passed he became increasingly ill and irritable. At last they stopped and the boy helped him down. It was a warm night, even this far from the sultry pall of Administration. There was no blanket; the Elder curled up on the ground and clasped his filthy cloak about him. The boy sat close by, his chin on his knees, and watched that old mouth jabber of rubies and gold until the night sealed his eyes.

“We all know why we’re here.” The room was partitioned into two distinct halves; not by any material contrivance, but by deep human sentiment. “We’re here because it’s time we got off our asses and did something about protecting our border.” The speaker, Ernie Ralfwissel, had rehearsed this moment throughout the long ride to People’s Hall. “There’s an army of those things all set to do the unmentionable to anything human. Who knows what diseases they carry? Who knows what foul practices they’ll introduce to our children?” “That’s just the point,” countered Bill Hemley. “Who knows? And who the heck are you, Ernest Ralfwissel, to drag out all these tired old prejudices right when we need to stick together? You’re a rabble-rouser.” “And you, sir, are a moron. Will you believe anything you hear—why can’t you have the good sense to listen to reason? Man, oh man alive; didn’t you just catch the Administrator’s address? They’ve poisoned our water, violated our livestock, and danced and defecated all over our flag— why, they’ve even kidnapped, tortured, and mesmerized our Council Elder! They’re holding him for ransom, even as we speak, in some place dark and obscene.” “But why can’t we just talk to them first?” Ms. Humphardy tried. “They speak English; what’s the problem with just trying to communicate?” “Everybody on the asteroid speaks English. Everybody in the stupid galaxy speaks English. That’s not the point. The point is they’re liars, ma’am. Don’t you get it? Am I the only one here with two Alexanders’ worth of wit and wile? English is our gift to them, and English is their weapon against us. They’re going to tell you exactly what you want to hear. And you, ma’am, no offense, are 97

Elis Royd buying right into the whole program. It’s people like you who befriend the enemy, take one in the back, and then run around crying, ‘oh why didn’t anybody protect me’. Let me ask you a simple question, ma’am; do you have any children?” “What’s that got to do with anything?” Hemley objected. “I’m just asking—does she have any children?” “That’s a sexist question and you know it. Why don’t you stick to the matter at hand?” “I am sticking to it! Now, does she or doesn’t she?” “Oh, this is ridiculous.” “Ma’am?” “I fail to see what my fertility index has to do with this meeting.” “I’m just asking. It’s got everything to do with everything. So, let me put it to you a—” “We need a monitor,” Hemley cried, “or we’ll never get anywhere.” “It’s a simple question.” “I nominate Mr. Hemley here. He’s got his head screwed on right.” “Why can’t she just answer? It’s how you say integral to the business at hand.” “I second the motion.” “Ma’am? Let me try one more—” “Okay, then,” Hemley called. “All in favor of marching out to North Fence and negotiating— give a shout!” “Yay!” “It’s a fair question, isn’t it? Isn’t it a fair question?” The crowd swept out the main entrance, thrilled to be moving instead of talking. Once exertion had caught up, they proceeded as an orderly mob, growing more pacifistic in sentiment with each step. Upon reaching North Fence they discovered that a small gang of royds had built a shaky gangway of tree limbs and were attempting to vault the electrified fence, which snapped and sparked with the jouncing wood. When they saw Hemley’s group coming up they dropped to the ground, leveled their rifles, and used the makeshift ramp for cover. Hemley waved his arms over his head. “Sirs!” he called. “We come as friends.” The royds set down their weapons. “Speak,” said one. “We’re all the same,” Hemley panted. “I mean, pretty much. We have lives, we have dreams, we have families. You, madam. Is that your child? She’s lovely.” “He,” said the female. She lifted the boy to eye level. They were a squat family of glyphs; a race from a nondescript planet around Sirius B, or Little Dog as it’s known. Your typical glyph has a face that appears to have been stepped on at birth, with flat aural and olfactory folds covered in brown scaly moles, capped by a wide bonnet of slimy tentacles peeking out of thorny humps. “He has never seen an Earthman before,” the female said. The child took one look and turned away. “Ugly,” he whispered. His mother’s flap lifted slightly in a half-smile. “Now, I wonder where they get these ideas.” “Kids,” Hemley laughed. “The same all over.” He spread his hands. “Look, we’ve been going over and over this, and the upshot is we feel our grievances can be settled diplomatically.” “We have seen enough of your diplomacy,” gargled a phaxc in the crowd. “Maybe you’d like a taste of ours.” “There we go!” Hemley beamed. “We’re negotiating already!” There was a shout down the way, and a party of mounted guards came storming up, their rifles ready. Hemley threw up his arms. “Wait! We’re negotiating!” 98

Elis Royd The first shot took out the glyph boy, the second and third his mother. The royds returned fire, but were no match for the well-armed and highly trained guards. Hemley and Co. hit the dirt while the battle raged, and when they looked back up there were half a dozen bloody royd corpses, the survivors were running for the hills, and the dismounted guards were placing the prone men and women under arrest. “This is outrageous!” Hemley cried. “We were conferencing, we were making headway!” “You were dealing with the enemy,” a guard replied. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear the dictate about selling arms to royds. Well, I sure hope you got your money’s worth. And you’d better keep your gold out where he can see it—everybody knows the hangman’s got bills to pay.”

Dismounting had never been so difficult. The Elder slid down the thymrn’s flank inch by inch; clinging to that sturdy neck with his good arm, catching the mane in his fist, at last making the pony droop its head to support his weight. His grip relaxed and he dropped to his side. He’d ridden halfway through the morning, on a beast too brainless for caution, too one-dimensional for dexterity. There’d been good miles and bad miles, but now the continuous thudding had hammered his shoulder into a wretched hunch. He carefully rolled onto his back. In a minute the boy crept over and stuck in his face: the Elder was breathing hard. The boy fanned him until those withered old eyelids cracked. “Worse than I expected,” the Elder panted. He motioned with his head. “Can’t move it at all. Damned arm’s locked up on me.” The boy drew the pony over so that the Elder was catching some shade. The old man nodded, had a minor flirtation with delirium, and passed out. When he came to, he was staring at a broadly smiling young Cept. The boy used his tongue to push forward his mouth’s contents—he’d been chewing some kind of root; a faintly acrid smell rolled with his breath. He now removed the root and made sure the Elder saw him gently rubbing it into the wound. There came a stinging, followed quickly by a penetrating warmth. His shoulder went numb, and in less than a minute the pain had passed. The boy wrapped up the wound in fresh bandages. “My compliments,” the Elder breathed. “And my gratitude. You’ll have to show me where you dug up that stuff; I could make a killing back home.” The boy simultaneously smiled and shook his head. “Use royd spit only,” he said. “Ah! Evolution is a beautiful thing, especially on this fast-forward little world. But I’ll bet you guys don’t have any morphine.” The boy cocked his head. “Kind of an Earthman root,” said the Elder. He creaked to his feet. “Better, I am. Much better.” And not only that. The wound healed even as he rode; he could feel the stiffness melt out of his arm and chest, could sense a new vigor to his side. Within an hour the swelling was all but gone, and a pinkness had replaced the brown. They plugged through the desert forever. At a broad stretch of canyons the boy stopped and said, “Royd come on horse.” The Elder leaned closer, instinctively lowering his voice. “But how do you know?” The boy shrugged. “Cept know.” “Then how many are there?” The boy shrugged again. “Many?” “We must hide! We are at war, and they are the enemy. There’s no telling what wickedness they will stoop to. They aren’t like Earthmen, boy! They have no compassion, no honor, no interest 99

Elis Royd in anything other than their own selfish wants. They cannot be believed, much less trusted. Should we go that way?” The boy shook his head. “Then how about that way?” He shook his head again. As though to underscore his responses, a number of riders showed to the southeast, and, a minute later, perhaps a dozen to the northeast. The Elder sagged. Catching himself at this, he sat erect as the parties neared. The riders bore long flag-tipped poles. These flags showed the new Coalition logo: a single level line meant to represent a horizon, capped by a fatly hemispherical crescent signifying a rising Sirius. They also carried rifles slung behind the right shoulder, and short spears sheathed on their saddles. The Elder thrust out his chin as the leader clopped up beside him. “You are lost?” the rider inquired. “There is nothing for you in this direction.” He looked down at the boy. “You are well?” The Elder arched his torso in the universal male posture of confrontation. “He rides under my protection! You’ll keep your filthy paws off of him!” He drew out his saber. The rider backed his horse a step, then smiled at laughter from his troops. He reached down and pulled out a blade easily four times the length, and twice the breadth, of the Elder’s. He allowed its shaft a long kiss of Sirian rays. The Elder shrank back. “You would not harm a crippled old man?” The rider grinned. “Never before lunch.” He touched the tip to his crown, sheathed the sword, and casually rode back to his fellows. “You see?” the Elder whispered. “He didn’t want us to go this way. He knows we’re onto something.” He watched the parties pass out of view, his eyes burning under the wide black brim. “Vile freaks. Notice how they need an entire squad to intimidate a helpless old man and his faithful young companion? Where are they now?” The boy shrugged. “Press on then, son. And know that I will protect you if it takes my final breath.” They traveled into the afternoon, through areas absolutely strange to the Elder, but perfectly fair to the pony and boy. On the edge of a broad gulch they stopped for lunch; the boy, like most royds, carried a little pouch of dried roots and suckflowers. Awful as it was, it was desperately needed nourishment for a recuperating old man. He sat the pony and used it for a recliner while the Cept boy built pebble castles. Time seemed to die. Finally the boy said, “Why you hurt Father, if he your friend?” “Hurt him?” The Elder looked over, one brow arched. “Oh! You mean downstairs at Administration.” He laid a comforting hand on a scaly forelimb. “That was all an act, son, a game. Me and your dad were out to fool that evil Commander and Administrator. We both knew what they were up to. They wanted to steal Maldea’s gold and jewels and keep it all for themselves. I couldn’t stop them—not one man against two. So me and your dad decided to even the odds. He’s a pretty good actor, eh? You should be proud.” He stirred the dirt with a forefinger. “Are you proud of your father, son?” The boy looked away. “Why they want to take royd treasure?” The Elder sighed. “Children and their endless questions.” He too looked away, in the general direction of a small blue world he’d studied extensively. “Where my ancestors lived, son, things aren’t as straightforward as on this big old asteroid. Leaders on Earth work things out in the dark, and put on the Big Smile for the light.” He fingered his dirty robes. “And they wear fine clothes, and eat only delicacies. They marry the most beautiful women, are escorted in awesome things called 100

Elis Royd Panthyrs, and receive fear and respect from all they encounter. And do you know why they are able to live the way they do? Do you know why? It’s because they command great stores of wealth, and wealth on Earth means power on Earth. Just as it does here. No one can withstand the dazzle of treasure. Do you hear me, boy? No one!” “Royd,” the little Cept explained, “make jewel into pretty charm, sell metal to EarthAd for big treats.” “Ha! Your stupid traders are fleeced to the quick. Precious metals for food scraps and cheap manufactured baubles. Our hand-me-downs for your gemstones. Rigged scales, empty promises, and lollies for the kiddies. Royds are the laughingstocks of this asteroid.” The Cept boy was quiet for a minute. He looked over at the old man, still intent on the heavens. The boy matched his gaze. “No natchu, natchura . . .” “No. Royds will never be naturalized. Humans will never see their glorious imperial planet. Royds will never be Earthmen, and Earthmen will never go home. Never, never, never. We’re all stuck here.” The boy mulled this over. His face broke into a smile. “Go see Father!” “Yes.” The Elder creaked and groaned to his feet. “Time to go and see your father.” The boy hiked an hour longer, leading the riding Elder through a vast desert land peppered with enormous pocked boulders. Beyond this realm rose a place of gently rolling hillocks; dry and brown, dusty and forlorn. They moved weaving between these hillocks, some mere rises, until they came to one nondescript hill, slightly isolated from the rest. The boy stopped and pointed, his face breaking into a smile. “Father!” The old man dismounted, instantly galvanized. “This is it? You’re sure?” “Yes.” The boy wagged his stub of a tail. “Maldea!” He made to rush off. “Go see Father!” “No, no!” The Elder grabbed a limb. “Your father and I have an arrangement. He wants to see you alone, quietly, and with dignity. He loves you very, very much, son. As do I. He asked me, as his personal friend, to make certain you reach him without being seen. He said he’ll be waiting in the treasure room, and he wants you to bring me to him. Do you know where the treasure room is?” The boy shrugged. “All Maldea treasure room.” “Really! Well, he’ll be easy to find then. Let’s not waste any more time. Just think how excited he’ll be to give me all that treasure. Man, is his face ever going to light up! I’m sure he wants to see you, too, son, so let’s get a move on! Go, go, go!” They walked the pony around the hill and crouched near the mine entrance, using the animal for cover. “We can’t let them see me, son—oh, no-no-no, not a mighty Earthman! Like I told you, this is all a wonderful surprise set up by me and your father. We have to work out a way to get past the guards.” “No guard,” the boy said. He scampered inside and reappeared leading a pair of royds pulling an old wood cart. The adults and boy shared a joke; the boy returned to his place and the adults to their work. There was a leather bridle in the bed, and a rough hide tether rope. The Elder attached the bridle to the pony’s neck and hitched the cart. He climbed inside and whispered instructions while keeping low. The boy nonchalantly led the pony down the main track. The place grew brighter as they progressed, the sounds of tapping and talking more pronounced. The Elder peeked off and on, but couldn’t bear to focus too long on all that splendor. He had the boy steer him into an alcove, and there fell out onto a broad ledge overflowing with jewels. The Elder absolutely lost it, feverishly running his hands back and forth over the pile. At last he looked up, only to find himself staring straight into the Cept boy’s wide liquid eyes. 101

Elis Royd “Where Father?” “I’ll give you ‘Father’, you little—” He tore the hide rope from the cart’s bed and tightly wound it round the boy’s throat. “Start filling this cart, you freak.” He gripped the loop at the sobbing boy’s neck with one hand and used the other to lash him with the slack. “Faster, damn you! Faster! We don’t have all day.” So great was his need that he began scooping and tossing wildly: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires; a broad rainbow shower. When the little cart was brimming he stepped atop the pile and dragged the boy in with him. “You’re coming with me, so I don’t get lost on the way back. You got that? If you think I’m leaving all this here then you’re dumber than the average royd. But, man, with this load I’ll be able to finance equipment, laborers—damn it, I’ll bring me back an army!” And with that he kicked furiously at the pony’s rump. The thymrn, hereditarily programmed to obey, strained at the load until the cart began to roll. Even against the grade it tugged resolutely. It lurched side to side rhythmically, then managed a zigzag trot, and finally, prodded by the Elder’s repeated vicious stabs, broke into a crouched shambling uphill run. The astonished workers moved to cut off the cart, but were quickly dispatched by the saber. The Elder, hugging the Cept boy as a shield, kicked and slashed wildly as the flustered pony barreled up the track and out the main entrance. The cart fishtailed in the dirt, its sturdy wheels shaking. As workers spilled outside, the Elder dragged the boy up his chest until their heads were level and his blade was dug deep into that trembling scaly throat. “I’ll kill him!” the old man shouted. “Don’t think I won’t! All of you back off and return to whatever you were doing. If you try to follow us I’ll cut off one of his toes for every tracker I see!” Still holding the boy, he hopped out and whipped the pony, then poked and swatted until it had worked its way back around. Panting, he dragged the boy aboard and lashed the pony on. The workers watched dumbfounded as the leaning cart shook against the horizon. The boy struggled up and down in the old man’s hold, at last managing to slip from his noose. He backed away over the pile while the exhausted Elder, fighting to control the digging pony, took great lunging swipes with the blade. The boy, easily timing the thrusts, worked his way to the rear of the cart and leaped free. “Get back in here!” the Elder bawled. He stood erect, waving his saber with one hand and fighting the reins with the other. “I killed your father, boy! Do you hear me? I cut him open wide! I made sure he died in agony! Follow me if you want to see him! We’ll dig him up together! Aww—” and he hurled the blade. It whirled like a toy before falling harmlessly. The boy stared as the spectacle receded, then, crying his heart out, scurried back to the mine. The cart lurched between the hillocks while the Elder jealously monitored jewels rocking at the cart’s rim. He quickly lost his way, rediscovered a landmark, lost his way again, and finally just relied on Sirius as his guide. Every now and then he was compelled to rest the pony, and during these breaks laid full-out under the cart, in the grip of his years. Only his sapphire dreams kept him going. But by twilight he’d become truly worn, and prone to panic attacks—based on a variety of extraneously-induced hallucinations, a narrow run-in with a frantic swarm of crag leapers, and a very real fear of being stranded without provisions. Plus, while pushing through the boulder-strewn desert, the cart’s rear wheels became mired in a sticky, thin red mud. He whipped the pony mercilessly until the poor thing, too stalwart to surrender but too stupid to resist, simply dropped on its belly and let the lashings fly. “You thick bastard.” The Elder threw down his whip and shoved, hoping to dislodge the cart and spur the pony on. Little by little he sank to his knees. He all but died there, his elbows buried in diamonds, his kneecaps buried in muck. 102

Elis Royd Almost as in a dream he heard it: a distant, rapid clattering, as of many running feet. He very quietly pulled himself upright. In a minute the first antennae came waving around the largest rock, and two heartbeats later the Elder was completely surrounded by predatory Great Roaches. They raced over the mud and each other, pouncing on the little old man and his tiny purple pony. The Elder was able to buy a minute by squeezing under the cart, but those grasping feelers were everywhere. The pony fell with a heartbreaking scream, the writhing mass went mad, and the over-laden cart split down the middle, half-covering the Elder in precious stones. A pair of Roaches took his arms, two more his legs. So ferocious was their assault that he was quartered in seconds, and his trunk and head left to settle under a sprawling heap of jewels in the sucking and popping mud.

“Civilian Guard, front and center!” The sergeant fumed. After a few seconds he stormed back to the slouching, bewildered file. “That means,” he hissed, “that you are to move your sorry butts up here where I can see them!” When he’d marshaled the men he addressed them as in boot camp, though they were assembled right in the street. “Before you compulsory recruits go out and shoot yourselves in the feet, you will respond to this field order: you are hereby commanded to go into these houses and shops and deputize all adult males for immediate placement. That means you are to direct them to me, and I will make sure they are furnished with arms and posts. You are not to sit and chat over coffee and scones, okay? They are not being given an option, and neither are you. This is a martial situation; Administration has declared all service-worthy males military property. Get them out here where I can handle them. No excuses, no delays. Now go!” Ed Sales and Whitey Pinn were more than glad to break rank. “Jeez,” Whitey said, “who’s gonna be watching my store with me out here playing soldier?” “Theoretically,” Ed replied, “the Guard. Meaning me, them, and everybody but you. Watch that rifle, Whitey! It’s not a baton.” They knocked politely at a haberdasher’s. After a minute the door opened and a curmudgeonly middle-aged man peered out. “You’re deputized, Earl,” Whitey said. “Sorry, but the sergeant says everybody has to go out in the street, right now. You’ll get a gun and a post to guard, and any royd’s fair game.” Earl was about to slam the door when his expression shifted. “What’s the inside bounty rate?” “Administrator’s upped it,” said Ed, “to two Eagles for any adult royd soldier.” He licked his lips. “They’re coming in by the hundreds.” “How many skins are in already?” Whitey shook his head. “They won’t tally or pay till after the dust settles.” Earl blinked, then slowly eased himself out, quietly closing the door behind him. “That’s two Eagles per hide?” “Skinned or whole, dead or alive.” “Who’s to say if dead bodies was scooped off the battlefield and turned in as kills? Who’s to say?” Ed and Whitey exchanged stares. “Not me,” Whitey said. Earl cracked the door. “Woman! Fetch me my coat and flask. I’m off to join the Army.” 103

Chapter Nine

Without much of a backbone, Administration’s front-line command went fairly quickly. The moment shots were heard in the courtyard the Councilmen hiked up their skirts and scurried down to the vast Warehouses complex, where they were safe to nurse their apertifs and processed cheese, monitor breaking news, and roundly damn those bungling cowards shot to pieces defending the Gate. The Head Administrator, now de facto Prime Custodian and Commander In Chief, immediately ordered all priceless objets d’art moved to his personal quarters for safekeeping, and relocated Grand Hall’s Administration Guard to the Warehouses Gateway, thereby making certain no savage royd hordes could raid the official pantry. Organization is always key. The Coalition was wholly ignorant of EarthAd’s means of electronic surveillance and communication; without a blueprint or vanguard royds were forced to learn as they went. Yet the illequipped and all but unregulated Civilian Guard proved far more formidable than the regular troops—these guys knew every nook and cranny, and freely employed tactics that were surreptitious, untoward, and downright dirty. The campaign to take, as well as to defend Earth Administration, quickly devolved to the very ballsiest kind of street fighting. All that night the sides battled throughout Administration. Earthmen had access to limitless supplies—to food, to ammunition, to medical aid—but they were an inherently soft opponent. Royds, by contrast, were pretty much on their own, yet they had heart and grit, and an enemy on the ropes. The first truce came at noon the following day, though not by pact or visual agreement: the humans had simply disappeared, regrouping in underground halls and storehouses constructed at Elis Royd’s physical inception. 104

Elis Royd Mhendu and his Closest used homes, outbuildings, and a series of abandoned shops as walled bivouacs. By now his Next were basically non-combatants—cripples and the unassigned used as couriers. The news was always the same: puppet commanders were running Administration’s military; the real ruler of EarthAd was some intellectual shadow going by a variety of titles, but most commonly tagged as ‘The Administrator.’ Mhendu realized that, whoever and wherever this mystery figure was, it was his, Mhendu’s, personal and patriotic duty to make sure he received the same treatment as Emra, Queen of Royds. Mhendu meant to take this idea literally: he intended to drag the human leader up York Peak, hoist him on a battery of spears from Terra Tower, and slowly run him through in view of every Earthman prisoner of war. And after that—? There would be one hell of a party; he’d make sure of it. The Warehouses would be appropriated, and if they contained anything resembling the brochures’ claims, well, royds would be feasting for years to come. EarthAd would become Coalition property, plain and simple. Humans would be locked out, and only let back in when they’d learned some manners. Maybe. Mhendu saw no reason they couldn’t, with a little discipline and a whole lot of time, learn to fall in love with a diet of gnawed roots and recycled radioactive condensation. Sparkling water, indeed. And naturalization? The propagandized dream drummed into every starving royd, cradle to grave? This was it: this was as far as anyone could go. All that next day the Coalition fought in the streets and fields, on foot and on horseback, with little sleep—forever chasing opponents that appeared to vanish exhausted and depleted, only to reappear fresh and replenished. At nightfall their dark ‘Administrator’ was still an elusive figure, but logic dictated human leadership must be holed up somewhere in the administrative complex, back near the West Gate entrance. They’d tried everywhere else. Mhendu patiently led his Closest down the quiet roads. The whole vicinity was sacked, shot, and burned out, though a number of smallish fires occasionally cropped up here and there almost as afterthoughts. Most of the dead royd combatants had been dragged off, presumably to be stored underground for post-combat bounties. Human corpses—guards, soldiers, and civilians—were everywhere. Mhendu’s party galloped up to the Grand Hall’s entrance, his Closest fanning out, forming a phalanx, fanning out . . . the group dismounted atop the final flight, left their steeds with an auxiliary, and carefully worked their way around the front. Mhendu peeked inside—the Guard were long gone. The Hall itself had been looted by Earthmen, and the forced doors to Council Chambers thrown wide. The party inched along the high walls, pausing every few feet to listen: the place was quiet as a morgue. They moved into the high-windowed Council Chambers, now lit eerily by a building just catching fire. All the adjoining rooms had been violated; broken into, ransacked. Yet one door, secreted behind an iron staircase, was only half-open; something inside had spooked the looters. Mhendu and his Closest placed their backs against the wall, and one by one squeezed through. Behind was a dark stairwell, cool and drafty. Despite the ventilation, a strong charnel smell clung to the walls and steps. They tiptoed down, and so came into the bleak interrogation crypt. Just inside the crypt door were a raggedy man and his two raggedy sons, nailed to standing beams. The weight of their bodies had caused their fingers and wrists to tear through the nails, and they were now crumpled in a touching family embrace. A crushed wall accounted for the draft. There was no point in checking the dozens of royds racked, impaled, flayed, scalded, and hanged. The stench of rotting bodies was so nauseating, even in that drafty place, that the Closest found themselves incapable of basic sympathy. They were just turning to leave when one noticed the little Cept sitting alone in the largest cell. 105

Elis Royd The boy looked up as Mhendu walked in. “How’d you get in here? Through the door, or through that wall?” The boy nodded. Mhendu went down on one knee. “What’re you doing here, son? Where’re your parents?” The boy shrugged. “Don’t you have a mother?” The boy shrugged again. “Then where’s your father?” The boy looked up at the huge gristle-tipped hook. Mhendu winced as he rose. He’d lost his own father as a child, and was himself childless; the depressing atmosphere, the corpses about them, the many lost in battle—he’d never felt so cut off. On impulse he reached down, lifted the Cept, and rocked him on his shoulder. “You’re not alone any more, boy.” He gestured with his free hand. “A pretty shabby family, to be sure, but . . . you’re coming with us.” He carried him up the steps and set him down in Chambers. “How’d you find your way into EarthAd? Were you here before all the fighting started?” The boy shook his head. “Well, you sure didn’t fly in.” The boy grinned and thumped his little tail on the floor. He gestured downward repeatedly. “Under.” “So. You’re not a mute, anyway. What do you mean by ‘under’?” “Bridge.” “What bridge?” “Tunnel.” “There’s a tunnel under us? A bridge in a tunnel? Do you think you can show me?” The stubby tail thumped harder. And so the Cept boy led the group across the city, sometimes riding on Mhendu’s shoulders, sometimes running ahead. The party moved on foot, as circuitously as possible, keeping low in the shadows. They snuck into the warehouse, crept through the jumble, and one by one dropped onto the ledge. Mhendu listened with all his senses. “That sound . . . very far away—machinery. Those are the pumps.” He gripped the Cept’s shoulders. “Are those the city’s pumps?” The boy shrugged. “It’s their power plant, isn’t it? The one that runs the whole place, re-circulates the air and water, makes all the lights and appliances work?” The boy shrugged along with each clause, an idiotic grin on his bobbing face. Mhendu turned to his Closest. “They’re dead without light and power. We’ve got to follow that sound.” Now, royds aren’t particularly squeamish about cockroaches, having shared their hit-and-run existence so long. The little party quickly forsook the main ledge for a series of descending wall outgrowths, crossed a spiraling bridge, and began shinnying down columns. The maters came out to meet them. It grew more active the deeper they climbed: the royds had never imagined maters anywhere near as large as these acrobatic purple monsters—the things were responding to the party’s clambering vibrations by looping their tentacles around bridges in anticipation, hoping to exploit any wayward footfalls. And suddenly they were everywhere, emboldened by the pheromonal fear-scent, only beaten back by bullets and well-placed shafts. The group all voiced the creeps, unusual for royds—they couldn’t have known that wilderness maters, recognized as mere corpse-sucking vermin in the broader scheme of things, had evolved, in this spacious, mildly radioactive environment, into bloodsucking predators accustomed to raiding Administration for infirm humans, unsupervised children, and injured animals. It just got worse and worse: larger specimens came out of the dark like hammerheads, while the occasional grandmater watched brooding, her many suckerlips smacking with impatience. There were also long-established, yet entirely unknown species inhabiting EarthAd’s underworld: there was some kind of living ooze that preyed upon sick and crippled roaches while showing an unnerving curiosity about these new, much larger visitors; there were blind 106

Elis Royd leapers that immediately swarmed any unfortunate party caught hosting one of their own—the royds had to quickly beat them off each others’ backs or risk infection; there were very, very dark things that at first seemed shadows, yet relentlessly stalked the climbers, parting and reforming as they moved. The fuzzy sallow light was stronger in some places, paralleled by an increased clarity in the thudding of machinery, so that the royds’ meandering course was set more by circumstances than foresight. Sometimes the way became almost horizontal, branching eastward for what seemed miles, only to drop by degrees, circle back, drop some more, and branch again. Eventually the roar of water grew universal; and a slimy condensation was felt on the porous rock. Something in its composition brought on a common complaint of nausea and malaise, compelling the explorers to monitor their breathing and to occasionally wipe down. The party set foot on a narrow, perfectly level rocky bank. What appeared to be an underground sea stretched before them—actually a regulated body of water contained in an artificial basin some hundred feet deep, perhaps five hundred yards wide, and with a breadth lost in a backlit, oddly sparkling haze. The thumping and wheezing came from beyond that haze. And from places far away came the sound of massive volumes of cascading water, landing in basins at progressively deeper levels. The walls of this particular basin were fabricated, making it actually more a room than a cavern. A sickly violet-green algae ran around the rim, partway up the facing walls, and deep into the still water. There was nowhere to stand other than the ledge they presently occupied; it was wall-towall water. Those cavernous side-walls were actually great components housings, holding technological mysteries of no interest whatever to the royds—what did interest them was a nearby 12 x 12 aluminum cover, hanging at an angle by a single huge bolt. Its surface was unbroken, and once they’d torn it free it proved a good three feet deep, and more than capable of supporting them all. There was no current; without oars, they were forced to use their hands and rifle butts. They pushed off hard, and the raft moved freely into the mist. It was very slow, very disquieting going: that heavy thudding vibrated the water’s pea-soup surface, and made the depressing mist seem to heave and roll. Soon they were fogbound. The royds, in no hurry to paddle into complete obscurity, sat back on their haunches and spoke with their eyes. The raft slid to a stop. In a bit the water just to port showed bubbles along the surface. That little event was quickly mirrored by another to starboard, and another directly ahead. The Closest leaned down, studying these disturbances like cats. Other than the gentle sounds of percolation, it was dead quiet. Something thumped the bottom. The raft turned gently and bobbed. The royds fingered their weapons. And the raft kicked up three feet. A thorny brown tentacle slapped over the side. Another rolled up from behind, pinning a royd by the legs. Two more tentacles then locked the raft in place, and seconds later a long conical trunk split the surface, dripping dirty pearls in the murk. The thing swayed hypnotically, all sucker-ringed mouth and heaving gills. It came in like a snake, intuitively going for the pinned royd. Mhendu’s first shot caught it dead-on. The head shook madly, dipped and rose, jerked back and forth. His second and third, made errant by the raft’s motion, caught the neck just above the waterline, then everybody was up and firing. The head splattered like a ripe melon, the tentacles flew off the raft, and the whole ghastly thing shot flapping below the surface. Excited by the bucking of the raft, those maters following overhead blindly thrust and swept their graspers, only to be snagged, yanked free of their holds, and shot thrashing in the water. 107

Elis Royd “Enough!” Mhendu whispered. He used his rifle’s barrel as a stirrer. The ripples spread and passed; the surface remained unbroken. Those maters still attached to the rock ceiling receded into the mist, and the royds carefully resumed paddling. The fog, dissipating, was gradually replaced by a soft amber light. A kind of brooding backdrop became apparent, and at last the raft kissed the basin’s far side. Elis Royd’s vaunted atomic plant squatted on twenty thousand square feet of reinforced concrete, two hundred feet deep and locked into the asteroid’s natural substructure. The whole area was overshadowed by massive conical tanks, heaving pumps, and strangely wrought machines, all winking with the system’s perpetually rock-steady pulse. The command station itself was iglooshaped, battleship gray; surprisingly unimposing. There was no door, just a broad portal revealing a sparsely lit interior. While they were staring, something pallid and long lurched across the dock and slid into the water without leaving a ripple. The royds crept up in single file, not sure what to expect. Inside they found countless racks and gauges, feeders and faders, cables and bays—an unbelievably sophisticated system to these simple wilderness folks. Mhendu set down the Cept boy. “Now what?” He ran his fingers over the glass-fronted meters with secret admiration. “This tells me nothing.” He tapped a bank of pulsing touch pads. The pads glowed softly in response. “This tells me less.” “Mathematics,” muttered a Closest. “Gibberish.” The boy scampered beneath the equipment. In a minute he jumped up on a table and began gleefully hammering a rack of meters with a fire extinguisher. Mhendu threw out a restraining arm, then looked closer. “Maybe he’s onto something.” He wrestled the extinguisher from the boy, said, “Only one way to tame a monster,” and smashed it against a row of meters. Nothing happened. He tried elsewhere, again and again. The place was solid. “Allow me,” said a Closest, and shot three rounds into the wall-to-wall motherboard. Everybody jumped outside. Ten seconds later they were all blasting away, weaving side to side while bullets ricocheted like popping corn. The station lights flickered and quit, followed immediately by the dock lamps. The pumps labored and wheezed, the big machinery kicked and stalled. The housings’ seams burned brilliant white, some kind of alarm bleated twice, and just like that the cavern went absolutely dark. After an uncertain pause the royds whooped and threw themselves into a blind victory embrace. But their spontaneous little celebration was short-lived: high overhead, punctuated by the groans of some large straining device, there came the oddest rumbling. Black streams began pouring off the ceiling and cascading down the walls—the pumped surface water was smashing level to level, overflowing basins, spilling into progressively deeper wells. The royds had to duck back inside and wait it out—there was no telling how high the water would rise, and no hope of finding an escape route in the utter darkness. Gradually the thunder diminished and the cascades thinned. Somewhere a buzzer kicked in, emitting an endless series of harsh triple blasts. A ruby glow appeared in the basin, accompanied by a slowly growing whine. The water began to steam, a hairline crack raced across the dock. The glow, pulsing as it grew, played upon the walls and turned the algae purple-brown. Mhendu and his Closest crept to the basin’s edge; tiny bunched silhouettes on a platform in Hell—the whole cavern was throbbing in a dull red haze. A number of rocks dropped into the basin, throwing up broad pink fountains. The glow intensified and the water began to boil. They ran looking for an exit, only to find the lift’s car locked in place at the top. There were no doors or hatches. The walls were polished concrete, without handholds. 108

Elis Royd And that low background whine surged and rose until it became a non-stop, ululating howl. The cavern shook. With a resounding crack, a huge piece of ceiling plummeted onto the dock, broke off the lip, and crashed into the water. The royds huddled and embraced, calling back and forth while chunk after chunk rained on the basin. And the dock broke up, and the walls cracked like glass. The pylons gave, the struts collapsed, and a heartbeat later the entire ceiling came screaming down.

The Administrator watched another piece of real estate vanish: kicked round the rim, caved at the center, sucked into the asteroid’s bowels. The world was coming apart. Without power, the only source of illumination was firelight, but there was plenty of that: lots of homes and shops were still on fire, and a number of burning farmsteads showed as pinpoints of light. Even as he stared, a huge chunk not far from the complex broke up, appearing to revolve slightly before pouring into a new abysm. To an observant man, the pattern was evident: subsurface columns and bridges making up the asteroid’s skeleton were holding fast, but the highly-compacted crust was collapsing in sections— this could only be due to some profound subterranean disturbance. Land farthest from the bridges, lacking any deeper support, was going quickly, while the gigantic cliffs of packed earth at the perimeters only gradually slid from view. The result was a growing latticework of column-supported bridges overlooking the world’s seething interior. As each burning sector passed into oblivion, so passed the dwindling illumination. The Administrator, watching from Terra Tower’s circular observation deck, was moved in a way he hadn’t experienced since puberty. He was no geologist, and no physicist, but as the only living man with access to Application’s thorough records banks, he was the only one with a pretty good idea of the catastrophe’s true nature; he knew the atomic plant’s location, realized the power was dead, and had no problem putting two and two together. Earthmen and royds were done fighting; they could be seen running about willy-nilly, many desperately scrambling up banks of caving earth. The thickest succumbed in the centers, while the more intelligent stuck to the rims, and so eventually worked their way to the safety of bridges. The Administrator’s vantage was 360: he could clearly make out innumerable panic-stricken citizens, unable to escape through the blocked turnstiles, fighting to weigh down the fences. The fences were too tough to fall, but the initial eviscerated scalers provided excellent flesh cushions for their followers. Those managing to squeeze out the turnstiles never looked back. York Peak gave a warning tremble. The Administrator quietly descended the Tower’s outer spiral staircase, pausing meaningfully on each step. He’d outwitted every foe he’d ever met, mastered a career and family, honed his strengths and tamed his weaknesses, dreamed and schemed his way to the very top. But like any man secure in his prowess, he hadn’t given a thought to the business of dying.

The Great Roach has always been an opportunist. When death is in the air, it’s able to determine the breadth of that tragedy, locate the source from miles away, and use a number of adaptive tricks to gauge its victims’ ability to retaliate against swarms, teams, and individual raiders. 109

Elis Royd Its many feelers—cross-evolved appendages contributed by hundreds of imported species— are able to function as remote sensory equipment. Thus the Great Roach utilizes a kind of radar to zero in on tremors of profound agony (the GR is all but useless in cadaver scrounging, a feat largely monopolized by the mater, its grudging symbiotic partner). The Great Roach can also mark and relocate its kills with personalized pheromone trails for return snacks, and emit a mild electric charge to rouse any unconscious prey saved for a chaser (there’s nothing like horrified thrashing and screaming to get the digestive juices flowing). First inside West Gate were the smaller, hit-and-run graverobbers that have always competed with the perimeter roach. Small and inefficient though these robbers are (generally under five feet, and unable to manage anything larger than a child without first dissolving it in salivary extracts), they are true Great Roaches, with compound guts adapted for humans as well as royds. This distinction is important, as it explains just how those ravening leviathans of the canyons were able to exploit the bloody trauma of Earth Administration. To wit: the unusual liveliness of graverobbers at the Gate was manifested in intense vibrations of their foremost dorsal antennae, creating an atmospheric disturbance readable by the highly sensitive feelers of the canyon Great Roaches. The latter made for the compound post-haste, and within hours arrived in swarms numbering in the several thousands. By that time their excitement was an unstoppable thing. West Gate was well guarded, though it had never been repaired due to the near-constant influx of royds late to battle (a mixed blessing for EarthAd, as plenty of those marching soldiers-to-be ended up as appetizers for the first wave of rapacious Great Roaches). In their horror, the shocked Gate Guard fired hardly a shot, but the minor noise and resulting confusion sent the bulk of the Roaches up and over the wall, and once in the courtyard they found plenty to keep them busy. Even so: though the perimeter fences were designed solely to prevent royd access, they proved impenetrable to the Great Roach. Many of these monsters were sliced to ribbons on razor wire, only to be dragged back down and devoured piecemeal by their fellows. At any rate, there wasn’t a whole lot left to protect, and most of the Gate Guard had already bailed, going for brute survival in the wilderness over being sucked into the rapidly evolving black hole of Administration. These earliest fleeing guards soon met their ends in the Great Roach juggernaut, as did the reluctant defenders, the straggling royds and deserting Civilian Guard, the mortified mothers and their terrified children, the shopkeepers and civil servants, the homeowners and the homeless, the farmers and the tradesmen, the wounded and the infirm, the sane and the insane, the newborn and the elderly, and pretty much anything else out of doors, out of time, out of ammunition, and edible.

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Chapter Ten

To a thinking man, no vision of Gehenna could be more spectacular or surreal: on a field lit only by stars were hundreds of marauding Great Roaches; fighting over cadavers, running down hysterical Earthmen and royds, laying into anything they could tackle. The Administrator stood motionless in the rubble of a fine old two-story, watching without emotion as a man hurled his family into a widening pit to spare them a slower horror. Ordinarily he’d have been transfixed—now he felt . . . nothing. There was a predictable, nauseating pattern: The opening of each new chasm would be followed by a momentary lull. The perimeters would appear to quiver and rock. And the rims would come alive: thousands of those footlong gray roaches would pour out like overflowing water, radiating in swarms that just as abruptly vanished into adjacent pits. Maters, clinging out of view, would flop their long purplish necks along the crumbling rims in search of scrabbling humans; they’d pull themselves root to root, then drag themselves topside by latching onto the limbs of corpses and ravening Great Roaches. Even as he watched, a great column of superheated steam blew out of the crust half a mile away—a basin geyser, one of many to come. This, too, struck him as just another detail in an endless 3D nightmare. He clasped his hands at the small of his back and wandered, lost in thought—there were razors in his quarters, along with various household poisons that, when mixed in the correct proportions and taken on an empty stomach . . . self-inflicted wounds by gun or blade are just so pedestrian . . . to 111

Elis Royd leap poetically from the heights: ah, but into what . . . the Administrator brooded as he walked, his tranquil behavior making him that much less noticeable in the general feast and flurry. He stopped. A soul-deep sickness had just radiated from his chest to his shoulders. He had to rest, had to sit. All the excitement—this was no place for a sedentary man. And the air was certainly more rarefied. The pumps . . . he fell back against a burned-out building on a chasm rim, dully watching the world die. In a few minutes he felt stronger. He rose and looked longingly at the blacked-out Administration complex, accessible only by crossing half a dozen of these spiny tapering bridges. Elis Royd’s engineers had constructed the complex above the asteroid’s most thickly-columned latticework; it would surely be the last to go. He stepped to the first bridge and looked down, feeling all the dread of a novice parachutist. The chasm walls were absolutely alive with millions of gray roaches, with thirsting grandmaters swinging gymnastically column-to-bridge-to-ledge, with climbing humans, royds, and Great Roaches tangled up in the necks of furiously sucking young and adult maters. He tiptoed out and paused, forcing himself to not look down. This was a zen challenge. The Administrator walked upright and with forced calm, reached the middle, paused again, and steadily proceeded to the end. He crossed the first five bridges pretending the crawling horror below was all a dream, keeping his respiration absolutely steady, and controlling his balance by holding his arms at a relaxed, admirably maintained forty-five degrees. But by the time he was halfway across the final bridge he was a nervous wreck. His rigid arms, now out at right angles, dipped and windmilled with each step; his teeth were grinding right into his skull, spots flashed and swam before his eyes. His trembling only made the bridge seem more precarious, and then—smack—a mater had him by the ankle. He went straight down, instinctively embracing the bridge. A second and third neck wrapped around his left arm and thigh. He automatically shifted his grip and rolled, and if it hadn’t been for the clinging mater he’d have spun right off the bridge. The Administrator lunged forward, tearing the mater free and hauling it airborne. He had to weave and bob to avoid its many whipping necks, but the thing was desperate for a grip; in seconds he’d taken one across the eyes, and another right in the mouth. He immediately peeled off the high one and bit down hard—the high neck shot out of his hands, the injured neck flailed wildly, snapped back, and wrapped around his throat. He staggered along on his hands and knees dragging the thrashing mater, finally collapsing full-out on a relatively wide length of bridge. The Administrator rolled onto his back, tore off the neck and gripped it, jerking and snapping, six inches from his nose. A pursing ring of suckers pushed out of the bleeder’s mouth. The instant that mouth clamped on his cheek the Administrator freaked—he ripped it off and swung the mater round and round by its wounded neck, hurled it kicking and screaming into the abyss, and recovered just in time to catch the bridge with an arm and a leg. With the last of his strength he pulled himself back up. A sharp pain squeezed his chest and rolled down his dangling left arm. His brain told him he was a fool not to rest, but something deeper—a horror of losing consciousness, of being eaten alive—drove him wheezing to his hands and knees. The bridge broadened at the rim. The scary crossings, the recent struggle: by now the Administrator was really shaken—so shaken he was completely unaware of another presence until the Great Roach’s drooping antennae were almost in his face. He froze on all fours, looking into a 112

Elis Royd horseshoe-shaped bank of compound eyes glinting palely with starlight. One antenna dropped. The other hovered for a few seconds, then slowly made its way forward, moving in an up-and-down serpentine motion. When it was right in his face the Administrator’s entire frame locked up. The whole fight-or-flight thing was out of him; he couldn’t move. Pointless questions knocked about in his brain: Do doomed animals become immobilized out of self-preservation, on the off chance they’ll be overlooked? Or is it just shock, numbing one for the inevitable? Does apprehension give way to acceptance . . . out of some healthy give-and-take aspect of the food chain? That certainly seemed the case now. Are life and death naturally in equipoise? At that moment the Administrator simply ceased to exist; as a fighter, as a dreamer, as a viable life form. The antenna shivered and fell. The Roach rolled onto its side, then, with a final jerk and heave, onto its back. Its hundred legs kicked wildly for perhaps two seconds and ceased. Now the Administrator could see the huge aluminum signpost protruding from its abdomen. Triggered by the Great Roach’s death throes, a dozen maters immediately flung their necks on the bank, and at least eight more popped out of the dirt. The Administrator was forced to navigate a snapping, wriggling gauntlet. Fighting for breath, he stole around the carcass, stomped on a pair of lunging necks, and hurriedly moved to safer ground. Now each structure in the complex showed clearly against the stars. The area was deserted. He moved listlessly down the streets, only half-aware of the familiar old homes, shops, and official buildings. Gutted, burned-out, looted, razed. A rumbling underfoot backed him up to a leaning storefront. The exhausted Administrator just zoned there, paralyzed by the vibrations racing up and down his frame. Not a hundred yards away, a huge mass of earth kicked up. A sinkhole appeared, pulling in enormous chunks of land from all sides, tearing up the ground radially, widening rapidly—he could only stare as the perimeter came on, expecting at any moment to be swallowed up. A crushing sensation clamped his breastbone, followed by the profoundest sense of morbidity. Molten electricity flowed down his arm. The Administrator paled head to toe. This was it. He slid down the wall incrementally, a foot at a time, coming to rest with his legs sprawled out and his upturned hands dug halfway into the dirt. There was no air to breathe; none. His head fell to his shoulder, and he caught a great gasp. Hot sweat soaked his cassock. His fingers and toes crimped. The Administrator closed his eyes, found his center, and passed. Five minutes later his eyelids cracked apart and he looked out on the same old disaster. Cheated. He’d have to go through it all again, sooner or later. Life still wasn’t done with him. The Administrator laughed as he stumbled down the streets; at everything and at nothing. A playground was abruptly sucked underground; that struck him as funny. A senior center went next. Hilarious. He instinctively made his way to Applications, slowly climbed the steps, and tenderly ran his fingers over the mounted touch pad’s soot-dusted screen. Nostalgically, almost wistfully, he tapped out the old security sequence, and was nearly knocked off his feet when the double doors quietly swung open. The darkness inside was broken only by a haunting red glow; the source was a nondescript bank of metal cabinets against the east wall. He locked the doors and stepped over. The light came from a series of liquid crystal display touch pads. The largest, in the center, bore the embossed words: EMERGENCY GENERATOR. 113

Elis Royd Intrigued, the Administrator tentatively pressed a finger on the pad. Something kicked under the building and the place lit up like a Christmas tree. The Administrator stepped back. After a few seconds he pressed again. The lights shut down and the centermost pad began blinking. He triggered the generator again, then set about turning off all but the essentials. Certain recessed lights—he’d never noticed them before—didn’t respond to any of the switches. These lights bordered specific doorways, and formed a blinking path on the floor. The Administrator followed, knowing exactly where he was going: the trail led through familiar territory into Records, terminating at the blinking screen he’d haunted a thousand times and more; it was RAT, the Records Access Terminal, hub and wellspring of all worth knowing. He sat in the padded contour recliner and tapped the screen. The blinking stopped. The screen glowed coolly, separating hues and eliminating angles, until a soothing tidepool-blue swam in mother of pearl. A canned gender-neutral voice came from microspeakers buried in the console: “Thank you. The emergency system has been activated. Sensors indicate a meltdown of QXTandem-Oh-Five, with irremediable structural damage. Subsurface stresses are radiating logarithmically. World annihilation is imminent.” “I do not . . .” the Administrator fumbled, “I do not understand.” “Thank you. The security system to this building has been de-activated via password. This screen was triggered by the emergency generator. The program itself will be initialized once the security pass that accessed the building is re-entered.” A backlit exclamatory security logo appeared on the screen, identical to the one embossed on the mounted touchpad outside. The Administrator placed his fingertips on the logo and repeated his password. “Thank you. The asteroid is determined to destruct in—00-29-17—whereas time is represented in particulars of hours, minutes, and seconds. Please enter your log and obit for Earth Administration now, and seal and launch the box. You have—00-28-53.” The Administrator spread his hands. “I have nothing to seal.” He looked around. “I do not know what is meant by ‘launch the box’.” “Thank you. Please relay your distress call to the Orbiter monitor. Begin speaking in three, two, one—now.” The Administrator’s jaw worked uselessly. “Hello?” he mumbled. He cleared his throat. “Hello! I am unfamiliar with these proceedings! I am to coordinate with a monitor somewhere. If you are hearing me now, I can only tell you that this process is a complete mystery to me. However, I am nominally in command of the vestiges of Earth Administration. There has been some kind of catastrophe—as I understand it, the atomic power plant that supplies the basics to this world has suffered a form of technological calamity. There is much death and suffering. We require urgent assistance, and beg that—” “Thank you. Records reveal that the Orbiter was retired at—minus 164-09-17-23-59-07— whereas time is represented in particulars of years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. You may leave a brief bio, as well as a message for your immediate family; include kin related directly by marriage, but exclude kin related by marriage of progeny. You have—00-24-51.” The Administrator studied his hands. “Of progeny, I have none,” he admitted. “My wife, you see, was unable to perform her natural duties due to some misbegotten notion concerning a work ethic of which I will frankly—” “Thank you. You may request an Intercession. You have—00-23-19.” 114

Elis Royd The Administrator balled his hands into fists. He wanted to smash the contraption, so great was his frustration. “I do not know what you mean! I am unfamiliar with these things!” “Thank you. You are required to respond in the negative or the affirmative. You have—00-2246.” The Administrator’s shoulders sagged. He unclenched his fists. “Whatever,” he said, and slowly wagged his head. After a minute he sighed, “Yes.” “Thank you.” An interactive icon appeared, taking up the bulk of the screen:

“The four pads correspond to cardinal points. They are as follows—Uppermost: forehead. Right: left shoulder. Bottommost: sternum. Left: right shoulder. Please touch each pad as it engages, followed immediately by the corresponding cardinal point. The pads will light in proper sequence. You have—00-19-34.” The top pad glowed a soft scarlet. The Administrator curiously tapped it with a forefinger, then touched the finger to his brow. The pad went dark and the lowest lit. The Administrator followed patiently, touching pad to point until he’d crossed himself and completed the sequence. “Thank you.” Except for the screen, the room went entirely dark: the emergency lights, inside and out, clicked off; the warning indicators and room guidelights vanished. The screen itself became a dull white contoured plate—wholly blank and absolutely neutral. It began blinking off and on, rhythmically, so that the immediate environment smoothly alternated black and white, lost and recovered, unlit and lit. It took a moment for the Administrator to realize the equipment was reading and matching his heartbeat. This very restful experience quickly became cloying: the program had locked on his pulse, and was electronically determining its subject’s subliminal responsiveness. The screen filled up with a stupefying hail of spots and flashes. The Administrator’s eyes ached with the unnaturalness of it; his skull became congested, his mind a passive sponge. He sat perfectly relaxed, upright hands resting on the console, staring fixedly at that flickering white field until the barrage ceased. The backbeat released his pulse, the screen dimmed, the room went black. 115

Elis Royd He sat in deepest darkness, only gradually becoming aware of a smattering of white points cropping up all around the walls. These pinpricks were electronic glyphs meant to represent stars, thousands of them, glowing everywhere. The room was simulating night. He rose woodenly. The Administrator was standing in a desert hollow, watching those stars shine with a curious beauty unknown on Elis Royd. He was experiencing something cell-deep, something his remote ancestors had breathed in, night after night, long before his own wretched arrival in life. And as he stared, one of those stars appeared to increase in brightness, and to gently drift toward the horizon. It swept down majestically, in slow motion, growing brighter and brighter until it fully lit the sky over a shabby little tent. The Administrator, mesmerized, bent down to check it out, and ended up landing on his knees in that tent, where a poor woman sat swaddling her newborn son. A strange pain ripped through him, and for some reason his eyes welled. The Administrator struggled to his feet, only to find himself following a peculiar receding figure down a dusty desert path. He was one of many in this man’s train, and was being jostled left and right. The Administrator elbowed his way forward, turned, and looked into a face that was a steady stream of black bytes on white. He turned back and tripped over the other followers—suddenly so many he had to fight to regain his feet. They were all part of a great crowd, straining to hear the words of that same faceless figure, standing in a rowboat on a little sea. The Administrator climbed through the rapt listeners until he came to a long flight of rock steps. That mystery man was now dragging up a giant wooden cross. He was in heartbreaking shape, and the Administrator had to assist him—had to. He threw out his arms and lunged, landing prostrate at the foot of the cross, now propped upright on a skull-shaped hill. An unbelievable grief ground him down, a desperate pain that was shared in spades by a handful of others, all crying out to this broken hanging man as though he were the closest of family. The Administrator wept openly as he rose, reached up, and stretched himself to his limits in an unworthy embrace: one hand to each of the crucified man’s own—two points—torso to torso—another point—his wracked face falling forward for a final begging kiss. “Thank you.” The lights came up, the apparition vanished, the Administrator’s arms dropped to his sides. He stood slumped in the room’s center, vaguely hearing, as his senses returned, a pounding and crying without. The survivors of Elis Royd wanted in. They’d seen Applications’ little light show: couldn’t miss it, actually; it was the only electric thing going. The roof’s cap was now emitting a steady light-pulse. The Administrator shuffled out of the room and hauled open the great double doors. The entire crowd fell in, one on top of the other. It was a fairly even mix of Earthmen and royds; perhaps two hundred in all. “Let us stay!” wailed a woman. She hugged a badly wounded Uryndm to her heaving chest. “We don’t want to fight any more! We’re sorry, we’re sorry!” “Yes!” cried a half-buried man. “We’re all sorry—we’re sorry, sorry, sorry! Whatever we did, we apologize, and we promise not to do it again! Please let us in.” The Administrator languidly spread his arms. “There is nothing for you here.” He numbly stepped through and out into the night. A different woman embraced his legs. “Oh, please don’t leave us. Please. Anything you want. We’ll do anything. Only just don’t leave us.” The Administrator cocked his head. “I am not the one you seek.” He continued his slow brooding walk, his hands clasped behind his back, his upturned face fixed on the brilliant night. 116

Elis Royd The crowd followed him to the top step’s lip. “Look up,” he said, “to the eastern sky. A star will announce his coming; a falling star that will light the world for all time. In him will you find salvation; not in me, not in yourselves, not in any selfish philosophy of humans or royds. Upon his arrival there will be great celebrations, and all will be well.” He turned back, addressing those silhouetting the Applications lobby: “Fall on your faces when you see him. Know that your sins are to be borne by one too great to deny.” A royd grabbed his arm. The Administrator looked on him curiously. The royd’s expression was torn by wonder, his eyes about to bust out of his face. The Administrator studied the crowd and saw that every member was staring at a point just above his left shoulder. He turned. Among a million stars in that black velvet night, one was falling gracefully, growing larger and brighter as it neared. The impression was uncanny: the Administrator was witnessing the exact sequence, in real time, that he’d viewed in Records. A great gasp filled his body. His hand shot to his chest. The royd at his arm embraced him as he fell, eased him to his back, cushioned his head with his lap. The Administrator’s blue lips twitched and writhed. The royd pressed closer. “I could not see his face,” the Administrator wheezed. “I must see him. In the flesh. I must see him.” The royd fanned him urgently, despite his broken forelimb and lacerated claw. The light of this star was now so great as to cast shadows. The Administrator’s face, fully illuminated in that expanding pool, grew whiter and whiter, even as his dull eyes correspondingly dimmed. He gripped the royd passionately, although the bleached and blue mask of his face was unable to reflect his joy. “He is come!” he whispered. “He is come, he is come!” And the beautiful star grew and grew, cutting out the night, laying bare the crowd, and filling up the whole visible sky with its promise of sweet, white, and all-glorious light.

117

Chapter Eleven

Captain Warren first noticed Applications’ blinking dome from three miles up. He immediately ordered the expanding field of view narrowed to a single square mile: there was no point in wasting time looking elsewhere; every gauge indicated an asteroid only minutes from coming apart at the seams. The atmosphere was all but gone, the magnetic field veering wildly due to a disrupted rotation—the disintegrating crust was rapidly exposing the true nature of this mechanically packed and paved wiffle ball-world. Sensors picked up humanoid activity outside Applications, as well as a closing army of Great Roaches. Warren ordered the ship’s entire keel lighted as an entry beacon during descent: now Applications and the immediate milieu were brilliantly illuminated. One benefit of the huge white beam was that the nearest Roaches tended to scatter, or at least back off somewhat. In a minute the captain noticed a band of humans and royds huddled on the top step; seconds later he could make out every detail of their expressions. They appeared in shock; dumbfounded, immobilized, disoriented. Warren dropped his chin to his chest. “All medical and security personnel to Bay. Navigation, put us down a quarter-kilometer from that illuminated structure, but give the keel at least a meter of surface clearance. Be prepared to lift off immediately upon my signal, regardless of head counts. There’ll still be time to seal Bay once we’re off-surface.” He cocked his head, ear to shoulder. “Indications are the air’s going fast. All personnel are to carry half-hour masks.” He backed off a notch. “I know, I know. Meet me in Bay.” 118

Elis Royd Warren handed his reader to an aide and stepped into the pneumatic pit marked ‘Bay’, bracing his shoulders against the cylinder’s smooth plastex wall as he dropped. Security was already waiting. Medical and a trio of field recorders landed even as the captain was stepping out. There wasn’t an instant to waste on details or the mundane: this was a balls-out emergency, and every member had been on his mark from the moment the ship hit the asteroid’s deteriorating atmosphere. Warren lowered his chin. “Air?” He cocked his head and looked back up. “Okay . . . go.” Bay’s broad dish of a floor descended with a spiraling hiss. Applications was now lit strategically, by both static columns and sweeping beams. The great keel light had been switched off so as to not blind the field party. They could see the black hulks of Great Roaches emboldened by an accumulation of shadows. “Security,” Warren said. “Take out any of those things that get within thirty meters. We’re bringing in casualties; fire only when necessary. Medical, two stretchers per team of four. Absolutely no field work. Time frame is four minutes. Go.” Warren trotted out halfway while his field party ran flanks. The humans and royds cringed on the top step, absolutely terrified of these strange new figures. “Subdue and drag them if necessary,” the captain called. The air was going fast. “If they’re not ambulatory, throw them on the stretchers and get them down here pronto. Three minutes.” The ground shook all around. One half of Applications spiderwebbed and collapsed. And now the sector including Exxona and Doopont was abruptly ringed by geysers; great pallid exclamation points in the distance. Much farther off, the gorge at Maert’n threw off a mushroom cloud of steam; a second later the whole valley blew into a million pieces. The medics raced down the steps dragging shell-shocked humans by the dozen; royds were more inclined to make their own way. Captain Warren waved from his command crouch. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” He grabbed a royd in one hand and a human in the other. The crowd spilled around him. “Security!” he shouted. “Give us a hand! One minute!” Then it seemed everybody was caught up in a mad rush for Bay’s waiting lowered floor. Security dropped their weapons and wrestled survivors inside, threw them to the floor, dragged them to the brightly lit hub. The ground kicked five feet in the air, a humongous roar tore out of the world’s bowels, and the atmosphere began to pop and sizzle. “Go!” Warren hollered. The screaming crowd piled in. “Lift off!” The keel whined, and the pneumatic hiss of Bay’s floor began to spiral in reverse. They all stared out the narrowing space as Applications was swallowed whole. Bay sealed tight while the ship was still in initial thrust. The cabin pressure quickly recovered, and after thirty seconds of ascending they’d stabilized. The entire floor became a vast active screen showing the ground coming apart below. No one said a word. They just sat sprawled in each others’ arms, staring down between their knees at the rapidly receding debris of their pasts. It all went very fast. There was a scary half-minute of turbulence, then Elis Royd was just another wretched rock whirling to nowhere, and the ship might have been gliding on smoothed silk. Captain Warren lowered his chin. “Real-time reports on all screens. Hospital, man your tubes.” He waved to Medical and Security. “Get them all sitting up. I want to know how many are critical.” He cocked his head. “No. None that I can see so far.” There was a disturbance to his right. A Security member and a wounded royd were carefully dragging a man in a filthy black cassock. The royd stared up at the captain. “He said he wanted to see you.” Warren went down on one knee, gravely puzzled. “Me?” 119

Elis Royd “Yes,” the royd panted. “He asked . . . he requested—he said that . . . he said he couldn’t see your face.” Warren bent closer. The Administrator was ice-blue, throat to forehead. In a moment his lids fluttered and he looked up out of eyes like cloudy gray marbles. Warren brought his mug in tight. “Sir?” The Administrator’s cheeks and jowls shook. He looked from the captain to the room and back. The strangest expression crossed his face. A second later his eyes rolled up and locked in his skull. Warren used two fingers to close the lids, then quietly rocked back on his haunches. “Who was he?” He and the royd traded stares. Finally the royd said, “Just a man,” and limped over to join the others. Warren got to his feet and lowered his chin. “Scratch that last. Make it one cold.” He walked up to the crowd of survivors. Minus those being pneumatically shunted to Hospital, they numbered a little over a hundred. A dozen masked and gloved nurses surged down and began picking through the crowd. The humans and royds looked up uncertainly. “First things first,” Warren said. “We’ll be segregating the healthy humans from the extraterrestrials to make sure there are no cross-species contaminations. Extraterrestrials, don’t be alarmed. You’re our first priority, and as soon as we get things organized you’ll get your own special area in the back of the ship. Nurses, remove these Earthmen to the galley and make sure they get some good hot chow.” He beamed at the huddling royds. “Tonight’s stroganoff!” Once the humans had been moved out of Bay, the captain stood as though at a lectern. “Well then, I guess it’s time we introduced ourselves. I’m Captain Darryl Warren, and you’re aboard the Terran recovery vessel Nymph. I saw lots of Earthmen like myself, but I’ve got to admit, some of you guys are radically unfamiliar.” The crowd was respectfully silent. Warren smiled warmly. “Now, I feel it’s incumbent on me to provide a basic explanation as to what this is all about, seeing as you’ve been through so much hardship and all. You’ll fill up on the details later. Speeches aren’t really my strong suit; I’m more of the take-charge type, so please bear with me.” He blew out a sigh. “Okay. The Elis Royd project was designed as a stepping stone for refugees out of the Local Group Wars. It didn’t start out being called Elis Royd, of course; that’s a sort of colloquial shorthand—what folks do to make a place or person familiar. Add to this the fact that your ancestors were still struggling with English, and you see how even straightforward titles can get garbled. “This place was originally named Ellis Asteroid, after a Terran point of entry called Ellis Island. Earth had a similar problem way back when, due to an international conflict, rather than an intergalactic one. Ellis Island worked out very well; in fact some of the finest people on the planet were naturalized there, and became citizens of a great big wonderful country called the United States of America. Right now we’re waiting to lock into the outposts grid, but you’ll be able to read all about it once we get under way, in our ship’s huge social studies library. Anyway, with all the superior minds America absorbed, she came to be the predominant nation on Earth, and her government and social policies were triumphant throughout the Solar System, and eventually the Galaxy itself. But then she became embroiled in LGWI and II, and next thing you know she was, well, the wet nurse to countless refugees from hundreds of worlds. “In time the United Galaxy of America stabilized. Now war is a thing of the past. All the differences were ironed out, everybody forgave everybody, and the idealized inhabitants of Elis 120

Elis Royd Royd became the poster children of extraterrestrials everywhere. You guys are practically heroes. The Nymph was sent out to bring you to the ceremony you deserve—and talk about good timing— you’re going to Planet Earth Herself, to be naturalized as Earthmen! Think of it! And you’ll be just as good as any real Earthman. Why, you’ve got the lingo down, and you know all the tricks. “Plus, you won’t be hampered by any extraterrestrial physical handicaps. You see, this was a very, very big asteroid; almost as big as the planet Earth. They wanted to make it as much like home as they could, so you folks would be all good to go when the time came. They wanted you to become what they call acclimated—ready to take up proper residence in the Solar System. So they brought in all kinds of Earth animals and plants; horses and trees, dogs and pretty birds. At first they thought there’d be problems with an artificially-induced rotation, with a lighter gravitational field, with recycled water and air . . . but you know what? Turns out the body adapts, and beautifully. Muscles get stronger, the respiratory and digestive tracts alter ever so slightly; doesn’t matter where you’re from, so long as your cells use oxygen. Time heals all things. “Then they brought in electronic tutors and simulated librarians—I’m told the entire Books Of Solar Wisdom resided, in a virtual sense, in that building where we picked you up. Pretty neat, huh? Well, are there any questions so far?” A little old royd half-covered in gauze raised a broken claw. “How come you abandoned us?” Warren took a step back. “Hey, I didn’t abandon anybody, okay?” “Not you personally. I mean your super-great great granddaddies. These ‘Solar Wisdom’ Earthmen you mention. How come they just left us here to rot?” The captain spread his arms. “You see? This is exactly what I was talking about. I’m here to give you folks a cursory explanation; all the details are in the ship’s Library.” “Then let’s hear your ‘cursory explanation’!” There was an affirmative grumbling. “Fair enough.” Warren folded his arms across his chest. “Those political men who red-lighted the Elis Royd project were under a lot of pressure. We were at war. Funds had dried up. There simply wasn’t the wherewithal, in any sense, to maintain this thing. In retrospect, it was a very selfish thing to do. And that very selfish thing can’t be undone. But it can be remedied. And that’s why the Nymph’s here. “A war of this breadth taught us a thing or two about social evolution. We learned humility. Throughout history, mankind’s tenure was marked by egocentricity, by hypocrisy, by lust and by greed. But we’ve grown up. We used to justify everything, as though values were temporary, and as though faith existed solely for the sake of expunging one’s conscience. We would fight: man to man, family to family, nation to nation; always pointing the finger everywhere but at ourselves. There was no accountability. “Then something happened. Our scientists tell us that we have evolved socially, rather than just physically, and that it took a great war to make it so. And those scientists tell us we are virtually a new species; grounded in compassion and charity, in foresight and fair play. Anything we can do for you, anything, just won’t be good enough. We want to help. We need to help. Just ask. Anyone?” “My mate,” called a royd female, barely able to hold back her tears. “He is missing. I know he was with us on the steps. Please see if he was taken to your hospital.” Warren dropped his arms. “Well you see, it’s like this. During a medical emergency we need all our people on their toes. They can’t just drop what they’re doing to look for relatives.” “But can’t you have one of your people do a quick check?” “Sorry,” said the captain, strolling with interest before the crowd. “Out of the question.” He paused to pat a little shmnag’s knotty skull. “Hey there! What’s your name, son?” 121

Elis Royd “Gubyrrhmtlynnkxr.” Warren smiled winningly. “Hmmn. Now there’s a mouthful for you. Well, y’know, back on Earth we have a kind of game where we give our friends nicknames. So we’ll just call you ‘Goober’ for short. What do you say? You like that?” “Do you have a nickname on Earth?” “Oh, heck. They just call me Dashing Darryl, but what’s in a name, eh, Goobs? It’s respect that’s important.” He gave the boy a pat on the tail. “Now you just waddle along, son.” Warren pointed at a pregnant glenk urgently waving her raised forepaw. “Ma’am?” The glenk brought the paw back down to her lap. “We have been through so much . . . please do not be angry, sir. I have been, well . . . expecting, for some time now. My condition requires that I . . . you know, when the need arises . . .” “I understand.” “I will need privacy and many . . . implements for clean-up—very soon now.” “Of course, of course.” Warren wagged his head sadly. “But unfortunately, you see, our lavatories are not outfitted for, well, misshapen occupants. So regretfully—” the captain snapped his fingers, positioned his chin, and said, “Facilities for the extraterrestrials?” He cocked his head and his face lit up. “Bingo!” Warren re-addressed the royds: “Never underestimate the resourcefulness of Homo sapiens. We’re setting up another special area for you guys in Garbage. There’s plenty of room between the bins and—guaranteed no waiting.” He snapped his fingers again. “Intern, show this fine lady to Garbage. Make sure she gets plenty of extra candy wrappers. Anybody else?” “I have a question,” said a young male Emphesnu. “I am impressed with the ability of this one species to attain what it so adamantly seeks, with a drive that is both blind and visionary. How is it that no other race of beings has come even close to matching your accomplishments?” “Ah! A philosopher. Well, sir, there’s this amazing foundation to the cosmos. Everybody gets what he has coming to him. You don’t just need our wits and fortitude, you need something called karma on your side, which, roughly expressed, means your results will be the sum total of your actions. Humans have reached the status of cosmic demigods not because they begged for it, but because they earned it. We’re unique. So you see, my questing young friend, every species will meet its match, and every world will get what it deserves. Excuse me.” Warren cocked his head and listened intently. “Roger that.” He turned back to smile at the royds. “Saddle up there, ‘Earthmen’. You’re going home!”

Tucked into Bay’s darkest corner, the seven foot Great Roach tentatively placed her upper dorsal antennae on the deck and slowly swept left and right. To one side was bright artificial light. Voices could be felt, ricocheting off the white steel walls. The other side was all shadows and silence. The broad vents of several open flues could be seen; wide tin tunnels leading from the heaters to all decks. Riveted to a steel half-column was a brass plate with the boldly emblazoned legend NYMPH, followed by some smaller raised characters. She tested it with a long shiny mandible feeler, tracing the big letters. Her swollen egg-case seemed to ache in response. The Roach raised her carapace off the floor by jacking up her anterior feelers. Although she was aroused by the scents of oil and garbage, her basic maternal instincts compelled her to first find a 122

Elis Royd place of dank safety. She hissed and deposited a pheromone-laced stain, then, with a quick sniff around, darted through the shadows like a thief in the night.

123

Savage Glen

On that lovely day Fate dumped me in the Glen I certainly had it coming, but, given my state of mind at the time, probably wouldn’t have sidestepped even if I’d been tipped off to the grisly outcome. I was a homeless, penniless, self-absorbed drifter. My shirt and trousers were grimy and riddled with holes, my hair tangled and unshorn. My toes, nine funky creatures that were bleeding and gnarled, poked numbly from their torn canvas homes. To top it off I smelled like a cesspool, and knew it. But I was way beyond stares and whispers, deaf to the clack of quickly locked latches, unmoved by the sight of glaring mothers. Man, I was so far gone the gulls laughed as they pelted my hair and shoulders. I’d been working my way back down the Monterey coastline, having not seen a job or a Jackson since San Diego, maybe a year ago. My worldly possessions consisted of an old transistor radio with a dead battery, a broken hairbrush, and a pair of binoculars I’d picked up beachcombing; all kept rolled in a ratty, malodorous sleeping bag. Physically, even at this advanced stage of moral deterioration, I could have taken the necessary steps to redeem myself, but lately a particularly vile bile had come to roost in my soul. Ambition, wonder, compassion—these things were all but strangers to me. And as for the cozy, gaily motoring Beautiful People, they could go straight to Hell for all I cared. Nothing mattered any more. Sometimes I’d hitchhike, sometimes I’d walk up or down the coast highway making camp wherever my fancy dictated. Recently I’d taken to wandering along the sand in Monterey’s quaint

Savage Glen beach communities, back and forth, day after day, until some bored lifeguard or other chased me off. I never gave anybody a hard time; I’d simply nod and split. Anywhere was as good as anywhere else. But today, as I sat on a jumble of rocks off the promenade watching the fat sun set, I was in no mood to be pushed. My stomach was rumbling and writhing, my joints ready to seize, my hands and feet freezing. All I needed was some tightwad freak to wish me a nice day. To my right, the endless beach was quickly succumbing to twilight, and to my left a commercial pier stood over the waves like a tentative centipede, its underbelly secured from the public by a sturdy chain link fence. Behind this fence bunched a solid green jungle of lady fern, so densely packed it must have grown unchecked for years. On the boardwalk above were a small parking lot, an amusement arcade, a bait and tackle shop, a diner, and, just at the boardwalk’s entrance, a little market which also did business in funshine souvenirs. The market’s outer walls sported a continuous mural of long shapely ferns and pussy willows under a washed azure sky. Peeking from this idyllic dreamscape were leggy fawns, reddish-brown monarchs, smiling squirrels and carefree jays. A sign above the mural, bearing script as fanciful as the painting, read GENTLE GLEN. Only a few people were patronizing the place, but I knew it was where I’d be bumming my dinner. As I sat scoping it out, a curly blonde in cutoffs and frilly white blouse approached an exiting customer and began gesticulating and touching. The man— a very burly, swarthy character in Bermudas, windbreaker, and fedora—smiled and ran an arm around her waist. After a few more words they began sauntering across the parking lot. A minute later another man appeared at the door, wearing a white apron and sour expression. He watched them leaning on the rail for a bit, looking as though he would spit, then reached to the inner wall and switched on the market’s corner floodlights. I shook my head and creaked to my feet. When it came to making a buck some people were born with a distinct advantage. Once the aproned man was back inside I picked my way over the rocks, ambled up to the market and leaned against the front wall out of the floods’ glare. No one going in or out felt compelled to offer me anything other than a hard look. I was just reaching the point where hunger makes panhandling aggressive when my radar warned of an approaching cold front. That man in the white apron came back out and fixed me with a very tough stare. “No offense—” he began. “But take a hike. Right?” “Right.” “Just going.” I bent to lift my sleeping bag, my knees and back protesting, my head swimming. I was hurting for protein. The man in the apron disappeared. Before I could leave he reappeared with a squashed cold sandwich. “Maybe this’ll tide you over.” “But don’t come back. Right?” “Right.” I thanked him and slunk around the market to a wall facing the parking lot, peeling off the cellophane with my teeth. We both knew I’d be back. It was growing dark, so I sat against the market’s west wall under an epileptic floodlight. I was just getting comfortable when that same curly blonde came hurrying across the parking lot, looking scared. Spotting me, she rushed right up. “’Scuse me,” she burst out, “but if it’s okay could I, like, just stand here with you? Just for a little while? There’s some guy back there who’s really giving me a hard time. He’ll back off if he sees I’m not alone.” I shrugged and tore into my sandwich. Bologna. It figured. Now I could see that she was closer to forty than thirty, and that makeup couldn’t hide the wear and tear on her psyche. But she must have been really pretty in her day, before the crow’s feet and stress lines did their number on her face. She kept looking back at the row of cars, where a dark figure leaned on the rail overlooking the 2

Savage Glen beach. “Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere soon,” I remarked, finishing off my sandwich. Half a minute passed. She was starting to bug me. “Why don’t you go ask the guy in the market to call you a cop or something?” “He don’t specially like me,” she said, sitting way too close. “I’m not real popular around the Glen.” I crushed the cellophane into a ball and looked away. “My name’s Cici,” she breathed. “My friends call me Peaches.” She squinted at the cars. The dark figure was getting bolder, moving our way a yard at a time. “C’mon,” Cici said urgently. “Walk with me a ways, will you?” “Walk where?” And suddenly I picked up on an old vibe. This whole deal smelled of a setup. “Just to where we can get away from this guy, okay? I’ve got a place he don’t know about— nobody knows about it. We can ditch him. Look, I’m hip to this dude, okay? He’s real dangerous.” She took my arm. “What’s all this ‘we’ stuff? Since when did we become partners?” “Would you just come on, already!” The dark figure was ambling our way. I groaned to my feet and grabbed my sleeping bag, intending to separate myself from the proceedings gruffly and with finality, but Cici, a no-nonsense grip on my arm, surprised me by dragging me around the market toward the pier’s arched entrance. The dark figure began to follow in earnest. “Look,” I said, attempting to extract my arm, “just get out of your own jams, all right? I got problems of my own.” Everything was happening too fast. “Shut up!” Cici hissed. “Down here!” She pulled me around the railing onto the sand. It was fully dark now, and my heart was pounding. What was I going to do, use a transistor radio to fight off some horny pissed goon? Cici hurried me alongside the fence to a spot maybe twenty feet from the waterline. There the fence continued at a right angle, leaving beachgoers plenty of room to walk below. Glancing over my shoulder as we ducked underneath, I saw a black form jumping onto the sand. “Jesus!” I tried yanking out my arm, but Cici wasn’t buying. At that I realized it wasn’t some kind of setup after all. She was just as scared. “Quick!” she whispered. “In here!” Now I’ll have to be absolutely clear in my description, because I still get confused when I recall how we worked our way into that place. Cici led me around a soggy wooden pillar and behind a clump of tall, sour-smelling plants. We stepped up on a tiny wood platform, scooted around another pillar and squeezed behind a row of heavy standing planks, took a few paces toward the water on a sagging beam. She parted another clump of those plants to reveal a cut section of chain link fence. The section swung inward at her push, and I followed her in. The fence swung shut behind me. We were up to our ankles in chilly sand, completely engulfed by those plants. Cici put a finger to my lips. “Shhh!” It wasn’t at all dark, for long white slats from the pier’s security floodlights shone through the boardwalk’s interstices. In a moment we could hear somebody run past, pause, and continue running. Cici took my hand and led me down a snaking path hacked through the foliage. Its density amazed me. The place was a weird, groping jungle; a hidden world. We came to a clearing where three men as grungy as I sat around a gallon jug of cheap red wine. Considerable work had gone into making the place a home. Sodden pillars bore slats nailed horizontally to serve as shelves for found bric-a-brac, walkways had been laid using large stones and 3

Savage Glen cinder blocks, crude walls were fashioned of hung plywood scraps. Tacked to these walls were a few posters, a wall clock without hands, a three-years-old calendar. Strategically placed chairs and mattresses showed half in shadow. The man to my right rose as soon as we came into the open. Not only did he have the look of an obnoxious and felonious bully, there were aspects of his expression which gave an impression of real viciousness, perhaps even psychosis. He was physically big, and broad, and of a pasty complexion that vaguely came off as diseased, but more striking by far was the fact that he was absolutely hairless—and not merely shaven. There wasn’t a trace of hair on his face, upper chest, or arms, not an eyelash or brow hair; and all this was evident from ten yards away. Several tattoos showed loudly against the whiteness of his flesh, one in particular—the realistically depicted, and strategically placed, scars of a hangman’s noose—plainly intended to shock and intimidate. “Who the hell’s that?” were the first words out of his mouth. “That,” Cici retorted, half-whispering, “is a friend of mine. We was being chased by Otto.” I was to learn that almost all verbal exchanges were served up sotto voce in this place. She marched us right up to the little group, pulled a twenty from her bra, and held it triumphantly under the hairless man’s nose. “You know how he acts when he don’t get his way. We had to ditch him.” The big guy tore the bill out of Cici’s hand and stuck a forefinger in her face. “How many times I got to tell you nobody comes in the Glen without my okay?” He gave me a really bad news look meant to scare the hell out of me, but I just ignored him and continued looking around. Maybe he wasn’t used to confronting people who didn’t care any more. He tried that hard look again, shook his head and muttered, “Funky-assed hooker.” The guy sitting to my left was filthy and heavyset, wearing gray sweatpants, tennis shoes, an enormous overcoat, a black beret. Horn-rimmed spectacles with exceedingly thick lenses caused his eyes to appear offset. He winked and said genially, “Now as you’re native, comfort your bones and draw with us one.” I snapped, “What?” wondering if I was being put on. “Siddown and have a drink,” Cici interpreted. “And another thing,” the big guy rasped. “You quit turning tricks out front, okay? I told you once already you’re gonna blow it for us. Keep your butt up on the pier.” “And, Ci’,” the genial man piped, “may I be first to express our gratitude concerning the wherewithal for this night’s repast.” The big guy grabbed the fellow in the middle and yanked him to his feet. “Elf, you go upstairs and get some grub. Bread, cuts, and cheese. And another jug of grape.” Elf, who looked like his moniker, took the bill sheepishly. The heavyset man groaned. “Pleeease. Not port; not again.” He rubbed a pudgy hand on his ample belly. “Mine ulcer, she sings.” The big guy glared. “Grape!” Elf nodded and made his way out, looking haunted. I sat and accepted the jug, half-tempted to follow Elf out. But there was something about the big man’s manner that made me do the one thing that would really gore him. Casually sipping wine, I made a show of getting cozy. “You ain’t wanted here!” he said, reading my mind. He strode through the foliage and disappeared behind a ramshackle partition. Cici, sitting right beside me, said, “Best you don’t challenge him too much. He’s not just rowdy, he’s really off his nut. Once he told me he’s been like, you know, confined. For hurting 4

Savage Glen somebody bad. And I seen him turn weird, if you know what I mean. He gets this look in his eyes like . . . wow! And he carries this great big hunting knife he likes to flash around, which he says he can’t wait to use on some big mouth. But most of the time he just gets his way with his fists.” She pulled back a handful of curls, revealing an ear that was swollen and discolored. “That’s what he done to me yesterday. And no reason, neither. Just out of the blue.” I glanced at her ear and looked away. I’d seen worse. “Looks like it’s about time you elected yourselves a new big cheese.” The bespectacled man sighed. “No Constitution down here, amigo. It’s the law of the jungle, both figuratively and literally. And sweet old Animal’s no more guilty of being human than the rest of us.” I grunted. “Animal. I would’ve guessed something more like Monster.” The ferns all seemed to lean to the clearing, eavesdropping. I found myself whispering. “Groovy little setup you’ve got yourselves here. Kinda reminds be of a place I once saw in a picture book. Borneo, I think it was called.” The man sighed again. “Athyrium filix-foemina,” he moaned. “Californicum Butters. Likes it shady and moist.” He glanced around meaningfully. “Obviously.” “Crap grass,” Cici translated. My eyes were adjusting to the contrasts of light and shadow. “What’s this Animal guy’s hold around here, anyway? Never before met a man I disliked so much so fast.” “Rule by terror,” the bespectacled man said. “Gets his way with a gesture or a grimace.” He tossed his head. “Alopecia, along with a heavy dose of incarceration, may have played telling roles in his present behavior. But he’s too hung up to realize it’s not necessary. Here he bides, cohabiting with three of the gentlest folk you’d ever hope to meet, and still he swaggers around like there’s a mutiny threatening his little fiefdom. But it’s all a lark to me. I’m easy.” He smiled and offered his dry old hand. “Name’s Ollen. Ollen Keats Farthingsworth III. That seems a little prolix in present company, so I just go by ‘the Poet’.” I nodded curtly. I’d always seen a handshake as an empty ritual; in more cases than not an invitation to a double-cross. The Poet smiled again. “Like I said, I’m easy.” There was a whisper of brushed fronds as Elf slithered in, a bulky shopping bag in the crook of his arm. He extracted a gallon jug of port, a loaf of French bread, a package of cheese slices, and some cold cuts wrapped in white butcher’s paper. Animal must have been listening for him, for he reappeared and strode right up, tore the food and wine out of Elf’s hands and sat cross-legged with it all tucked between his knees. He stuffed the change in his shirt’s pocket, ripped the loaf down the center and crammed in the cheese and cold cuts. Without a word he began wolfing down the enormous sandwich, starting in the middle and working toward both ends. The bully was reestablishing his domain. Animal made a point of hogging the meal solely to get to me. Suddenly, mid-swallow, his eyes rose and burned directly into mine. The man was so loathsome I couldn’t help returning the stare with venom, and as our eyes locked everything around us seemed to freeze. Only as those ugly eyes grew progressively viler did I realize I’d been trapped into staring down a psychopath. Without averting his gaze Animal completed the swallow and slowly and pointedly rubbed the uneaten portion in the sand between his knees. At the corner of my vision I saw Elf’s face fall. Still holding my eyes, Animal made a show of reaching under his shirt. He drew out his hunting knife and slowly brandished it at eye level. I could tell how big the thing was without having to look at it directly, and while our little contest went on and on he twirled the blade in his fingers, 5

Savage Glen catching and passing the radiance from the floods above. The whole point of this gambit wasn’t to frighten me, but to break my stare with reflected light. “Ahem,” said the Poet. No one moved. I realized I didn’t have a thing to gain by beating Animal at his game, but I was already in too far. The more menacing his stare became, the more stolid I made mine. Crazy as it sounds, this must have gone on for the better part of an hour. Cici, Elf, and the Poet fidgeted as I willed myself to stone. At length sweat began to creep over Animal’s forehead. His eyelids twitched. I saw him blink twice, almost imperceptibly. The man’s mouth twisted into a bitter snarl, his eyelids fluttered, his face began to quake. He grunted and, his eyes still married to mine, took a vicious swipe at my face with the blade. The tip just brushed my cheek, not quite breaking the skin. The Poet was first to react. “Under the circumstances,” he breathed, “mayhaps mine ulcer wouldst not complain all that vociferously.” He gingerly plucked the jug from between Animal’s legs, unscrewed the cap and drank his fill. Elf and Cici responded like children under a Christmas tree, fidgeting and giggling. They nervously passed the jug. Animal ignored them. Our eyes remained locked, his expression even meaner than before. “Look!” Cici squealed. “Look at the lights! Somebody’s turned on the arcade!” Someone above, the electrician apparently, had indeed lit the amusement arcade’s particolored neon façade, and now ghostly primary and secondary spots were dancing about us, vanishing and reappearing between the pillars and ferns. The effect was extremely surreal. “Like being in a snow bubble,” Elf tittered. “You know, one of those little glass things you turn upside-down and shake.” Just as suddenly the effect passed, leaving only the stark, humorless spears from the floodlights. “Shoot!” Cici pouted. “Somebody had to go and turn us rightside-up again!” The Poet chuckled. “Never in a day,” spake he, “hast one’s going wit so trod the moment made.” “Shut up,” said Animal. The Poet looked at him quizzically, a patient smile on his face. “Meaning what? Meaning let the bearing quiet run the clockwork of our lives? Meaning fault the Muse for sorrow’s sake, that our—” “Meaning shut your stupid face,” Animal said menacingly. “I’m sick of listening to your crap, you got me? So either you clam up or I’m gonna clam you up. Is that clear enough for you?” “We need not evoke bivalves,” the Poet responded in all seriousness, “nor the product of our bowels. If perchance mine song should ring askance—” “I said,” Animal screamed, “shut up!” The Poet stared for a long minute, blinking. Wine had made him careless, and a bit slow on the uptake. He looked at us uncertainly, wondering if his speech was garbled. The faces returning his stare were white as death. The Poet turned back to Animal. “Believe me,” he began, “lest I seem remiss in endeavoring to—” What happened next happened so fast and so unexpectedly we were all struck dumb. Animal grabbed the Poet by the hair, yanked his head forward, and slit his throat in one clean swipe. The Poet gawked at the blood spurting on his overcoat. His hand started for his throat, but before it could make it he pitched forward. I sat quietly, bespattered, watching the spurts taper until the Poet was no more. Cici was in a strange posture, her hands raised, her eyes wide, her mouth all agape. I kind of expected a cinematic, piercing scream, but what came out was more like a tea kettle’s piping. And, 6

Savage Glen like a kettle’s song, the sound just went on and on, finally descending in pitch until it blew away as a sigh. “Jeez, Animal,” Elf whispered. “Jeez, man!” Animal glared maniacally, waiting for me to move. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or snarling, but I wasn’t about to stare him down this time. “Dump him,” Animal told Elf, his eyes pursuing mine. “In the back.” Elf wobbled to his feet. “I—I can’t lift him. He’s too heavy.” He sounded like he was about to break into tears. “What’d you have to go and do that for, Animal?” He turned to me with a look of supplication. “In the back,” Animal repeated. Elf turned to Cici, whose eyes were rolling round and round in her head, then back to me. “Help me out,” he whined, “huh, guy?” But I knew enough to sit tight. Animal’s stare was searing. Elf dragged the Poet’s body through the foliage, making an awful lot of noise. In a few minutes we heard him whimpering maybe thirty feet away, and eventually the sounds of digging. Animal hefted the near-full jug and tilted back his head, his eyes never leaving mine. He swallowed and swallowed, his face contorting. I knew this wasn’t for show, he really needed that drink. At last he lowered the jug and secured it between his thighs. There was a long silence, broken only by Elf’s distant whining and by Animal’s heavy breathing. Cici’s eyes avoided us both, and mine were fixed on Animal’s knife. In my heart I knew he was waiting for an excuse—any excuse— to use it on me, and that he was only beginning to consider the enormity of his crime. Animal belched, feigning calm. It didn’t take a psychoanalyst to figure out what he was up to. He was using the alcohol to steel himself, realizing he now had three witnesses to deal with. The pier creaked and trembled with the tide as the tension wound down. Animal played out his scene with the jug, his eyes glazing, his mouth hanging open for successively longer intervals. I saw a ray of hope. If the big man managed to drink himself silly I could walk. At last he set down the jug, having killed well over half. He stared dully at Cici and slowly moved his hand to stroke her hair. At his touch her eyes came to life, darting side to side, lighting on me imploringly. Animal wasn’t too drunk to not pick up on her look. His attention rolled back and forth between us—it was obvious he saw her less as a sexual opportunity than as a means to provoke me. He raised the knife until it was positioned before her face. “C’mere.” Cici didn‘t budge, but her eyes were all over the place. Animal grinned, casually brought the blade around to her back and used the tip to snip off her blouse’s buttons one by one. He did it dispassionately, methodically, like a man removing grapefruit seeds with a butter knife. Cici’s blouse fell open. Animal used the knife’s tip to draw it away from her body. Amid the spears of light and shadow the whiteness of her bra served more to accentuate than conceal her breasts. Animal rested the flat of his blade against her throat. Watching me all the while, he slid it caressingly around her neck and down her back, finally hooking it under the bra’s strap. His eyes gleamed. With the gentlest flick he severed the strap. Cici shuddered as Animal used the blade to fling off her brassiere. Topless, caught in that wholly vulnerable posture amid the shadowy ferns, Cici possessed a sensuality that evoked every healthy male’s wildest fantasies. The big man’s strategy was definitely working. Certain primitive urges, as protective as they were erotic, made me want to wrest that blade from him, cut out his filthy heart, and cart off my prize. Animal smiled. “Where’s your manners, boy?” 7

Savage Glen Cici watched only me as Animal pulled her face onto his lap. The knife glinted against her throat. “I said,” he hissed, “turn . . . a . . . round.” I carefully turned away and stared coldly at the ferns. Animal wasn’t content to make a pig of himself and be done with it; he had to rub my face over and over in his gathering show of excess. Hours were lost in a greasy blur of gulps and grunts and squeals of disgust. It was a numbing experience to have to sit there, listening helplessly while the morning light drew dreamy patterns on the plants and piling. Never had a night passed so quickly. Finally Cici gave a little sob of defeat. I heard Animal’s voice say, “All right, get up.” Unbidden, I turned back around. Animal was hitting the jug again, looking glum, and Cici was on her feet, naked, staring at a point equidistant between us. Animal almost lost his balance pulling up his pants. Cici turned to face me directly, caught in the classic pose of feminine abashment: right forearm covering the breasts, left hand concealing the crotch, right knee turned in. Then a really strange thing happened. She let her arms drop to her sides and looked me straight in the eye. My pulse shimmied at the mixed signals. Animal took another long swallow, looking anything but triumphant, his drunken gaze languishing on Cici’s stance. He blearily studied the way she was watching me, filled his mouth with wine, leaned forward and spat the mouthful in my face. I let the wine roll into my eyelashes and off my chin, refusing to react. He ticked the knife back and forth before me, very slowly, like a metronome’s pendulum set to largo. “I got eyes,” he said, and his face shook a bit. “Okay, tough guy. You do her, then.” I forced myself to not tense up, still waiting for that subtle drift of countenance that would show he’d overextended himself with the wine. But his size seemed to be working in his favor. Drunk as he was, he didn’t appear anywhere near losing it. “Up!” he said. “Get . . . up!” Rising slowly, I prepared to make my break. Again Animal seemed to read my mind. He grabbed Cici’s calf and tenderly stuck the blade’s tip in her navel. “Get your duds off—now!” I kicked away my shoes, peeled off my shirt, dropped my pants and shorts. Cici and I stood face to face, our bodies inches apart. Only then did she begin to weep. The sound was soft as a whisper. I looked past her. Animal swallowed and swallowed, set the jug down hard. He began tapping the blade against the glass, enjoying himself. The jug was almost empty. “And,” I said quietly, not really sure what made me take a stand, “so help me God, pigman, when I’m done I’m gonna take that bottle and stuff it right down your bleached ugly face.” The pinging stopped. Animal was gaping up at me, his expression an odd blend of exultation and amazement. His eyes danced. “Elf!” he crowed. “Make room for another!” “Just a little man,” I went on numbly, sensing his pride, and knowing I’d already gone too far. “Just a scared little man with a big, bad knife.” Animal’s eyes narrowed. His face assumed that same cruel expression that had so vexed me when I came into this place. With a grunt he plunged the blade into the sand, pushed himself to his feet, and rammed Cici aside. Before I could respond he had his hands on my throat and was choking me for all he was worth. I can’t remember too much of the ensuing minute or so. I still see the shadows swirling about me as unconsciousness approached, and I still feel Animal’s thumbs pressing against my windpipe, harder and harder, and I still smell his foul alcoholic breath taking away what little air I could manage. But most of all I vividly see his face up against mine. And I remember how the savageness of that expression intensified, and how it became ecstatic, only to slowly lose its flame, waning almost to a look of sadness. A fuzzy spark of just maybe hit me—the dying man’s last gasp of hope 8

Savage Glen he’ll be spared by a trace of humanity. Animal’s sad look declined in sync with my flagging awareness; the expression becoming regret, becoming weariness, becoming stupor as we collapsed. Through the coalescing shades of gray I caught a glimpse of Animal’s hunting knife protruding between his shoulder blades, saw Cici’s worried face looking into mine, and finally had a blurry impression of little Elf peering over her shoulder. There wasn’t a whole lot to be done in a constructive vein. Elf wordlessly dragged Animal’s body to join the Poet’s while Cici and I stood silently, finishing off what was left of the wine. In a few minutes Elf was back, Animal’s hunting knife in his trembling hand. “Only one thing to do, man,” he said. “Throw this sucker in the water and hightail it out of here. No weapon, no case.” He wiped the blade at his feet, encrusting it with sand. “You can just leave those guys in the back and let this stuff grow over ’em. Nobody’ll ever know.” He stashed the knife under his coat and looked around, searching for words. At last he said, “Man . . . I’m outta here!” and darted through the greenery. Cici and I avoided eye contact, staring at the fronds long after the entrance had rustled shut. My eyes, reacting to daybreak, fell on the scant piles of our clothes. It was very quiet; only the murmuring of breakers and the creaking footfalls of stoic fishermen. “Look at us,” Cici said, embarrassed. “Just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.” Her fingers brushed my thigh. We faced each other, and I found myself staring frankly at her naked body. I swallowed. “Now I can see,” I whispered, “why they call you Peaches.” Long shafts of morning sun began to play over the foliage, bringing to life a lush and primitive arena. “Tell you what,” I said, letting my hand ride down her spine, “I’ll be Adam.”

9

Common Denominator

Everybody in this country knows the feeling. Televised events are imprinted on the subconscious—a photogenic president was assassinated, a bunch of half-witted miscreants burned and looted a great American city, some Third-world lunatics used jets . . . and the unsuspecting public . . . as propaganda tools. These occurrences were not just news, they were Time-Life spectaculars, a dead century’s standout stories. But there’s a difference between a) hearing about it from your buddies, b) mourning over popcorn and Betamax, and c) actually observing these events, in real time, with no foresight, no hindsight, no insight . . . You—Were—There, if only electronically, and so were somehow as much participant as observer. That’s exactly the soul-deep memory engendered by The Happening On Fifth Street. You remember—don’t you . . . the talking head breaking in over Oprah—a major event in itself. The cams and copters all humping—I think it was Channel 2. But this wasn’t a slow-speed pursuit. Five drunken idiots were loitering in the drive-thru lane at a Burger King in L.A.—standing there, indifferent to the decent customers attempting to duly edge their vehicles along. They were screaming, shouting, giggling, guffawing. At a honk from a little green Aspen, one, the biggest, spun and flipped off the elderly female driver. “Fuck you, man!” he bellowed. “I’ll kick your goddamned fucking ass, you ugly old whore motherfucker!” His friends shrieked with hilarity. One of the women—there were two, I recall—

Common Denominator lifted her dress, yanked down her panties, and began thrusting her pelvis at the driver. The whole creepy knot just howled and howled. But that’s all incidental, contextually; just another clip of typical Americans having fun on a hot summer’s night. What happened next is the part we’ll never forget. The big guy hollered, “You got me, bitch? You want a taste of—” AND RESET! “You got me, bitch? You want a taste of—” “You got me, bitch? You want a taste of—” His friends, no less exuberant, were equally caught up. The obscene woman raised and lowered her dress—over and over—her laugh ringing: “Ah-haha-ha! Ah-haha-ha! Ah-haha-ha! Ahhaha—” Her friend fell all over her giggling, hauled herself back up, fell all over her giggling, hauled herself back up . . . The other two males, having appreciatively high-fived and butted their heads, high-fived, butted their heads, high-fived, butted . . . At this point it was really funny, okay? I don’t think there’s a cat out there who wasn’t halfway to upchucking. It was Saturday night fun, man. Nobody knew until later that the live action was spliced with footage taken by some guy with a videocam in the parking lot: there was no reason for the media hoopla until it got freaky. And that’s when we all stopped laughing. The police responded first, of course. These five misguided merrymakers had to be on angel dust or something. But the situation couldn’t be controlled with manpower. The Five were spilling all over one another, rhythmically repeating their shared sequence, and it wasn’t humorous at all. Their faces grew red and contorted as they gasped against an unnatural clockwork, their limbs were seizure-stiff, their eyes bugged and desperate. It was all a mad implosion of thrashing arms and melding voices: “You got-ha taste of bitch me-ha. You got-ha taste of bitch me-ha—” By the time the paramedics arrived the street was a sea of rubbernecks. The cops had to escort the ambulances in. And these guys were no less useless: injections didn’t work, restraints were a mess; they couldn’t even apply oxygen through that tussle. The Five were gasping and streaming, frothing and vomiting . . . in rhythm. The two high-fiving males’ skulls were cracked wide and gushing, and still their arms jerked up feebly in unison, still their lolling heads begged to collide. And the cops, the paramedics, the bystanders; nobody could hold ’em down—wild stuff, man, wild stuff. And it was the looniest form of entertainment imaginable to pick it up on that live feed, as the BK5, as they came to be known, were wheeled in on gurneys, strapped down and muzzled by oxygen masks, their purple faces trying so hard to spew as their soaking heads banged up and down and side to side, up and down and side to side, up and down and up and down and up and down and a story like that gets a brief, but very thorough, run. You learn all about the vitals—nicknames, dogs and hos, probation officers, favorite slash films, etc.—because the heroic BK5, thank our merciful God in all His infinite wisdom, survived. Nature is the ultimate physician. When their bodies could jerk and foam no longer The Five simply went comatose, woke to an awkward celebrity, and, once they were proven lousy commercial investments, gratefully slunk out of the spotlight. The initial focus was on ingested pathogens. That Burger King was shut down so the Department Of Health could pose importantly without being interrupted by autograph hounds, by 2

Common Denominator lowriders in limbo, or by any more damned honking old ladies in little green Aspens. Other agencies wanted to know if rap music or the Vice President was the culprit, or if perhaps the Devil Himself, paid seven and a half bucks an hour to hang out a window in a paper hat, was surreptitiously pulling the BK5’s strings. The whole thing would definitely have blown over, if not for an uncannily similar episode, four days later and not two blocks away. Rival groups of gangbangers had spilled onto an indoor miniature golf course at the new GotchaGoin’ Mall. Terrified shoppers stampeded concentrically while a couple of furheads duked it out over a vital piece of plastic turf of no importance at all only thirty seconds prior. One beady bozo bit another’s tattoo. The second creep screamed and flailed his fists. The first furhead bit. The second sphincter screamed. A bite and a scream, a bite and a scream—and both arms of the human cesspool broke on their champions like opposing waves. That, again, was the amateur part—caught streaming by a teeny bopper fledgling reporter with a broadband Blackberry. A local news crew, covering the grand opening of Thundergirl’s Dine-AndDisco, picked up the action as the looping gangs cussed and whaled in what director’s-chair psychologists term staggered sync; an erratic-yet-redundant vacillating pattern wherein one group appears to react viciously to the other’s retreat, and vice-versa. But this, as I stated, is an apparent motion. With so many close-knit individuals involved, the action comes off as almost choreographed, especially on video, when in reality a seeming cohesion is deceiving the anxious observer’s eye. Even the late-night stand-ups didn’t joke about this one. It took a riot squad to contain the madness, a major law enforcement presence to control the perimeter. Tear gas only made the repetitively kicking and wheezing combatants labor for breath as they grappled and rolled about. The course was smashed to rubble in the frenzy. But officials had learned from the fast-food episode. Emergency crews and disaster specialists created an on-location makeshift hospital. SWAT teams sealed the area. Surgeons, anesthesiologists, and blood donors were whisked into a giant ring around the action, where they simply stood stunned, like a tribe of pacifistic Indians round a knot of drunken cavalrymen. Because in the end that’s all anybody could do: stand there with their jaws hanging while thirty-seven spasmodic malcontents jerked and wailed and gasped and spewed into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness. By this time it was humongous news. Even though no one really expected it to happen again, there were individuals, aching for their fifteen minutes, motoring around the area, videocameras in hand. Some of these guys were hooked up with community web sites utilizing a nexus called Retard Watch, stationed somewhere in New Zealand, if I remember correctly. The Board Of Health taped off the Mall for analysis, and got the same reams of nowhere-data as their cronies at the now-famous hamburger slop, but it was all a great giggle for a while there; watching these lugs in space suits lumbering around a sealed-off parking lot with little bitty beakers in their big dufus gloves. Yet we weren’t really all that into the aftermath. By now we were glued to the news—ratings-sweepers on all channels, across the board—as we perched on the edges of our sofas and bar stools, stocked up on drinks and munchies, waiting wide-eyed and wondering, like children on the night before 3

Common Denominator Christmas—waiting for the mostest unlikeliest, for the unpromised third strike, for the boggler that blew away ’em all—waiting, waiting, waiting . . . waiting for The Next One. Gilbert Flemm had it all worked out. In a 9 to 5 suckass yellow-light bug stampede, he’d determined, as an electronics grad nauseated by the prospect of applying his talents to some soulless applications firm, to make his living online, at home, in private, at odds with the bigger picture. He’d been inordinately successful. At thirty-two he was, both virtually and literally, master of his own domain. The shades were always down in Gilbert’s tiny roach motel of a Boyle Heights apartment. One side of this groovy bachelor’s pad was a garage-heap of miscellaneous electronics hardware, patched in to nowhere. Extension cords hung like streamers from hooks hammered into the ceiling, plugs were tangled up in power strips leading to God knows what. The little bathroom and kitchenette were badlands, practically unnavigable due to years of tossing shipping crates, obsolete appliances, and pizza delivery cartons every which way. The other side of the room is where Gilbert lived. His home-office was a massive cluster of milk crates, monitors, drive housings, and patch bays, all squeezed into a work console produced by a series of squared components-casings made perfectly level by a broken desk top. Gilbert had achieved this console environment not by being an artisan or handyman, but by being a burrower. The console came about through the constant jamming and shoving and hammering of stuff into place; the space for his legs was effected by repetitively pushing and kicking and kneeing until he’d made stretch room. Grease, dirt, fly cadavers, and dead skin cells made a perfect mortar. His work chair-bed was a ratty old recliner with a floating horizontal frame, allowing him to recline full-out whenever the pixel pixies had overdusted his eyes. His personal urinal was a funky old pee jug, one of many, crammed, rammed, and jammed under the desk to make room for his naked, malodorous, scratched-crimson legs. Something of an inventor, he’d devised a peeduct out of a punctured condom wired to a quarter-inch polyvinyl tube trailing into the current jug’s punctured-and-wired cap. This way he could take care of vital business without having to ford the lavatory horror. Gilbert had lots of girlfriends. Linda Lovelace and Candy Samples were two of his favorites, bygone sweethearts now; looped into some miscellaneous folder or other to make room for recent files. Jenna and Busty and Ginger and Christy; they all came and went, but a techie’s heart is not programmed to be longbroken. A man has work to do. That work involved the remote debugging of programs, the defragmenting of drives, the importing and cleaning up of desktops. Viruses were Gilbert’s best pals. Smoking out these little virtual critters made a good living possible, working from home, with mouse of steel in one hand and foggy yellow pee tube in the other. Gilbert had never met his clients—transfer of funds was electronic. In this way Gilbert also made payments; to the bank, to Pink Dot, to his landlord and various electronics outlets. And in this way he drifted along; a retired, sedentary commander in a fetid space capsule, passively sucked into the giving black hole of ever-imploding data, umbilically attached, metaphorically speaking, to a daisy chain of RGB viewscreens, battling aliens for points, trading services for digits, making long, hot, electronic love. But lately he’d been consumed by a game called Common Denominator. “Lately” could mean any amount of time; Gilbert had no idea of, or interest in, the hour, day, week, month, year, decade, century . . . the game could be played singly or with friends, but “friend” is one of the F-words, and 4

Common Denominator anyway a man has work to do. The concept behind Common Denominator is deceptively simple: the gamer sequences characters, sites, and situations; all contributing to perfectly plausible scenarios with perfectly credible culprits and conclusions—which splinter and evolve into slightly less credible culprits . . . into ramifications of feathered conclusions . . . into rationale forks and logic back roads . . . the butler never did it in CD; the butler’s just a butler. But for drifting retired commanders willing to go the distance, the game’s an intoxicating mindfuck; a master finds the common denominator in abstractions, in subtleties—in qualities rather than appearances. It’s not for extroverts. Gilbert was so wired in he could follow the game on one of six desktop monitors while simultaneously earning a living, ordering Chinese delivered, downloading porn and avant-garde music, shopping on ebay, and monitoring streaming news. That news, of late, was a major draw, even for a carpal gamer like Gilbert. Those public seizure episodes had been increasing, both in frequency and fury, for some weeks now. Huge rewards went unclaimed, talk shows hosted prescient callers determined to stammer themselves into oblivion. Scientists, theists, and theorists rolled the dice—but all these players, posers, and pontificaters were sooner or later shut down by their own verbosity. Nobody had a clue. Some of those episodes got really intense. Certain fighters had been seriously hurt, a woman and her daughter, innocent bystanders, critically injured in a fray. Collateral damage. Unrelated skirmishes and spot-looting were reported. Also, one participant, seizing in deep shock while impaled on an upright sprinkler, had drowned in his own puke. That very dramatic death, amazingly, was repeatedly broadcast on regular TV as well as over the Internet, to the wailing bereavement of congressmen, televangelists, and suffering soccer moms everywhere. The BK5, dragged out of retirement to plea for peace, were getting plenty of airplay with their ubiquitous rap single, already in the running for Best Song Lyrics. A Christmas album was pending. Gilbert was singing along right now, partitioning CD clues with one hand, balancing his bank account with the other: “Brothahs an’ sistahs,” he croaked, “don’ play da foo’. Homeys an’ hos, ya gots t’ be coo’.” Catchy little fucker. True talent surfaces in the unlikeliest of ponds. And genius will never die: new applications, new technology, new faces were emerging. Art evolves: that bootyshaking finger popper was the natural extension of rap’s brilliant violation of vinyl; but now digital looping was applied—studios had cleverly used the BK5’s epileptic claim to fame—the tight instrumentless vocal harmonies, satirized by the straight community as aw, crappela, were electronically broken up and repeated as phasing backing vocals: “Brothahs an-play da—homeys ya gots t’. . .” until it was almost as good as Being There. Gilbert Fucking Flemm had an epiphany! While the rest of us were grooving, grousing, and googling, he’d subconsciously crossreferenced a number of sources in real time. 1. The BK5 were on a loop. 2. The CD characters were repositioning in sync. 3. The televised image of the latest oddity was crackling in and out due to a glitch in one of the news vans’ transmitters. 4. Said televised image was a melee involving blowhard bikers and barroom boneheads. The location was only a few blocks from Gilbert’s. 5. His police broadcast receiver was cycling; whining, grinding, reacting to some kind of pirate signal. 5a. The signal and melee were related. 5b. The signal’s source was close by, but receding. 5

Common Denominator And, of course, 6. “Yo Homey Yo,” the BK5’s celebration of the creative spirit, just had to be the most godawful piece of crap ever recorded. Gilbert patched the streaming feed to the police broadcast. The resultant scream almost blew out his speakers. He patched the combined input to an equalizer and manually cut out audible traffic until he had a fairly steady audio line, then adjusted it to screen. It was all white noise. In a dream, Gilbert used his joystick to move the CD players intuitively, his other hand tweaking the bastard signal. God in heaven, he’d triangulated! He gaped at his wall monitor for a minute, then, terrified he’d lose the signal, mapped and saved it to disk. He printed this out as a straight hexadecimal graph: every particular was established and tabulated; Gilbert didn’t need to research the results—he’d found the common denominator. He sat straight up. The streaming newscast contained a throbbing hyperlink for civilian-police intercourse. Almost without thinking, he control-clicked on the link. His condenser mic’s icon came up. A canned voice blurted from his house speakers. Gilbert switched to console mono. “You have reached the Los Angeles Police Department, U-Tip, We Talk Division. This thread automatically links to the State Of California’s Wireless Web Archive, and the call may be monitored for your protection. A live operator will be with you shortly. If you are an English speaker, please press 1 now. Yo tengo caca en la cabesa para todos no mas por favor—” Gilbert impatiently pinkied the 1 on his keyboard. Almost immediately a bored voice came in, “Detective Cummings, LAPD. U-Tip, We Talk. If this is an emergency situation, please dial 911. If this is a non-emergency situation, please dial 1800-LAPD. If this is an earthquake-related call, please dial 1-800-OHNO. If there are communists under your bed or gays in your closet, please dial 1-800—” “ASSHOLES!” Gilbert broke in. There was a tight pause. “Take a look in the mirror sometime, buddy.” “No! You don’t understand! He doesn’t like assholes!” “I’m not crazy about ’em either, okay? Especially when they get on an official line and interrupt police business!” “Listen to me! I play this game called Common Denomi—” “Well, don’t—” “—nator and I was—” “play games—” “—watching the news.” “—with me!” “On the side. It’s not food poisoning or drugs or anything like that. Forget the lab stuff. That’s all bogus. Rudeness is the common denominator. Obnoxious behavior in public. Selfishness. Immaturity. No pathogen can single out poor ethics in people! This is a case, or cases, of affronting. Somebody is revolted by these creeps and he’s lashing out.” A faint click. Now it was like talking in a tunnel. Detective Cummings’s voice came back carefully. “Who’s revolting?” Gilbert ground his teeth and clenched his fists. It was too late; he was already in. “I don’t know who it is. All I know is, like I said, the human factor’s undeniable.” “And how does your friend accomplish this feat?” “I just told you I don’t know who it is! He’s using alpha over the ether. I just picked it up. Or maybe it isn’t a male. Maybe he’s a she; I don’t know.” “So tell me, does your shemale friend have a name?” 6

Common Denominator “I’m trying to be of assistance, for Christ’s sake, as a private citizen!” The gentlest ping, as hollow as the night. “I want you to understand that the U-Tip, We Talk Hotline is completely confidential. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. Every aspect of your identity is private, and will remain private. So now that we’ve got all that out of the way, Mr. Flemm, maybe we can talk.” Gilbert’s thumb jabbed the Escape button. Sweat was creeping from his hairline. His right hand danced on the keyboard while his left rolled the mouse. The streaming live inset expanded to full screen. He punched out a sequence and a MapQuest graphic became an overlay. Gilbert reduced the opacity. “Damn.” He transferred the feed to the wall monitor. The resolution was diminished relatively, but that didn’t matter; once he’d configured his GPL to Random, the active elements in the grid translated to pixel groupings very much like churning dot matrix asterisks. The news scene was a mess. But there were isolated right-angling pixel blotches, like Ms. Pacman in slo-mo, that moved along the streets-grid with mathematical certitude. Order was the common denominator. Gilbert was looking for the anomaly. There. One asterisk was chugging along oddly; crisscrossing street sides, doubling back, pausing, moving along, pausing again. Gilbert tagged it: Eleventh and Willoughby. Four blocks away. He popped off his peter pal, pulled on his shirt and pants, slammed on his boots, jammed out the door. Deep twilight. Emergency vehicles were zooming for Seventh, and plenty of cars were turning in pursuit. It was obvious everyone in the vicinity knew what was up. Gilbert dashed across alleys and yards, hopped fences and cut across drives, finally blowing out onto Eleventh and Willoughby. His emergence must have been a noisy one; lots of pedestrians found it interesting enough to turn from the lights and sirens. One in particular, a man in dark pants and jacket, immediately made for a leaning tenement. Gilbert ran puffing and wheezing; wanting to meet him, wanting to warn him, wanting to praise him, wanting to stop him. He saw the old door swing shut and pop open. It was a fire exit; abused, infested, a rundown hallway for beggars, taggers, hookers, dealers . . . Gilbert slipped inside and the door slammed behind him. The hall wasn’t lit, so he cracked the door. Only an amber street lamp provided any illumination, and that was all of a dim narrow wedge and broken pool. He paused to let his eyes adjust and to catch his breath. “Before you take another step, I want you to know that I am armed, and that I will not hesitate to take you down.” It was impossible to make out features in the dark. There was a strong dab of light on the right earlobe, soft crescents and planes at the hairline. Gilbert addressed that area beside the lobe. “Look, I’m not a cop, I’m not a stalker, I’m not a bounty hunter. I know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and I want you to know I’m not your enemy.” A pause. “What am I doing?” Gilbert blew out a lungful of stress. “With the device. With the obnoxious people. I don’t blame you . . . I don’t hate you for what you’re doing . . . I . . . I admire you.” The figure took a step back. He was now completely obscured by darkness. “Then your timing couldn’t be more impeccable.” “What do you mean?” The dark blew out a sigh matching Gilbert’s own. “I mean this whole thing is moving faster than me. If you’ve latched on, the authorities can’t be far behind. And I really don’t think they share 7

Common Denominator your admiration.” Another pause. “I’m burned out, man. Or sated; I don’t know which. So . . . how’d you find me?” “I’m IT,” Gilbert mumbled. “I’m hooked in so deep I’ll never get out. There’s a game I’ve mastered called Common Denominator. It kind of forces the gamer to think outside the box. My brain cross-referenced, and I put two and two together.” “Did you call the cops?” “Once. On impulse. It was a mistake. Don’t worry; I got out of there right away.” “You sound like a bright lad. So you know all about W.T.T.” Gilbert fidgeted. “Maybe. Initials are all over the place.” “Wireless Trace Technology. A War Department development passed down to the police. If you tapped in for a nanosecond you’re tagged. Home, phone, credit, friends . . .” Gilbert swallowed guiltily. “That’s a new one.” He licked his lips. “Sir, I want you to know . . . I want to make it absolutely clear that I took great pains . . . I’m certain I wasn’t followed. And as far as anything electronic goes, I’m clean. So, unless they can put a trace on a man’s heartbeat. . .” “Not just yet, they can’t. How much do you know about my operation?” “I know you’re working in alpha. I know you’re jamming autonomic activity over the ether. I know the signal cycles in the human brain. I know it’s directional. I know the field’s variable. I know . . . I know the wavelength.” A casual movement, and an arm rose out of the darkness: brown suede jacket and black leather glove. Nested in the gloved palm was an object not much larger than a thumb drive, plump in shape, with an inch-long bulbed antenna. A red diode blinked twice. “Catch.” Gilbert caught. It was disappointing, somehow: a crude thing of tin and staples. He slipped it into his trousers pocket. The arm vanished. “Take that toy and tear it apart when you get home. I know you will; you’re already dismembering it in your mind. I’m out of here.” “But what you’re doing,” Gilbert tried. “I think . . . I think maybe people will get the picture. About ethics. About morality. About public comportment in general. Respect for strangers . . .” he mumbled. “For decency . . . manners . . .” The pause was so long Gilbert began to feel he was alone. Finally he whispered, “Sir?” “Now is not the time,” the darkness replied, “to wax philosophical. The world is pumping out idiots as we speak. We’re tagged, you and I. That thing in your pocket’s a joke; an ethicist’s objection in a hedonist’s courtroom, a forgotten blush in a government-sponsored whorehouse.” He sucked in a huge breath, let it out with a long sigh. “Right now people are being assaulted, insulted, raped, robbed, ridiculed.” The voice faded down the hallway: “Swindled . . . betrayed . . . rejected . . . abused . . .” Gilbert stood in the dark forever. He could hear his heart pounding; one knobby little traveler in the great human stampede. When he could bear it no longer he eased open the door and slipped out into the night. “Hello, Mr. Flemm.” Gilbert didn’t look around. “You’re wasting your time. He got away.” “Oh, no, he didn’t. He is, as of right now, in custody, and if all my years as an official witness have taught me anything, he’s looking at life without parole.” Gilbert’s jaw dropped. He turned. “What are you talking about?” 8

Common Denominator “I’m talking about assault and battery.” Cummings grabbed Gilbert’s wrist and swung him about. “I’m talking about lying in wait.” The cuffs were snapped tight. “I’m talking about reckless endangerment and carrying a concealed weapon.” The cuffs bit deliberately. Gilbert snarled with the pain. “What weapon?” Cummings patted him down with his free hand, tore the unit out of Gilbert’s front pocket. “I believe it’s called Exhibit A, asshole!” Gilbert’s whole face shook with horror. “No!” “Yes!” Cummings slammed him against the wall before dragging him around the building’s side to the ticking unmarked car. “That could have been my wife in that crowd, dickface, that could have been my daughter!” “I’m the wrong guy!” Gilbert gasped. “I was just talking to him, for Christ’s sake, but he took off. I don’t know where he is!” “That’s okay. What’s important is we know where he isn’t. And where he isn’t is in the apartment of one Gilbert Going-to-Hell Flemm, whose transmitted signals were tracked by specialists hired by LAPD, whose computers and peripheral equipment were just seized as evidence, whose hard-copy files are even now being pored over with attitude. You see, Flemm, your victims could’ve been those specialists’ wives and daughters too. I sure do hope you like it doggy-style, Gilbert.” “Wait!” Gilbert dropped to his knees. Before they hit the cement he was dragged back up by the cuffs, almost separating his arms from their sockets. “I won’t wait!” Gilbert’s face was slammed against the rear windshield. “Motherfucker, I can’t wait!” Gilbert felt the cuffs unlocked, heard them drop on the asphalt. He turned, shaking head to foot. Cummings had the unit in his gloved right hand. “You know what, Flemm? Sometimes even a predatory prick can get careless. He could be trying to zap a detective, let’s say, and not realize he’d accidentally pointed the zapper the wrong way; right back at himself! And if there weren’t any witnesses, and no prints but his own, there’d be nothing other than that poor detective’s sworn testimony. After all, it’s just a little tube with a button in the middle; easy mistake to make. And that would be a shame, man, a crying fucking shame. Raise your arm!” “But I . . .” “Raise your arm! That’s right. Now hold your thumb up above your hand. Good. Bend your thumb, at a right angle. Feel familiar, Flemm?” Cummings aimed the unit right between Gilbert’s bugging eyes. “Say goodnight, cocksucker, over and over and over.”

9

Snapdragon It has always been the curse of our species to miss the forest for the trees. Our ancestors’ natural tendency to demand complexity in all systems made their appreciation of simplicity well-nigh impossible—their rude science could never accept the reality of photosynthesizing single-cell organisms stretching galaxy to galaxy, producing life, consuming life, and maintaining life throughout eternity. “But,” they would cry—reactionaries and thinking men alike—“there must be a purpose, a Grand Design, some kind of wise and caring Source for the unknowable!” When the truth hit them, many found the notion of a deaf-and-dumb genesis—the concept of life-without-meaning, and therefore life itself—to be untenable. The ensuing surge in suicides may have done the world a backhanded favor, if only in reducing the gene pool’s incidence of low self-esteem. To these, our hysterical forebears, we can only tip our collective hat and say . . . Good Riddance. Upon its entropic death throes, that Cell bridging the Canis Major Dwarf and Ursa Minor Dwarf galaxies produced a continuum cataclysm, a thrust deep enough to rock our own Solar System in ways formerly inexplicable. 21st Century researchers, by then aware of Cells, still clung stubbornly to this concept of universal sentience. They therefore first interpreted the spatial kick as a kind of plea for healing. We now know that these Cell reactions are actually more akin to kneejerk plaints. Nevertheless, Cells are organic, and this particular Cell’s instinctual attempt to reach a healing source had very real consequences in the local group—the resultant shockwave disrupted timespace, creating slips in the faultline and causing anomalies on our own Earth and elsewhere; anomalies that instantly self-adjusted with bizarre and unpredictable consequences.

Snapdragon The first jolt was the seam-breaker, a major rocker—the aftershocks were comparative trifles, producing erratic continuum shifts of mere hours and miles. We have pinpointed and cross-referenced that phenomenon. According to our most precise instruments, the initial wave occurred just outside of Jerusalem in the year 26. And he hit the garbage face-first; dazed, disoriented, naked, emaciated. The piled material was so unfamiliar he froze on impact: black plastic trash bags, cardboard boxes, aluminum cans. Rather than dirt or desert sand, the ground was some sort of continuous gray brickwork, smooth and cool. Just beyond, a low continuous brick ledge led onto rough asphalt. He dragged himself into a sitting slump, recoiling at the heat and blare of traffic. Rundown buildings, rusted-out vehicles, dirty raggedy people sagging in doorways . . . and a dark woman running up in clopping footwear, shamefully dressed, her face painted, her hair high. Behind her a similarly dressed woman, perhaps a friend, shouting: “Maggie! You get your ass back here, girl!” But the first woman ran right up to him and said breathlessly, in a tongue that made no sense at all: “C’m’on sugar: you can’t just lay here with your privates public!” She giggled musically, her breath fruity sweet. After a quick search she came up with a torn and stained blanket, draped it around him, pulled his arms out from under. She continued rooting, talking incessantly, at last producing a sprung bungee cord with enough play to serve as a belt. Thus covered, he reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. The woman trembled. When she looked back up her face was a fluid mask of remorse, the expression falling, caving, melting, tears pouring down her cheeks. He rose and the woman simply dissolved at his feet, kissing the toes and ankles, weeping uncontrollably. “Talitha cum!” he commanded, and turned at a shout and bustle. The other woman stormed over, yelling at the top of her voice: “Get away from her, you freak! I’ll call a cop. I’ll mace your nasty ass in a hurry.” She kneeled to embrace the weeping woman. “You all right, honey? What did he do to you?” She looked up with venom in her eyes, but the man was already walking along the curb, staring in amazement at the cars and stoplights. The ground rocked, hard, as though the planet had momentarily ceased its spin. He raised himself on one elbow and blinked at his surroundings. He was sprawled on a high cement stairway, just outside a stately steel-and-glass building alongside a much cleaner street. Other folks were frozen in similar postures of dismay, on their bellies and knees. Their expressions were identical: startled but unsurprised. A man tumbled down the steps and helped him to his feet. “Are you okay, sir? Wow! That had to be it: that was the Big One for sure.” It was a surreal scene: cars, their motion sensors triggered, honking repetitively nearby and in the tapering distance, like calling prairie dogs. Drivers hunching outside paused vehicles, men and women spilling from buildings. The man looked him up and down. “Do you need medical attention, sir? Can you walk?” He blinked. “Como esta? Por favor?” His fingers did a pantomime of a body walking. The answering stare was intense, but of no assistance. The blanketed figure opened his mouth and spoke something that struck the helpful man as merely intelligent gibberish. He shook his head and said with exaggerated clarity. “I am Mister Edmond. Mister John Edmond.” The man nodded, intensifying his stare. At last Edmond ran an arm around his waist and sat him back down. He flipped open his cell, 2

Snapdragon thumbed a number, and said excitedly, “Larry? John here. Yes, of course I felt it. Who didn’t. Look, I’ve got some guy here in shock. He’s not mute; he just spoke a dialect I’ve never heard, but definitely Semitic. Not modern at all. No, I can’t leave him here; there’ll be aftersho—” And on that abbreviated syllable a tremor ran right up his back, shaking out the glass left standing in the bank. “Did you feel that? Okay, then. Meet you at Giggles? Good enough. Bring something this poor fellow can wear; he’s just draped in an old blanket. Get going before traffic freaks. Right.” Edmond led him down the steps, smiling vigorously. “Don’t be frightened. I’m going to introduce you to Professor Baling. He’s a linguist at Pepperdine. Practically famous. We’ll get you nice and fixed up, and once we’re all in communication mode we can learn who you are and maybe get you a job or something.” There was another rumble, long and low. Edmond’s brows furrowed and he tugged gently, but with urgency. “Please trust me, sir. This is your lucky day.” The lunchtime stampede: Giggles was packed, shire to shire. The man from Nazareth now sported lime-and-purple jogging sweats, ten sizes too large, a gift from the kindly and portly Professor Darian Baling, precariously seated directly opposite and to Edmond’s left. The Giggles servers whizzed back and forth on their Star Wars roller skates with the strafing turret sparkle-hubs, wearing enormous Harry Potter eyeglasses, Princess Leia frightwigs, and their signature JollyWally Grab-a-Jabba fanny packs. At last a server responded to Edmond’s wave. She screeched to a halt at their table, the brakes on her skates emitting flurries of canned Gremlins giggles. “Hail thee, fellow Jedis, and may the farce be with you.” “Muggles are morons,” Edmond responded. “We’re ready for menus.” “Energizing!” She whipped two out of her jetpack. “Right Chewbacca at ya!” “I think maybe I’ll go for a Filet O’ Flipper, or else just a Silly Salad with Chuckling Chicken, or maybe, um . . .” “Oh, yoda, yoda, yoda.” “You’re right. I’ll have a Bilbo Burger, hold the Magic Mustard, with a side of Funny Fries and a Shimmy-Shimmy Shake.” “Just coffee,” said the professor. “How about our friend? He can’t have eaten for days.” The server straightened. “Friend? Friend? Where’s Waldo! Where’s Waldo?” Then, appearing to notice the little party’s third member, she moved her twisting face in close, a hollow Keebler countenance of psychotic glee. “And who’s this happy hobbit?” The man from Nazareth recoiled, not sure what to make of it all. Edmond danced his menu side to side, much to their server’s delight. Finally he said, “Let’s go for the Golly Burger with plenty of Gee Whiz, a Jumbo Jelly Sundae, and a Stupid Soda to wash it all down. StuporDooper.” It struck him that the stranger’s table etiquette might be less than punctilious. “And please make sure that cup is spielberg-proof.” Edmond raised his eyes. “You’re not like a vegetarian or anything?” The answering stare was cryptic. “On me,” the professor beamed. Their server yanked an imaginary handle on her forehead, tittered, “Back in a flush!” and zipped away. The professor smiled encouragingly, clasped his hands on the table, and spoke a line or two of what Edmond recognized as simple Hebrew. Their guest narrowed his eyes. The professor tried again, then began branching out. After a few minutes of this Edmond felt superfluous to the proceedings. A temblor rang cutlery in the Giggles kitchen. Edmond’s eyes were naturally drawn to 3

Snapdragon the in-house television monitor, its frame painted to blend seamlessly with the Frodo’s Playground mural over the registers. Ordinarily the broadcast news was enhanced by the Giggles digital FunnyVision program, so that the anchors’ hair and facial features automatically received magnetic treatments of superimposed rainbow wigs and rubber noses, but today’s news was so important, and so sobering, that the man-oh-manager felt compelled to temporarily squelch the FunnyVision program altogether. Employees all stopped what they were doing, their painted smiles and hobbit hoods surreal in contrast to the sudden mood shift. Film clips moved by almost too rapidly for the mind to assimilate: a Turkish neighborhood buried in rubble, thousands of Pakistani survivors marching out of a smoking valley, Japanese tsunami victims dragging their belongings down a ragged coastline, aerial films of a Detroit neighborhood consumed by flames. But the real shocker came from a sweating seismologist at a lonely podium, surrounded by microphones, lights, and anxious faces, speaking in a monotone so contrived it inadvertently raised blood pressure all over the nation. No foci could be located, this man stated; no hypocenters, no epicenters. It appeared that the planet Earth itself was in “sporadic seismic arrest.” He had absolutely no idea what those data meant, knew of no protocol for dealing with such a profound phenomenon, and hadn’t the foggiest notion of what steps to take. He knew only one thing for sure, and that was that there was absolutely no cause for alarm. Edmond dazedly turned back to the table. The very act of avoiding the set somehow made it all a dream; there was a palpable reality in these known faces, something down to earth, something almost comical. Baling seemed to feel Edmond’s eyes on him. He lowered his head and studied his clasped hands. “Well?” The professor looked up, grinning wryly. “The dialect is ancient Aramaic, and it’s flawless. Says he grew up in Galilee as a carpenter. Says he was tried in the court of Pontius Pilate. Says the last thing he remembers was being prepared for crucifixion at Golgotha outside of Jerusalem. Says he felt like his whole body exploded, and that the next thing he knew he was sprawled out in the garbage—by his description the eastside ghetto over on Fourth and Military.” “O-o-o . . . kay.” Edmond wiped the tabletop. “Look, Larry, I’m really sorry I rousted you for nothing. I don’t know what it is—I just had the feeling there was something more than meets the eye to this guy.” The professor leaned back. “Oh, you may have been right.” Baling clasped his hands behind his head and spoke ruminatively. “It takes a great deal of dedication to create and maintain a messianic delusion at this level. I’ll give him credit: he certainly does his homework. He doesn’t believe he’s Jesus; he’s way beyond that. He knows it—in a matter-of-fact way that goes without ego gratification or any self-interest whatsoever. He’s lived the illusion so long it’s modified his personality. He’s Jesus, John; so get used to it. He certainly has.” Their server wobbled back to the table, obviously subdued by the news, her Gandalf’s staff limp as a sobered lover. She laid out the gaily patterned platters like a woman packing her final bags. Her Darth Vadar cloak appeared to have lost its gleam, her Spock ears looked wilted and pale. Still she gave it her professional best, duly tapping her light saber on the tabletop while performing a truly Tolkienian full-fairy curtsy. But somehow it just wasn’t the same. She looked at the professor and her particolored face scrunched and drained. “I’m—I’m just so, so sorry,” she tried. “My children, my children . . .” 4

Snapdragon The professor nodded in amazement and the server slowly rolled away, the blinking Harry Potter broom between her legs mournfully swishing side to side across Cap’n Sparrow’s Deck. The man from Nazareth grimly studied his platter. The aroma made his nostrils flare and cinch. He stared uncertainly at his benefactor. And the whole place seemed to lift off its foundations. He dragged himself to his feet, in a dank alley surrounded by looming, broken-down tenements. Two blocks away a department store’s roof collapsed before his eyes, even as a pair of helicopters wheeled in a stark wedge of moonlight between leaning buildings. There were fires leaping here and there, and the startling sounds of the occasional smashed display window. He exited the alley with all senses perked, his eyes hungrily absorbing every new sight, each sudden motion. This side of the street carried the ghosts of the old neighborhood: closed shops and overgrown walkways, abandoned cars and neglected yards. He noted a small group of men loitering on a street corner. Their eyes narrowed and flashed as he passed; after a minute the group began to follow as one. Presently he came across dozens of kneeling citizens outside a sealed antique building, fighting to catch the words of a gesticulating man in an Armani suit. The man from Nazareth had just halted to observe when a disturbance behind almost knocked him off his feet. “Hey,” the offender said angrily, but with more impatience than hostility, “you wanna make a little room here, pal? Jeez.” This person then fell to his knees and beatifically raised his eyes. He continued down the walk, pausing to stare in looted buildings. A dozen yards ahead, a group of four men stepped out of the shadows between shops. One whistled, and there came an answering whistle to the paused man’s rear. He turned to see three more striding up purposefully. Their footfalls were echoed; he turned back to find himself trapped. There was no preamble; the post-riot condition obviated any feeling-out process—the fists clubbed his head, the shoes found his stomach, and he could only lay curled up on the sidewalk while the hands ran through his jogging sweats. But a penniless, helpless victim is just a diversion on a ripe swollen night in a city caught with its pants down; the punks got in their kicks and split. He had to drag himself into a doorway. When he got his wind back he scraped to his feet and moved along, using the looted storefronts for support. In one display he observed a neglected, stillconnected television running the disaster buffet; the orphans, the wasted homes, the collapsed freeway overpasses. But it didn’t strike home, didn’t feel real—the technology was way too strange. A groan just off the walk got his attention. He limped over and discovered an old man trapped in an avalanche of fallen bricks. The mortal nature of the injuries was unmistakable; he reached down to place a palm on the forehead. A very bright light struck him, followed by the urgent sound of rubber meeting curb. An amplified voice said: “You in the sweats! Remain where you are! Keep your hands where I can see them!” Two officers, a man and a woman, stepped around the car with flashlights aimed. The driver pulled out and leveled his gun, holding forth his other hand to indicate complete compliance. The woman, keeping her distance, crept by and crouched near the pile of bricks. “Talk to me,” said the man. “Unconscious,” the woman responded. She righted herself, muttered, “This one’s dead,” and swung her gun around. The male officer immediately threw him into a combination wrist-and headlock, slammed his face up against the car’s hood. “Relax completely,” he grated. “I want you to go absolutely limp. Do we understand each other?” He leaned hard. “Are you holding anything that can hurt me?” The woman patted him down thoroughly. “Nothing obvious. Pits and crotch clean.” 5

Snapdragon “I.D.?” “Nothing.” “Okay.” He kicked out the legs and pulled both wrists behind the back. The female snapped on cuffs. “I,” the driver grunted in his ear, “don’t know if you’re aware this city’s been placed under martial law. I further don’t know if you’re aware of the implications. Looters can be shot on sight. Muggers—creeps who waylay old men under cover of chaos—can receive some of the harshest sentences on the books. When you’re rotting in that cell, with only your conscience for company, I just want you to thank God it was us who got to you before some decent armed citizen.” The woman ran her flashlight’s beam back and forth across his eyes. “What’s your name, sir?” He blinked. She shook her head. “Unresponsive.” “So be it.” The woman got the door. The driver pulled the cuffs up to the shoulder blades and shoved down hard on the crown. “Watch your head,” he said. You had to squeeze and slither to reach the desk, though there was far less processing than usual for that time of night. Fact is, the place was one crisis from anarchy: just too many officers coming and going to make sense of it all. Detectives, Fire, National Guard, even Coast Guard and Parking had occupied center stage at one time or other. And each successive temblor critically wracked the nerves of these men and women, the very men and women trained to hang onto their cool under the direst of circumstances. This was bigger than law enforcement, bigger than crowd control, bigger than major disaster. The families of these officers were in some instances unaccounted for, their homes and valuables left naked to the mob, and there wasn’t a damned thing they could do about it. And still the reports came streaming in; over the radio, over the television, over the Internet. The earth was breaking up around them, brimstone was spewing high. The sky was falling, and there wasn’t a damned thing they could do about it. The desk sergeant was in no mood to argue. “He’ll have to go straight to Old County. We can’t spare placement in this station. If you can get his prints, fine, but I can’t guarantee a file. A phone call is out of the question.” He turned to glare at the prisoner, his eyes all but bursting in his skull. The pencil gripped between his hands was bent to the breaking point. “You are hereby waiving your rights to counsel, at least temporarily. This city is in a state of martial law. We can guarantee your protection, but that’s about all. If you have family and friends worried about you, well, they’ll just have to sweat and fret like the rest of us. You have no identification, and according to these arresting officers are entirely uncooperative.” The room trembled ever so slightly and the pencil snapped. “For now you are going to be held in protective custody, Old County Jail, Downtown. Any cell we can spare. A public defender will be in contact with you at the earliest opportunity.” Another tremor ran through the station. This time the sergeant closed his eyes and controlled his breathing. After a minute he whispered, “I sincerely suggest you be compliant, and take care to not make any enemies.” The quake first slammed them against the rail, then right up against the independent cells. The escorting officer was sweating heavily as he pulled the prisoner out of reach of scrabbling hands. He hollered back at the angry and frightened men in their orange County jumps, but his every word only 6

Snapdragon served to rile them further. He released a bicep and waved the free hand. The module commander, watching closely, triggered a siren. The prisoners went nuts. The escorting officer, grimacing, waved the arm again to signal a stop. The siren wound down and the individual voices became evident: pleas for news, pleas for protection, pleas for transfer. The deeper they moved, the deeper became the passion, the anger, the horror-stench of trapped men who know they’re about to die. There came a jolt so fierce it almost knocked the officer off his feet. The prisoners wailed and screamed. The last available cell was right near the end. Directly across stood a giant of a man; black, broad, and intense, the only caged animal not prepared to howl. He just watched, his eyes glinting and his mouth on the verge of a smile. The officer waved his arm again. A harsh buzz, and the cell door rumbled open. The officer nudged him inside and waved. The door shut. “Move your back up against the door so I can get the cuffs.” The man from Nazareth stared ahead uncertainly. The officer reached in and dragged him back, held him firmly as he worked the key. The prisoner turned. Sweat was pouring off the officer’s face. “I know you can hear me.” He rolled his eyes. “I know you can hear what’s going on around us. Now I want you to sit on your cot and face the wall. Do not allow the prisoner behind me to provoke you. Sleep, do yoga, meditate: whatever. This will all work out somehow. I . . . I have a family to find.” He stumbled back down the walk, and the man from Nazareth found himself eye to eye with the big man across the way. “Hello, bitch.” A tremor shook the module and the prisoners cursed, screamed, bashed their cell bars with anything that would rattle nerves. “Seeing as you’re the last person I’m going to see alive, I feel it’s beholden on me to make my confession, if that’s all right with you.” The man from Nazareth stared silently and the big man smiled. “Just what I was hoping for: a good listener.” A crack raced across the wall behind him. “I’ve always been a God-fearing man.” He raised his eyes. “Do you believe in God, bitch?” He wagged his head regretfully. “I thought not. You know, God came to see me, right in this very cell. And do you know what He told me? He told me a snitch would come and test me, and that that snitch would be an agent of the Devil. And He said if I really meant to sit at His Right Hand I had to pass that test. I had to slay that agent.” He spread his hands. “So there it is. Not much of a confession, you say? Well, you’re right. My hands are cleaner than yours.” He vigorously rubbed his palms, meaningfully clenched the fingers. “For now.” A rumble rose from the old building’s bowels. Bits of ceiling fell around them both. “Agent, meet agent.” The man from Nazareth turned and stared at his cell, wondered at the stainless steel toilet and sink, made the mental leap to indoor plumbing. In a heartbeat the module’s east wall had collapsed. Excitement replaced fear in the air. There was a scream from the guardhouse and one by one the cell doors buzzed open. The man from Nazareth turned at the sound, found himself staring from one wide-open cell into another. The big man spread his arms and beamed. “Voila.” A shotgun blast and emergency siren’s howl. Prisoners came stampeding back into the module, snapping at one another like dogs. “Snitch!” the big man called. “Snitch in the hall!” Within seconds the cell was blocked by furious prisoners. “Save some for me,” the big man said. With howls of excitement the animals in orange jumpsuits came down on the man from Nazareth, beating him with fists and feet, with elbows and knees, with any loose objects they could find. Finally he was dragged to the cell bars and secured at the wrists, ankles, and throat by bloody starched County towels. He sagged there, head fallen and knees crimped, an absolutely broken man. The prisoners filed out and huddled against the rail, grinning and high-fiving. “Leave us,” the big man said quietly. 7

Snapdragon “There is important work to be done.” When the mob had moved away he turned back and lovingly removed from his butt-crack a shiv filed out of a toothbrush. He pressed his big self up against the suspended man, kissed him on the fractured skull and bloody mouth. He dropped back his head. Then, in an act of slow-motion ecstasy, he shoved in the shiv inch by inch, his moans echoing the captive’s. Now the wide black face came in until the lips were just grazing the prisoner’s ear. The voice was low, almost sultry, the breath a hot miasmic pool: “Any last words, snitch?” The bloody head fell, chin rolling against the chest at an awkward angle. “Eloi, Eloi,” came the glottal whisper, “lema sabachtani . . .” The big man cocked his head quizzically, his expression rolling round to one of pouting indifference. “Cat got your tongue? Aww, that’s too bad.” He snorted to the bowel and hawked one right in the eyes, ran back to the gate and stood there holding it like an eager chauffer. A broad smile cut his face in two. “Don’t wait up for me, bitch. I’m going to Disneyland!” This is as far as our instruments will trace in this matter, so many hundreds of years ago. The Cell was revitalized, the tremors quelled. Of the man from Nazareth, we have only speculation. All indications are that the streetwalker, Marilyn “Maggie” Deliano, through persistent and selfless entreaty, was able to procure sums sufficient to have the body interred in a tiny mausoleum outside the city, and that she was persuasive enough to found him a cult following. This following, eventually numbering in the tens of thousands, was permitted daily services until a freak after-effect of the Cell’s initial paroxysm caused the cemetery’s landfill to shift, resulting in countless sinkholes, collapsed edifices, and sunken statuary. Bodies were exhumed for purposes of relocation, but officials were dismayed to find the man from Nazareth’s coffin barren, although there is nil evidence of tampering. As no body existed for the sake of identification, the empty coffin was shipped, at substantial cost to the cult followers, to the man’s original homeland, where it is rumored to have been weighted and submerged in a little desert sea. With no physical traces remaining, and only unsubstantiated eyewitness reports, it is deemed meet that we seek no further vestigial evidence, and consider this record sealed.

8

The Group Hammer The Outs Solomon History Lesson Madame Rat Visions The Honeycomb Caverns Evolution The Possle Mama Signature Closure

“Now us, we’s what’s knowed as butchers.” —Micah

Chapter One The Group Picture a man on a brightly lit catwalk. He’ll be a black man, around sixty, dressed in ceremonial robes of blinding gold. In the background you’ll see a forest of upturned faces, a frozen pyrotechnic flare, and a full moon hanging fatly in a crystalline sky. Now pretend it’s a real-time image. See that flare get blown to shrapnel, watch the crowd rear back and roar: “Thirteen . . . twelve . . .” Zoom out, in your head. Imagine a couple of screwballs, on a dock twenty feet below that catwalk, hilariously arguing physics, mob mentality, and plague stats, the way you and I would go on and on about faceball scores, chickie chambers, and a good old bare-knuckle carrier-whooping. “. . . eleven . . .” Grab a breath and get ready. Because there’s something in the air, man. There’s something about the next number that obliges you to holler in sync, as if its place in the sequence holds a magical significance for anyone who can count. “. . . Ten . . .” And you’re in! Throw back your virtual head. “. . . nine . . .” There’s that sweet party moon, with her winking corona of satellites— “. . . eight . . .” 1

The Group —catching and bending the sun, reflecting it— “. . . seven . . .” —onto a thousand lunar mirrors— “. . . six . . .” —perfectly spaced, servo-aligned— “. . . five . . .” —to spell out our holiday message. “. . . four . . .” And there it is: written bright-on-white— “. . . three . . .” —and right on time. So shout it out! “. . . two . . .” Let go, pal! Howl like a lunatic. “. . . one!”

No, damn it, scream it:

2

The Group

“And that,” said Abel, “was that.” He snapped his fingers. “Less than that. An instant, the wink of an eye, and . . . gone! Once again the crowd’s immortalized a moment that exists solely as a symbol of its own pinwheeling mortality. Why can’t we dedicate a day to something that mellows with age, eh, Doctor?” He rammed the psychoanalyst into the crowd, and someone unseen rammed him right back. The return impact bounced Abel off the throng’s opposing flank, incidentally knocking Izzy back on track. In this manner they crossed the dock like a wobbly old wheel. Every party has its bullies. The one who came after Abel was no drunker than the rest, just uglier. He shoved Izzy so hard the doctor shot through the press of flesh and was doubled at the east rail. “You push this little freak on me again and I’ll kill you. Do we understand each other, old man?” A second later he was gone, swept up in the jostling promenade. Abel called after him, “I’ll push the little freak on anyone I want!” and carefully stepped around the strolling families and hooting rowdies, muttering, “and I’m not yet fifty.” A few rubbernecks at the rail were slow to part. “Air,” Abel explained. “Just a little room, please. He’ll be 3

The Group fine.” Now a flurry of rockets crisscrossed the night sky, momentarily lighting the Burghs a ghastly white-and-purple. Izzy raised his streaming eyes. Not two miles away lay the Colony, denuded on the surface, but peopled below by a race hidden for so many generations it was recognizable only in folk legends and bedtime horror stories. “Hullo, megalopolis!” he bawled. Every drunk within earshot cheered, urging him to complete the old salutation. Izzy inhaled until his eyes were popping. “And burn in hell, you stupid plague Colony!” Fists were raised, empties hurled, throats screamed raw. Izzy rocked back around, his jaw dropping at the flash of gold. “Speak of burning. What in the who is that?” The man on the catwalk looked like he didn’t know which way to spit. Fireworks were going up all over the place, but he didn’t raise his eyes. Everybody else went nuts. “Okay. That’s our guy.” Abel waved his arms, showing five fingers on one hand and two on the other. Security at Gate 7 immediately began ushering patrons to adjacent gates. There were garbled protests and a few shouted threats. Abel watched impassively before turning to study the black-and-gold gargoyle. “Lost in a crowd. Sad, really. The party’s just starting, and there he stands; without a friend or a clue.” “Surfeit of study,” Izzy gasped. “Now you hold steady! Don’t you . . . barrass me.” Head of Security rolled his forearms one over the other. “We’re on,” Abel said. “Wipe your chin.” He looked up at the catwalk and a broad smile cut his face in two. “Moses! Moses Amantu!” Cupping his hands round his mouth, he called over the crowd, “Professor!” and lustily climbed the gangplank. Abel swung round the gatepost and approached the startled historian like an old friend, his hand extended warmly. Amantu’s head jerked back a notch for each step advanced. When the two were face to face, Abel panted happily, “My name’s Abel Joshua Lee, Professor, but my pals just call me Josh. I also go by ‘AJ’. We’re from Titus Mack.” He pointed at his partner, now inching up the gaily adorned gangplank. “That’s Israel Weaver there, psychoanalyst extraordinaire and my best damned friend on the planet.” As if reading Abel’s lips, Izzy gave a cheerful wave-back, then jumped and laughed at an abruptly-launched Screamer behind him. Clinging to the rail, he renewed his laborious climb, bending forward and backward like a punching clown. “Ti—Titus, that is—said you’d be expecting us. He might have just mentioned us as the other two members of a little frat he founded, known colloquially around the Burghs as the ‘Group.’ Kind of makes us sound both standoffish and regular at the same time, don’t you think? Anyways, I’m really amazed to meet you, sir.” He thrust his hand forward insistently. Amantu considered the palm as though it were a rotting lab specimen. “And to.” The arm dropped. In the awkward pause a flash of magenta blew into a zillion falling stars. “Well!” Abel’s grin was killing him. “My nephew’s got a big hand in particle mapping. He’s cleared us with the Director on down.” He snapped his fingers like castanets. “One View, all fired up and ready to go! So let’s not dally. We can cruise along in comfort and with dignity. Let the masses have their hoot.” Amantu looked away from the rides, away from the merrymakers, away from all things insufferably pedestrian. “These experimental amusements. I do not approve. They are dangerous, outrageously overpriced displays. I expected a cab.” “On this, of all days? No, no, no, Professor. You must be our guest. And the bill’s on Ti. He’d have it no other way.” The black head reared. “Titus Mack demanded we ride one of these things?” 4

The Group “Well,” Abel laughed, “of course he didn’t specify any particular conveyance. I mean, he spends so much time cooped up in that remote old observatory of his I doubt he’s ever even seen a View. Look, all I know is, I get a buzz only yesterday. Ti wants to show me a discovery he’s been keeping under wraps, and he’s fit to bust. Haven’t seen the man in a blue moon. ‘Bring Izzy,’ he says, ‘and do me a favor. I’ve put out a special invite to Professor Moses Amantu of Burghsbridge, and hang me if he didn’t accept. You guys hook up with him halfway and show him along.’ And so of course I was excited, and reserved us a ride. Moses Matthew Amantu! Mister Up The System himself.” “And what,” Amantu asked icily, “would a waveman want with an historian?” Abel blew out his cheeks. “It’s like I told you, sir. We’re just here to show you along. He’s got a surprise for us. And, if I know Ti, it’s sure to be a good one.” Amantu’s crosshairs swerved onto Doctor Weaver, now feeling his way around the gatepost. The highly-cited psychoanalyst turned out to be a balding, portly little sot with the pout of a spoiled child. Amantu made no attempt to hide his disappointment. When all three were at arm’s-length, Izzy raised his eyes and winked blearily. “Happy You Near, ’Fessor! What say you we all. Tickle old tonsil?” Amantu looked away. “Thank you, no. I do not imbibe.” “For Cry sake, man!” Izzy’s head bobbled round to Abel. “Never?” The hard eyes slid back. “Not ever!” Faces in the crowd turned. Nostrils were flaring; a fight was in the air. Amantu’s voice cut through the din like a buggywhip. “I do not disdain celebration, sir. Nevertheless, I feel no urge to run cartwheeling through a vomitorium simply because my calendar needs replacing. In public, Doctor Weaver, it is mature behavior that separates professional men from the mob. Do you not agree?” Izzy froze as though he’d been slapped. A half-grin raised one side of his face and passed. “What you say I—” Abel squeezed right in. “Perhaps we’re getting off on the wrong foot here, fellows. Please accept my apologies, Professor. I so wanted to meet you congenially, and maybe absorb your brilliant theories on cultural recall firsthand. I’m certain Titus’ll be fascinated.” He very gently took Amantu’s elbow and guided him around the gatepost. The professor bent a kinder ear. “Oh? Mack is familiar with my research?” They picked their way down. “Absolutely familiar. The Group has its own theories on suppressed historical data, but this work you’re pursuing—wherein the brain retains, actually hard-wires memory over generations— well, that’s the kind of stuff that gets a man in trouble. And, speaking for the Group, it’s also the kind of passionate research that makes a man admired.” “Yes.” Izzy and Abel descended behind Amantu, who was parting the climbing file by presence alone. “And how is it that my work has become so public?” They spilled out onto the dock. “You know how students talk.” Abel clasped his hands behind his back, affecting a cosmopolitan stroll while the New Year raved around them. “But just a word to the wise about scholarly immunity, Professor. Please have the good sense to know when the Barrier’s notoriously thin skin has been breached. I’d hate to hear you’d been ‘debarked,’ or shot in cold blood, for that matter. Don’t look so skeptical. There are perfectly credible stories of healthy, sane men being labeled as carriers. Sensible men.” He squinted at a magnesium starburst. “Intellectuals.” “Stories,” Amantu mumbled. “Distorted, like everything else, by the popular imagination. 5

The Group Recall volunteers are specifically instructed to ignore plague-related material of an anecdotal nature.” Abel nodded sourly; the professor was hooked. He steered Izzy through the crowd, studying faces all the while, and let Amantu roll on: “Recollection, sir, is fundamental to our survival as a species. Memories of powerful events are therefore retained at the cellular level and passed onto descendants. Distortions do occur over time, but the university’s equipment treats culled statements as outright lies, then uses an inversion program to reconstruct similarities into a cohesive picture. The greatest liar in the world could not construct a system of perfect liars; human beings are far too idiosyncratic. Devices do not have this problem.” “Do tell.” The professor halted. “Pardon me?” Abel smacked his signet on the turnstile at Gate 7. The faceplate lighted, but the wheel remained locked while four softly glowing columns rose out of the deck beyond. At their apices these shafts developed horizontal limbs that extended until all four columns were linked by a misty cylindrical rail. The faceplate went dark and the wheel unlocked. Abel backpedaled through the turnstile. “I submit, Professor, that your conveniently receptive students are in fact carriers—and it bothers the hell out of me to have to put it so bluntly. They belong in the Colony. At least under quarantine they won’t run the risk of being shot outright. Cultural recall, indeed.” His fists did a spongy drum roll on the rail. “But perhaps you’re doing a backhanded service. Weed out these individuals, sir, and report them immediately. Secure that university.” He rolled his neck and hunched his shoulders. “Secure all universities. Anyway, let’s cud some. How’s about perco and a snack? Izzy, order what you like. But for Christ’s sake let’s talk about something else. Anything else.” He flipped his hand, placing the signet and rail in direct contact. “Table for three. Destination, the Outskirts. Titus Mack’s.” Abel glowered over the menu. “Eight miles an hour. Transit time, forty minutes. What was I thinking? Well, we’d might as well get comfortable. Everybody move up to the rail. It says here the sensors need sixty-four square feet of clearance.” They stepped back. The map trembled with a sickly radiation. Five new columns broke the surface; one at each corner, one at dead-center. The corner posts ceased climbing at two feet, three developing foot-square seats out of their caps, the fourth broadening to form a fuzzy drink stand. The central column continued an additional foot. A horizontal plane grew out of its cap, producing a perfectly square tabletop. Amantu tucked in his robes. “Delightful.” The View’s deck commenced a gratingly slow extension from the dock, its eerily pulsing tip marking time with a tracking pulse miles away. Though the Group were soon rising gently over the Burghs, there was no real sense of being airborne; rather, cruising on a View gave one the feeling of riding uphill in a rickety amusement park train. Still, there were brief moments of an exhilarating weightlessness, every hundred yards or so, when the deck was electromagnetically nudged by a massive ground arbor. But even that exhilaration soon gave way to a kind of rhythmic nausea. Dozens of these bile-green arcs were rising every which way over the city, most conveying parties of drunken screaming celebrants. Rented space above Views erupted with holographic pyrotechnics, with laser-driven pixel images, with briefly reflective messages of a recklesslypublicized personal nature. And now, swimming along in that wide popping sky, the good old moon was back to her familiar unadorned self. Abel rapped his signet on the table. “Order.” 6

The Group A life-sized projection appeared; half mannequin template, half pretty brown-eyed waitress. The template-side scrolled through a spectrum of sample types before adopting a mirror copy. Pen poised eagerly over pad, the recovered Pj gave Abel its full attention. “Blonde,” he said. “With pigtails. Blue eyes. Native blouse.” These details applied immediately. The projection’s posture and expression remained in type. “Perco all around, please. Blue Mountain in china. You may leave the pot.” Izzy rolled back his head. “None of your blasted greasy brown beans for me, Josh! I mean it, man! Your embarrass us. We’re aluminaries, damn it. So let’s . . . get aluminated!” “Make that a Lazy Sun,” Abel drawled, “for our glowing friend. And a plate of sweet cakes. Something luminous.” The Pj made as though deleting a line. Izzy threw an exaggerated wink at Abel, reached around cagily, and slapped the likeness on its apparent bottom. “Okay, ‘Sweet Cakes’?” His hand, passing through, skipped across the tabletop like a stone on a pool. Izzy pitched off his seat and landed on the fat of his back. His tough little skull bounced hard on the deck. The waitress appraised him uncertainly, then took in the table in general. A second later she broke into a mosaic of interlocking facial samples, and was immediately replaced by the image of a towering policeman, its entire head locked up in a shiny black helmet and visor. The telepresence stared hard at Izzy, ignoring the rest of the Group. “Signate?” Abel sat right up. “That would be me, officer. Um, Happy New Year. I’m responsible for Doctor Weaver here. He’ll be fine.” The Tp only intensified its study. In a minute it was replaced by an equally-grim apparition in medical smock. A ruby beam lanced out of this image’s mock ophthalmoscope. For a wild instant Izzy’s sprawled body became a living anatomy chart; every nerve, every blood vessel, every bit of cartilage beautifully delineated. The beam dimmed and the medical Tp vanished. The cop reappeared in its place. “Signate?” “Here.” “This individual requires monitoring. Be wary of further impairment.” “Done.” The Tp was displaced. Abel bounced his forehead repeatedly on the table. “Eminent,” Amantu muttered. Izzy had just found his stool when the waitress reappeared, a misty chest in her hands. Abel touched his signet to the lid’s imprimatur. The chest waxed solid and the waitress dissolved. Pressing the lid released a thin tail of steam and the bland aroma of instant coffee. The cups were disappointing little inverse cones of disposable lined plastic, but Abel laid them out neatly, and made a show of savoring the odor as he poured. The cakes, flat dry cookies that had shattered with the release of pressure, boasted the Escalateur Company’s arcing View logo in green sugar sprinkles. Izzy gloomily unzipped his pouch and poured the vodka-rum mixture into one of the neat little plastic glasses. The accompanying pouch of freeze-dried ingredients revealed lemon-flavored seltzer powder, a packet of chipped honey, and a petrified cherry with a hollow sulfur-tipped stem. These items he poured into the liquid, then lit the floating cherry’s stem with the included striker. The brandied drupe flared and sizzled, causing the bubbles of bicarbonate to glimmer and the honey to glow. He studied the sorry concoction for a few seconds before knocking it back. “We three grown men,” Amantu said through his teeth, “have just been admonished, in the space of only five minutes, by no less than two officials!” 7

The Group Izzy hurled down his glass. “To hell with ’em!” The plastic tumbler didn’t crack, but sprang back feebly. “To hell . . . to hell alla them!” He turned on the professor. “And to hell with—” “Doctor Weaver!” Izzy glared one to the other. He tore the flask from his vest’s pocket. The professor pushed his coffee aside. “Perhaps our confluence was ill-advised.” “Bladderdash!” Izzy wobbled to his feet. “The time is right!” “Izzy!” Corrected, Izzy cried, “The time izzy right!” He then appealed, at the top of his voice, to anyone within earshot: “Time to celebrate!” Cheers rang from proximate Views. “See?” Izzy screamed, losing his train of thought. “It’s time! It’s time! It’s time, time, time! It’s time we celebrate; it’s time!” He snarled down at that jet-black, unflinching face. “Why izzy every jackman on planet understand but you?” “You celebrate,” Amantu seethed, “and you celebrate.” He slapped his palms on the table. “Doctor Weaver, why an individual of your stature should celebrate, rather than cerebrate, eludes me completely.” Izzy smacked down his flask. “Who statue?” Abel rose quickly. “Gentlemen. Let’s remember that these festivities are not meant to commemorate time’s passage in a literal sense. The mood is symbolic.” Amantu dabbed at his forehead. “The mood is imbecilic.” “Simbasicle? Why, you son of a . . . I’ve—I’ve shaken all I can!” Izzy tried to achieve a pugilistic pose while simultaneously rolling up his sleeves, rocking back and forth as he did so. “Is human nature celebrate!” Tiny furnaces appeared in Amantu’s eyes. “Human nature, certainly. However, this annual excuse for bacchanalia does little to aggrandize that gap between homo sapiens and the so-called ‘lower animals.’ Midnight on January First of the year 1347 was chronometrically destined, and, technically speaking, appeared and concluded instantaneously. The interval separating this year and last was less than a heartbeat, and I see no appreciable change in the world. Yet you celebrate still!” Izzy managed to get it all out in one breath. “Then I celebrate that heartbeat, damn you, right here and now, and no less fervently!” “Gentlemen! We’ve been all over this.” Izzy wobbled round. “No, Abel, you bend over for it!” Amantu very slowly made his feet. “You damn me?” He felt his blood rising with him. “You . . . damn . . . me? Why, if you were not such a self-deluded little—” The professor was cut short by a cinching in his chest. Lava rolled down his left arm. Amantu knew the feeling well—the shortness of breath, the veil of sweat, the profound sense of morbidity. A voice addressed him from miles away. “Professor?” Abel leaned across the table and peeled up an eyelid. “Doctor Weaver, you’re an ass.” He snatched the flask and shoved it under Amantu’s nose. “Professor, I want you to drink this immediately.” Amantu raised a leaden hand. “No . . . I—” “Drink it!” The professor swallowed weakly. “Another.” Abel pushed the flask’s mouth between Amantu’s lips so that brandy rolled over his chin. “I’ve been practicing for close to thirty years, and I know the symptoms of angina when I see them. Now swallow!” Amantu got down another sip. Abel fell back on his stool. “Give him some air.” He placed two fingers on the carotid. “Did you bring any nitro? Like an idiot, I came unprepared 8

The Group for the least predicament.” When Amantu didn’t answer he rapped his signet on the table. “I’m summoning an ambulance.” “No,” Amantu gasped. “Not pernicious. I am . . . I am fine.” Abel couldn’t buy an emergency confirmation, couldn’t shout one up, couldn’t wave one down. He was dangerously close to blowing his own gasket when a canned voice began rotating above the urgently throbbing tabletop—breaking up, falling out, breaking up: signate . . . party of . . . interruption. Party of three . . . please . . . interruption . . . signa . . . signa . . . party of . . . “Now what?” By way of reply a hazy image appeared at his elbow; stuttering with pixels, entering and deleting contours, and finally falsifying three dimensions. The telepresence belonged to a haggard middle-aged street peddler, dressed in rags on top of rags. Affixed to his shredded trench coat were noisemakers, light flashers, and a number of fairly sophisticated pyrotechnic devices. It took him a second to get his bearings. When he saw Amantu’s flashy gold robes his eyes flashed back. “Signate?” “Outrageous!” Abel barked. “How’d you get in here?” “Only a moment!” the Tp begged. “I have all you need, friends, to make your New Year’s fete complete. Things to razzle. Things to dazzle. Things to make your party the envy of all. Or . . . to really rise above the crowd—” He threw open his coat, exposing enough fetish toys to stagger a leash of perverts. “I repeat! How did you get in here!” The man dipped a gnarly hand into an inner pocket. On his palm was an oddly glowing oval box. “Well I’ll—” Izzy marveled. “A pocket scrambler! The man’s got . . . pocket scrambler.” His head tipped back up. “Have you know, good man, that’s an . . . ill eagle.” The peddler eyed him keenly. “And you, sir, will be elated by the range of aqua vitae I have to offer. Cut rate, yes! Cut quality, never!” He displayed tiers of frayed body belts, each containing rows of hand-sewn pockets holding stoppered miniature carafes. The Tp swiveled the goods seductively, watching Izzy’s eyes roll side to side. Abel leaned in. “Out of the question! It’s my party, and I’ll make Group decisions in this matter. There’ll be no contraband on my signet.” “But I’ve—” “No negotiating! Beat it.” The peddler flicked his tongue and hissed like a snake. He raised his arms melodramatically, incidentally revealing a hazy row of vials clipped to a threadbare belt. “You,” Abel said quietly. “That’s Swirl, isn’t it?” The image hissed again. “It’s mine is what it is, pigeon!” Catching himself, he swept a vial filled with heaving blue smoke under Abel’s nose. “Only the best, good sir! Absolutely pure, absolutely clean.” “Absolutely dilute, I’ll wager. Leave it. How do I get around a trace?” The Tp extended a banged-up signet, the only substantial aspect of his attendance. “Not a problem! Straight into my account.” Abel looked into Amantu’s glassy eyes before grudgingly clicking signets. He brought his head up close and said with exaggerated clarity, “Professor Amantu, I’m aware your personal ethic prevents your indulging in certain substances. But I’m addressing your health right now. It’s a medical fact that Swirl is an extremely effective vasodilator. It will quickly relieve even your most 9

The Group distressful symptoms. In limited use it is not only safe, it is highly beneficial. Like most medications, however, it has received a bad name through abuse. I urge you to partake of it medicinally, and with the utmost haste. It will do you a world of good.” Amantu peered through the blear. The men appeared to loom as they looked on, the whites of their eyes glowing a green jaundice from the particle map underfoot. Blue and violet skyrockets branched out behind them, erupting into fiery multicolored blossoms. The Tp sputtered and crackled. “But my mind,” Amantu managed. “Will it not affect me adversely?” “The effects are most agreeable. Consume it now and be done with it—I assure you a completely safe experience, along with a pain-free night thereafter. Understand that, in any case, I will be close by.” Amantu looked uncertainly at the eerily-lit faces. “If it produces relief . . . perhaps it will improve my company.” He regarded the newly-corporeal vial guiltily. “Pardon me.” “Of course.” Abel uncapped the little bottle and slid it over. At the disturbance its smoky contents began wafting from the mouth in a corkscrew motion. The professor drew it to his lips and hesitated. “Sip it,” Abel advised, “just as you would a beverage. Only inhale as you do so.” The men watched curiously as Amantu closed his eyes and tilted the vial back. The blue smoke rushed out and into his lungs. He reopened his eyes. “Pleasant,” he reported. “Refreshingly cool, with a metallic palate.” “No ill effects?” “None as yet.” He thought about it. “As a matter of fact, I am aware of an escalation in pulmonary responsiveness, and of spirit in general.” He closed his left eye. The staring men became a fish-eye portrait on the lens of his right eyeball. The portrait swung smoothly to his left, sewing shut the open eyelids as it rolled. For a while all was darkness. Then, in the exact center of his skull, a vertical slice of light began widening like the crack between a jamb and opening door, rounding out as it progressed. In the midst of this light an upright black line distended correspondingly, but, rather than continuing to fill out uniformly, grew constricted in its center, so that the dark area became a sinuous squiggle with classic female curves. Amantu’s breath quickened. The shape undulated in response. A heavy drum beat opened between his ears, jumping back and forth, back and forth, accompanied by a solo oboe playing an odd melody in a minor key. It took him a few seconds to realize that the drum was actually his pulse, and that the sound of the oboe was coming from the very heart of that wiggly shape. But then a dancing black woman, clad only in satiny gold bangles, was swaying side to side through a white-hot spotlight’s beam, her full lips clamped suggestively round an ebony oboe’s reeds, her bangles falling like leaves at every thrust and shimmy. Amantu gripped the table’s edge and writhed on his seat, his breath catching in his throat. The woman blew a long ascending legato scale in reply, dropped the oboe, and threw out her arms. With her head tossed back and her lips spread wide, she shook and shook until the bangles fell from her belly, her thighs, her bosom, her bottom. The professor tensed and dropped his jaw and, for one crazy second there, was this close to letting go.

10

Chapter Two Hammer Amantu opened his eyes to find the Group staring roguishly. Even the telepresence appeared amused. The professor pushed himself upright, his thoughts still steaming. “A Nyear toast,” said Izzy over his flask, “to Moses Mantu, Burghbridge favor son and now . . . now . . . newst member Group!” Abel nodded. “Hear! Hear!” “And here,” the Tp responded. “Well.” Izzy searched his brandy. “Well . . . nickname. For Group ear, mind you, only. Let see now. Moses. Tough one. Not many great many men share suchlike forename. ‘Mo?’ Uh-uh. Doesn’ ring. How bout ‘Mosey?’ Nah. Too . . . lay back. Are you guy help me nail this or not? We need something . . . meet. Something meet the man’s bearing, meet the man’s aplomb, the man’s—wait, wait! ‘Nail this,’ I said. I tell you, I was on something! Man’s a hammer, is what he is.” He beamed all around. “And so ‘Hammer’ shall be he!” “Bravo!” “And here.” Amantu tried to focus, but wasting emotions, normally reserved for lesser men, were gumming up his intellect. He’d never been given a positive nickname, never been accepted by anything warmer than a panel of starchy deans. That these two fine men, closer than brothers, should hold him as one of their own was inexpressibly moving. He blinked back the first tears since childhood. “You gentlemen will forgive me,” he bubbled, “if I appear to blush.” Abel peered from behind his upright thumb. “Not from where I sit, you don’t.” “Did I lie?” the Tp gloated. “Never cut quality!” “You’re still here?” Abel glared at the extended translucent paw. “Generally speaking, criminals don’t go begging gratuities from their victims.” The telepresence ignored him. “So how’s the old pump, big fella? You’re okay now?” “Odd. I feel lighter, both physically and spiritually.” 11

Hammer “That’ll be the ephedrine.” The peddler’s eyes burned to the side. “Not on your account, signate.” “Go. You’ve made your sale.” The Tp threw open a ragged vest, revealing sewn-in pockets overflowing with miniature rockets and miscellaneous small firearms. “Perhaps a noisemaker or two. Something for the holiday.” “Go!” “Half a minute!” Amantu begged. His vision had never been so keen. “Is that the barrel of an MRA, or do my eyes deceive me?” The hawker raised an apparent eyebrow. “Oh? You like history stuff?” He slid the dully shining weapon from an armpit pocket. “Your eyes, generous sir, would make the sharpest sentry weep with envy. A vintage piece, a real collector’s item.” Abel smacked down his palms and pushed himself to his feet. “That does it! You’ll bring the Barrier, as well as the police. Beat it! That means now!” They stood nose to nose; Abel bristling, the Tp fizzling in and out of focus. “But I must have it!” Amantu panted. “Eight pulses, retractable chamber, magnetic load. Where on earth—” “I don’t give a damn where he got it!” Abel looked the snarling illusion in its sputtering diaphanous eyes. “Get your felonious ass off my View!” The peddler immediately tapped his grungy signet on the gun. The slender tube appeared to firm in his hand. He laid it on the table like a straight flush, his face sizzling with defiance. Amantu picked it up. “I’ll see you fry,” Abel swore. The transparency nodded in acknowledgement. “But—until that glorious day, signate, I’ve got to eat. And I like to eat well.” “Beautiful!” Amantu breathed. Abel whirled. “Professor . . . ‘Hammer.’ Leave it alone, man. Give it back and I’ll dispose of this imaginary little crook headfirst. Understand something: that blue concoction he produced may cause you to make regrettable decisions. Decisions we may all regret. Please, Professor. Think how the Barrier will react if they learn intellectuals are in possession of a military weapon.” “Up for grabs!” the peddler called. “One of a kind! Won’t last forever!” “Well . . .” Amantu tapped his signet on the gun. “As of precisely now, it is exactly—mine!” He and the peddler clicked signets. Abel sat hard. “Be gone, then!” “Losers,” the Tp sneered. “Crybabies with shallow pockets.” At this Izzy rose unsteadily, one pudgy fist poised. “And stay away, blast you! Where’s my liba—you promised—where’s my—” He picked Amantu’s MRA off the tabletop curiously and raised it over his head. The men jumped to their feet. Amantu leaned halfway across the table, Abel threw out his hands. The transparency stepped back. Whoops rang on parallel Views. Someone yelled, “Kick his butt!” and another hurled a flask that bounced harmlessly off Abel’s stool. “Where’s the hell my libation?” Izzy howled. A hail of containers blew onto the Group’s View. He up-thumbed the trigger. “For Christ’s sake, where?” The force of the discharge nearly broke his arm. A white pulse tore skyward, erupted as a bright silver jellyfish, and dissipated in a counterclockwise spiral of glittering platinum. 12

Hammer “Moron!” the Tp screamed, and was gone. Abel swore up and down, pounding his fists on the table while Izzy turned in a slow circle, stunned. Amantu snatched back the weapon. “What in Reason’s name are you doing? This is not a toy!” He was hyperventilating. “Doctor Weaver, I arrived under the impression you were a man of character, not merely a character. In my eyes you have failed, and failed miserably, to live up to even the minimal requirements of a professional man.” “That tears it,” said Abel. Izzy looked from his empty hand to Amantu’s glowering nightmare mask. His brows came together. “Sorry my. My sully my . . .” Comprehension dawned. “Sullied my reputation!” He flicked his fingers disdainfully, as though blowing off a malingering client. “My reputation!” He backpedaled clumsily while pumping his fists. Sensors instantly extended the railing, but it was too late. Izzy’s substantial bottom came down just beyond the mapped lip, so that the furiously recalibrating shelf served only to help flip him into space. He vanished as he’d celebrated, throwing a haymaker at the sky. Abel and Amantu breathlessly watched him bouncing off fleeting splotches of light. “It is my fault,” Amantu offered. “I should not have provoked him. His faculties are incapacitated.” Abel paced the rail, squatting and rising, intuitively employing the scientific method. The data were not promising: stretching View to View, and visible only through the disturbance of its tympanic vibrations, the bowl-shaped safety net was now rimmed by a remapped rail rising to an insurmountable twelve feet. Every sudden movement brought a siren’s howl and accompanying bright beam. “Nonsense. I’m supposed to be monitoring him.” Abel’s face went white. “Damn! I’ll have to summon an emergency breach. Get rid of that weapon, Professor. I don’t care what you do with it— toss it. No! There’s probably a trace already. Hide it. Anywhere.” He twisted a lip. At the tracking field’s depressed hub, the gently bobbing psychoanalyst lay on his back in a web of briefly radiating light pulses. Over a hundred feet below, ground sensors released a storm of bright orange beams. Abel swiped his signet across a length of blinking horizontal rail and said, very distinctly, “Breach.” That portion of the rail dissolved. He clung to the active stubs like a novice parachutist. Izzy, by rolling round and round and side to side, eventually made it to his hands and knees. He clawed ineffectually against the planet’s pull, losing a foot for every two gained. As Amantu took his deepest breath, Swirl seemed to flood into every capillary. “Pardon me.” Decorously leading a golden hem, he swung a leg through the breach and set down his foot as though testing a pool’s temperature. A spray of light met his sole. There was a sensation of resistance. Abel called down, “Hold still, damn you!” Izzy feebly thrust out a hand and rolled. “I said,” Abel screamed, “hold . . . still!” A chant grew on those rides made contiguous by the net. “Hold still! Hold still! Hold still!” Amantu was shaky as a foal. It required near-superhuman focus to concentrate on his object, rather than on the gaping metropolis so far below. The experience was similar to walking on glass, in that the lack of a visible surface produced in the brain an unshakable sense of impending doom, but in another sense it was far worse; here there was not even the comforting feel of solidity. The field, active only where contacted, produced a fleeting, squishy support for the weight of each placed foot, instantly eliminating that support once the weight was removed. The effect was intensely unnatural. Amantu went straight down on all fours. If not for Swirl he’d never have recovered. Amantu scurried down on his hands and knees, 13

Hammer leaving bright vanishing prints. When he reached Izzy, the professor adroitly flipped onto his back, grabbed the doctor’s wrists, and began hauling him along a yard at a time, using his own heels and posterior as points of thrust. The pair came lurching up to the breach. Abel, on his belly, grabbed collars and yanked. Once again the heroics were all Amantu’s. The Hammer pulled himself onto the deck with a bicep in either fist, gave a mighty heave, and dragged Izzy aboard. He tried to assist the analyst onto a stool, but Izzy shook him off. “There’s gratitude!” Abel snarled. Amantu was exhilarated. “No matter.” He smoothed his robes up and down. “We are safe and sound.” He watched excitedly while a harsh light tore skyward like a rocket. Abel cursed as he deleted the breach. The net shut down, the rail sank back to normal. “Don’t,” he grated, “break out the horns and whistles just yet.” Amantu would have been amazed to see the juvenile grin on his face. “Gentlemen! I am to be congratulated. This will be my debut with the police.” Izzy raised his head, a self-deluded, punch-drunk prize fighter. “’Grats.” The professor seated himself ceremoniously, but, unable to be still, ordered and reordered the cups and chest, inspected the table for drops and crumbs. “I suggest a show of nonchalance.” “My repu—” “Izzy, if you don’t shut up I will personally spoon-feed you disulfiram. You got me?” The light, rising to eye-level, slowly swung round to expose three properly seated gentlemen mildly distracted by all the pyrotechnics and revelry. The glare intensified as it neared. The Group shielded their eyes. When the beam was alongside the View it waned to a rolling amber glow on a hovering chopper’s handlebars. A scarlet, pencil-thin beam shone into each squinting face, resting longest on Izzy. The officer popped his scrambler from its holster and aimed it at the deck. A section of railing dissolved, quickly reforming as a broad jutting ledge. He stepped off, disengaged his chopper’s emergency lights, and firmly pushed the machine down by its seat until the blur of its undercarriage melded seamlessly with the ledge. Seven feet of irresistible authority, he loomed over the dead-silent Group, the glossy black of his helmet and visor reflecting their ash and ebon faces. The visor swung onto Abel. “You, signate, were warned to monitor.” Abel cleared his throat. “There’s been no damage, officer. Our friend here simply lost his balance. He was quickly rescued and, as far as I am aware, nary a contusion resulted from the affair. Please notify your captain that my account will accommodate any expenses incurred by the ride’s owners, and also your very professional work here.” The officer locked in place. An excruciating minute later the visor swiveled to Izzy. “Up.” Izzy raised his blood-red eyes. “Why, you—” “Doctor Weaver! You are on my signet!” “Up!” “My reputation,” Izzy snarled. “My reputation!” The officer’s arms spread like wings, his ramrod forefingers zeroing in on Izzy’s temples. The twin flashes were so faint they might have been figments. Izzy’s head snapped back, his feet kicked up, and he flipped off the stool onto his rear. When his eyes reopened he was dead sober. “Up.” Izzy glared menacingly. Abel and Amantu made to assist, but froze at a jerk from that looming black helmet. “Up!” 14

Hammer Izzy pulled himself to his feet. The officer studied each man in turn. “Down!” Amantu winced as the Group took their seats. “An unauthorized firearm was discharged on this map.” Nobody moved, but their eyes were all over the place. “Up!” The officer removed his scanner and walked once around the table, sampling the standing men. “Down.” The Group resumed their stools. “Signate.” “Yes?” “Your account is cancelled.” Abel went absolutely limp. A flurry of data raced across the polyvinyl visor. The black carapace cocked. “What was your destination?” “Was?” Abel squealed. The night stopped on a dime. Those nearer View riders, picking up on the tension, watched quietly. “Officer. Am I—am I under arrest?” “Up!” The mechanical voice was deadly. “The incidence of public drunkenness is waived. A discharged military weapon was traced to this map.” Another flurry further straightened his back. The input ceased and he leaned back down. The voice went flat. “The courts are closed for the holiday. Due to the expected crush of cases, bail may be remitted against a suitable sponsor’s account in lieu of arrest.” “Oh, thank you, officer!” The helmet didn’t budge. “On my discretion. Down.” Abel sat with his hands folded on his lap. “We are,” he said as distinctly as possible, “on our way to visit a colleague, the celebrated astronomer and wave cataloguer Titus Mack. He lives outside the city proper, but he’s a highly respected citizen. I’m sure he’d be cheerfully willing to overwrite this little misunderstanding.” “By proceeding, you agree that the request will be monitored here in my presence, and that a recording will be filed as a legal document.” Sweat broke from Abel’s hairline. Suddenly he was weak as a transvestite in a holding tank. “Look, officer. It’s really putting Ti on the spot, you know? I mean, couldn’t we just like, laugh this off, make a New Year’s resolution or two, and be done with it?” He looked down, toeing the paused map. “I really feel your demand is prejudicial.” The officer snapped to attention. “Up!” Abel rose agonizingly, swaying like a cobra. “Approach!” Abel took a timid step forward. The cop strode up titanically, bent at the waist, and got right in his face. “Raise. Your. Eyes!” Abel’s mousy reflection became a funhouse image on the visor’s convexity. His breath fogged the acrylic, but the officer didn’t move. Now sweat was flowing freely on Abel’s forehead and cheeks. His knees and shoulders caved and recovered, caved and recovered. When he thought he’d faint, a whisper broke his lips. “Officer—” “Down!” Abel crumpled on the stool and buried his head in his arms. In a minute Mack’s voice could be heard, seemingly emanating from the air just above the table. Titus Mack here. What’s this all about? Abel raised his head and looked around deliriously. “Ti? Ti! It’s Abel. There’s been some kind of a mix-up. We’re on one of those View rides over the Burghs. Somebody shot off a rocket or something, and somehow or other we’ve been implicated. There’s no way to clear it up right now, 15

Hammer and anyway they’ve gone and cancelled my account. It’s the holiday, so they’re giving us the option of a sponsor over jail. Can you handle it, man? The officer’s right here, and he’s recording. As far as I know, we’re not yet under arrest.” A pause. Is everybody aboard? “Yes, we’re all here.” Then of course I’ll sponsor. Mack’s voice cut out. The cop raised his scrambler and rapidly tapped out a sequence using thumb and forefinger. The deck shimmered under his gleaming jackboots. Table and chairs melted in a reverse of their formation, and the ledge, now a tongue appended to the View, began porting the Group, officer, and chopper high over the metropolis. The officer ignored them completely, standing erect and motionless, facing away. The men stood tightly bunched. After a while their hands and feet were freezing. They sat very gradually, facing one another with legs crossed and heads almost touching. Abel moaned into his cupped hands. “We’re . . . going to jail. I knew it. We’re going to jail!” “Not so,” Amantu gushed. “I shall gladly bear our burden, as my account is spotless. I assure you, my friends—the moment I encounter a magistrate these little follies will be laughed right off the books.” Two pairs of eyes looked up darkly. “Professor Amantu,” Abel grated, “what took place here tonight is on my signet. Everything that has happened, from the moment I scanned us onto this stupid flying snail, is officially on my tetherball of a head!” “My fault,” Izzy whimpered, whipping out the flask while the cop’s back was turned. “Me! Me! All me!” “Well, Izzy, hopefully the judge will take your contrition into account. Because, damn you all to hell, we’re going to jail!” It was a long ride over the metropolis. Rekeyed ground sensors delineated an official corridor to courthouse and substations, complete with flashing lights and wailing sirens. The Group weren’t the only ones thus escorted; similar green tongues were approaching the civic center from all directions. Some were already in the process of dissolving on police docks. It was pretty obvious the rides would be undergoing some serious rethinking after the holiday. Now the twin bloody comets of a lost ambulance, disoriented by the aerial displays, rocketed by overhead, causing proximate Views to dip and pause. The Group shakily regained their feet. The officer didn’t turn. They were halfway across the Burghs’ M Grid when the tongue halted abruptly, its tip suspended a hundred feet above a pulsing tower. The officer straightened like a man being electrocuted. After a minute he came up to the Group and brought his shiny black visor in close. “Up!” The men watched encrypted data race across their reflections as he studied each face in turn, dwelling longest on Amantu. The cop stomped back to the tip and resumed his stance. Holding his rigid arms straight down, he pointed his scrambler at the Burghs and banked the tongue away from the sprawling Center, clear across the great expanse of the grids, toward the Outskirts’ wide lonely plains. The morning grew chillier as they rode, the landscape progressively less attractive. A bitter wind replaced the composite warmth of bustling humankind. Mystified by the proceedings, the men bundled themselves deeper into their robes and scarves, speaking only with their eyes. By the time the tongue’s tip was testing the surface, the moon’s misty white medallion was shining coldly on a 16

Hammer boundless desert junkyard, and the proud torch of civilization was a wan and distant glow.

17

Chapter Three The Outs The cop deposited the Group in a section of Outskirts known only to vagabonds and poisonous spiders. He stood straight as an arrow in his jackboots; a grim colossus staring into tomorrow. “Signate?” “Here.” The helmet didn’t budge. “I am prohibited beyond this point in a non-emergency situation. Titus Mack has initialized a sounder. Are you receiving?” Abel watched the soft pulse of his signet. “I have him.” “This party is hereby transferred into his custody, and from here on you are on your own. The Colony proper is fully seven miles away, but the intervening terrain poses dangers beyond police purview. You are duly advised to make directly for his mark, and not linger to satisfy your . . . scientific curiosity.” The polyvinyl faceplate turned to Abel. “You retain, of course, the option of protective custody until the courts re-open after the holiday.” “And you, frothisir,” Izzy snorted, “are drooly advised to take a flying—” The black eggshell swung hard. Izzy’s eyes dropped. After a long moment the visor moved along. Abel too looked down, his fists and jaws clenched. “Yes,” the officer breathed. When the faceplate reached Amantu the head moved in curiously. The professor, a man of genuine presence accustomed to gaping inferiors, automatically drew his robes tighter and returned the stare. The head kicked back. Again with the brief tweak-and-sizzle. Bringing his visor up wayclose, the officer said with canned deadliness, “Happy New Year.” His spine jacked straight, his shoulders squared, and then he was the same bakelite statue that had escorted them thus far. He aimed the scrambler between his boots and punched out a new sequence. The tongue’s tip pulsed. The application reversed, lifting the cop and chopper off the ground and backward. Not until he’d been elevated some fifty feet and was a good hundred yards away did the Group relax. 18

The Outs “That,” Amantu declared, “will be enough celebrating for me.” He fluffed his robes. “Although I must admit I—cannot remember feeling so vigorous.” He squinted into the stinking wind. “Exactly how far did he say?” “He didn’t.” Abel raised his signet against the drear. “But I’ve got the feed. To hell with him. Let’s get going.” Izzy licked his lips. “Do lead on, Josh.” He swatted the dust from his vest and after a moment said shyly, “Praps somebody owes the Hammer—debt of gratitude.” “Yeah,” Abel said wryly. “Thanks, Professor.” “Esteemed friends, the pleasure was entirely mine.” They were picking their way along, intuitively communicating sotto voce, when three seemingly innocent heaps abruptly rose about them, cutting them off at the fore and flanks. Those heaps were actually camouflage: bent-round shields of aluminum siding covered with lengths of pipe and assorted greased-over debris, all attached with strands of grimy copper wire. The thugs stepping from behind these shields wore black hooded cloaks, homemade black gloves, and shabby black boots—each amateurishly patched article dyed with soot. White thread portrayed rude skeletons: cruciform stitching representing stubby arms and spines, stitches on the gloves suggesting metacarpals and phalanges. The brigands’ faces were painted ash-white, except for great black circular blotches about the eyes, a black ring at each nostril, and painted death’s head teeth stretching from mouths to ear lobes. Crude staples affixed their hoods to skin at the foreheads, cheeks, and jaws. Out of those black eye-splotches the highwaymen’s orbs gleamed like the eyes of rabid raccoons. The bandits linked hands to fence them in. Their leader was a psychotic giant wholly ignorant of decent grammar and basic hygiene. His gloves and boots were dulled by a thousand fights and forays. But his eyes were sharp as lasers. “Happy New Year, ladies. Sorry to disappoint you, but the theater is that-away.” Abel smiled only with his teeth. “Guys! Guys! Didn’t mean to startle you. We were just on our way to visit an old buddy for the holiday, and got a little bit on the lost side, that’s all.” He winked and pantomimed a drunken leer. “You know how it is.” “Oh, you’re lost, all right. Now, if you’ll kindly lift your skirts we’ll get this over with.” The men submitted meekly as they were patted down and stripped of their valuables. The leader raised Abel’s signet in his huge gloved hand. “Well now, what have we here? Why, it’s a wee pink eye! And she goes blinkety-blank, blinkety-blank, over and over. But what does she mean, and who does she summon? Tell me, girls— could this be some sort of diabolical signal? A secret message to your gentlemen callers, not meant for the likes of a lot of filthy old Outers?” He eyeballed each man in turn. Abel’s bark of laughter didn’t fool anybody. “Aw, c’mon, man. It’s a simple repetitive pulse. What kind of message is that?” The laser eyes swung back. “I recognize this pretty little pearl, Senator. She ain’t a messagemaker. She’s a message-taker. She’s a locater! So now the issue becometh: just who wants to locate who?” “Oh, take it then. Rip its guts out, smash it to bits. It’s only a trinket; there’s warehouses full of ’em. My nephew’s got a big hand in camping toys. So . . . we’ll just be on our way, and a Happy New Year to all!” “Blinkety-blank,” the man repeated, considering Abel narrowly. “Blinkety-blank, trampety19

The Outs tramp, and way too much yakkety-yak. Just a caution, Senator: don’t be talking in circles as well as walking in ’em. What’s your business in the Outs, is what I wants to know. Why should you three peripatetic princesses come here a-courting? Suitable suitors, unless I’m severe-mistook, are scarceproper in these parts. You ballerinas couldn’t find amusement enough in your slick-hearted city?” The big man’s lieutenant fingered Amantu’s silky gold robes. “Looky here, Micah! Ain’t this a lovely dress for a girl’s night out?” He curtsied for his friends, holding high his own filthy black hem. “Why, Ezekiel! I do believes you’re jealous.” Micah smiled genially at the professor, the painted-on death’s-head grin arching at the corners. “Maybe she’d be pleased to trade skirts.” Malachi chimed in, giggling at his own pun, “She’s a pretty black, a pretty black, a pretty black p-polliwog. N-not pretty-pretty. P-p-p-pretty black.” “Vectors. You will keep your diseased hands to yourselves. Touch me even once and I will slap that silly white paint right off your silly pink faces.” Abel laughed even harder. “Fellas, fellas! The Hammer’s been partying plenty hard tonight. He’s not responsible for his actions.” Micah shouldered Abel aside, his face deadly. “Diseased?” He grabbed Izzy’s collar and squeezed until it looked like the psychoanalyst’s head would pop. “I’ll show you disease!” As crowing Malachi leapt around them, the big man shoved Izzy along with measured brutality, Ezekiel prodding Amantu and Abel at the rear. The Group were smacked and kicked to a large mound of stacked aluminum scraps. Micah and Ezekiel maintained their prisoners in revolving headlocks while Malachi hauled aside a camouflaged gate over a black stairwell. The Group were beaten down rough steps, manhandled to their feet, and dragged along a brightening tunnel to a rock wall outside a torchlit cavern. Inside, hundreds of voices called out in the strangest fashion, equally pregnant with ecstasy and pain. “Welcome,” said Micah, “to Dan’l’s Gate.” His eyes danced with torchlight. “You are expected.” Ezekiel and Malachi peeled the Group off the wall and hauled them toward the bright mystery within. Izzy broke first. Screaming hysterically, he scrambled into the darkness with his friends on his heels. In three enormous strides Micah was on them. The man’s strength and energy were prodigious, but the cornered Group, inspired by Amantu’s unblinking exchanges, put up a frenzied resistance, and by the time Micah’s henchmen had regained control the brunt of his fury was spent. “When—” he snarled, puffing hard, “when the Cannonites walled in Jerrycho, what were their quarrels? Not to taste stone? Why? Are your lips too pure?” He hammered Izzy’s head against a wall. “No sir,” Izzy croaked. “Not pure at all.” “Don’t you spin me, Leftie! We knows you was sent by the Seizer.” “By the what?” “By the Seizer! By Julius.” Abel’s face twisted up in Ezekiel’s chokehold. “For Christ’s sake, man—what in the world are you talking about? Micah booted him viciously. “You, reprobate! And don’t you be naming him in vain. Did he die on the double-cross, or what? Answer!” But it was Amantu who answered—with a hard left followed by a harder right. He almost had Ezekiel when Malachi went for his eyes. Suddenly both men were all over him. 20

The Outs Abel watched aghast as the professor hit the ground. “Oh, Mercies! What will you people do with us?” “That depends on Mama.” Micah clubbed friends and foes alike, smashing everybody into a pile. Revitalized, he stormed back to the cavern’s opening and stood yelling with his black gloves poised like fat spiders on the rock. “They’re here, they’re here! Tell Mama they’re here! Thirty pieces of silver is all they seek; ten for me, ten for thee, ten for the cock’s crow. Tell Mama, tell Mama! Tell Mama they’re here!” A hundred voices blew into the antechamber like hot gas. “Mama!” Micah turned and pointed the finger of Death. “God’s gonna getcha, He’s gonna getcha!” “Mercies!” Izzy screamed. The Group broke their captors’ grips by squirming and stamping, and for a while there it was all a riot of grappling silhouettes. Then Micah barked, “Mal! Get Danny!” Malachi flapped to the wall. A latch was slammed aside. There came a godawful rumble and clatter, and a second later a chain barricade crashed on the floor. The Group fanned in reverse while the backlit jackals pressed in with their gloved fingers wiggling, calling back and forth, “Whoo-oooo!” Micah’s hand dipped under his robe. There was a bright gleam of metal. “Snippity-snip, choppity-chop. Lop off the gonads, watch the boys drop.” “Please,” Izzy whimpered, “you’ve got the wrong guys, you guys. We don’t want any more trouble.” “Oh, we know exactly what you girls want. Coming for that thief Barberus, were you? Well, too bad. You already gots a date with Mama.” Micah flicked the blade twice. His partners immediately rushed their personal targets, then abruptly whirled to jump Amantu. Before they could take him down, a silvery bolt blew away a chunk of the tunnel’s ceiling. The Group dashed into a well-used side-passage, and were quickly consumed by the dark. The closeness had a nauseating core: in a minute they were screaming and gagging as they hopped amidst putrefying cadavers. They crashed into walls, fell sprawling on rotting flesh, jumped up and ran headlong into an obscene darkness. The light of pursuing torches danced on projections like embers, accompanied by a clamor resembling angry bees, but the light and voices grew distant as the Group stumbled through a twisting maze of tributaries. “Shook ’em!” Abel crowed. “Please,” heaved Izzy. “No more. End this nightmare.” He took a massive breath. “Professor. Ah, the Hammer! Every bit the nick-of-time hero. Mercy, son. Where’d you hide that gun?” “In a place of interest only to proctologists. I . . . I believe I have killed a man.” “There’s a draft!” Abel hissed. “One of these tunnels breaches the surface!” The proceeding Group used a kind of vocal sonar, sounding one another before each careful stride. Abel’s selected passage wended painfully, in places narrowing to a crawlspace. Before long they were scraped raw. This profound darkness completely upset the senses. At last they paused, clinging and speaking in the tightest of whispers. It was difficult to tell who was doing the talking. “They’ve given up. Not a trace of light behind us.” “A bleak victory. There is less illumination here by far.” “Who was that?” “I. Amantu. We cannot go backward. We cannot go forward. We have placed ourselves in 21

The Outs mate.” “Well, we can’t freeze up here.” “I’m blind.” “Who just spoke?” “Me. Izzy. I can’t see a thing, you guys. If I poked my own finger in my eye I wouldn’t know who did it.” “We are all blind. It is imperative we retain touch as our basic sense. I suggest personal handholds. We can move single-file, and so make our way—ponderously, certainly, but with a degree of security.” “Make our way? Where?” “Anywhere but here. Let us proceed. We must find a sign of life or retrace our steps to the light. Then we must think.” “Same objection. Think about what? This is hopeless.” “Not necessarily so. We have brainpower, proven throughout time the superior force.” “Well, it’s done some job so far.” “Who said that?” “I did. It was me.” “Sirs! Who was that?” “Steady there, Professor. It’s me, Izzy. You needn’t hold so closely; just keep a strong pace’s distance. Then we won’t be as prone to, you know, belly right up against each other and all that. No offense.” “None taken, Doctor. And yet . . . at arm’s-length, please. Keep it at arm’s-length.” “Aw, shucks. And just when we was getting all cozy-wozy.” “Ghaa! They are among us!” “Ooh, la-la-ladies!” “C-c-caughtcha!” Out of the sudden riot came a whirling silver light, clearly disintegrating a patch of wall. The next instant all was darkness. Again with the sightless flight, again with the battered elbows and knees. All else being equal, fear will always outrun anger. In time the Group outdistanced their pursuers, though they were no less blind than before, and just as lost. They moved on tiptoe, whispering only after small identifying tugs, and then only with lips pressed against ears. Finally they sat in a tight circle, their foreheads touching. “I’m telling you, it’s futile, Josh. I’m beat, man, beat.” “Quit whining. If they find us cringing here they’ll kill us. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.” “I concur. We are bereft of options. Perhaps . . . a peace offering.” “Peace offering! That’s clinical psychosis sneaking up behind us.” “Absolutely. Besides, peace never solved anything. Let me see that weapon.” “A moment. Your hand. There. What do you intend?” “How deep was that little hole they dragged us down?” “Three, four yards. Perhaps more.” “Right. And the floors of these caves and passages have all been roughly level. If I’m not 22

The Outs mistaken, our progress along these tunnels, when not absolutely horizontal, has been ever upward, albeit of the gentlest degree. What I’m trying to say is—we’ve never been far from the surface! Stand back.” Abel rose, using Izzy’s forehead for support. “You are as deranged as they! Doctor Lee, you will kill us all!” “Get back!” There came another bright whanging comet, and a section of the tunnel’s roof came down twenty feet away, completely blocking the passage. “Outstanding! Not only have you eliminated our sole hope of egress, you have simultaneously announced our whereabouts to every madman in the house!” Another pulse, and an even larger section collapsed on the first. The men backpedaled, coughing and exclaiming, while Abel fired again and again. The concussions and flashes were staggering, but he fired furiously until the magazine was spent. “There! The sweet breath of night! Do you feel it?” In response a posse of torch-waving lunatics came tearing up the tunnel. The men clambered awkwardly over the heaped rocks, losing precious advantage while squirming to avoid unhappy intimate contacts. More time was lost at the surface, as a decent exit now involved extensive apologies. But then a great company was spilling into the passage below, and upon their maniacal roar the Group lost all sense of decorum. They whirled and began a close sprint, elbow to elbow, heads down and rocking. At least a dozen carriers poured out of the earth like hopped-up termites. They ran as a bloodthirsty unit, screaming bizarre slogans about smiters and martyrs. “South,” puffed Amantu, now holding the lead. “A structure of some kind.” In the distance squatted an isolated little observatory that, under the Outs’ dirty white moon, resembled nothing so much as a porcelain tortoise. The running men turned in the manner of desperate over-the-hill athletes, and put their hearts into it. Yet only a hundred yards separated they and the mob, while the tiny observatory appeared a full quarter-mile away. Almost weeping with the effort, the Group threw back their heads and ran for their lives.

23

Chapter Four Solomon It was a close race, with victory going once again to the self-preservation instinct. Yet for the final hundred yards, and especially over the last grueling seventy feet or so, the Group, middle-aged men all, were closer to death’s door than to Titus Mack’s. When they reached the porch, fingernails and teeth were literally at their backs. Fortunately the place was ready for them. Both Izzy’s and Abel’s scans were pre-keyed, and the professor’s had been transmitted and memorized upon his acceptance of Mack’s New Year’s invitation. The instant their feet hit the property line the observatory’s hemispherical wall began to hum in anticipation. When they were a hair’s-breadth from contact, the facing surface quickly breached and sealed, leaving their crazed pursuers to pound in frustration without. A breath of pressurized air escaped with an anticlimactic pop. Mack’s observatory was part of the old Eyeball line: basically, an outer wave-collecting “lens,” a flexible central “iris” for digitizing those collected waves, and a smooth white Neoprene Inner Kinematic Surface—anagramatically NIKS, but known in the astronomical community in reverse-anagram as a “skin.” Mack’s skin was sympathetic; that is, it was able to learn and underwrite its runner by continuously filing domestic events as data, even as it automatically updated saved wave files. The men blew in like tumbleweeds. No one should have been in worse shape than the anginaridden professor, yet Amantu, still tiger-eyed and full of vinegar, was first to his feet, and the one man able to haul everyone upright. Abel, stanching the flow from his nose, coughed out, “It’s only us, Titus! Sorry about the racket! Bit of a disagreement with your neighbors! Happy New Year!” Outside, the hammering diminished to a pattering like rain. The skin vibrated. “And to!” called a voice from one of the building’s concentric apartments. “Just give me a minute! Help yourselves!” 24

Solomon “Please—” Abel hacked back. “Take your time!” Izzy called up a bar post-haste. The circular floor’s zodiacal arrangement broke up, and a complex glass cabinet rose with a noiseless, orrery-like movement. Various menus showed round the skin and passed. Izzy bolted enough to anaesthetize a psychotic, then balanced back a tray heaped with spirits and glasses. Abel called up a favorite drink stand to meet him. The thing was a beaut; a diode-lit Messrs Ivory with a shatterproof, chlorophyll-painted lens top. The Group feigned nonchalance vociferously, hurriedly brushing their hair and robes in the glass as electronicallymagnified flagella and protozoa appeared to inch along between their drinks and reflections. By the time Titus Mack came ambling in the atmosphere was almost cordial. Half a year had passed since the Group last saw their founder, and over that span his well-kept appearance had changed dramatically. His graying brown locks were a mess; plus he’d adopted a perpetual five o’clock shadow. His comfortable paunch was gone; he’d become, through either nerves or undernourishment, gaunt by comparison. And apparently he was too busy to bother with fresh clothes or soap and water. His matted outer robe hung from stooped shoulders like laundry on a line, his sunken waist was delineated by a belt with a knee-length overhang. Underwear and unwashed plates were scattered about the floor’s gel tiles. Only now did Amantu note the thousand palm prints on the skin’s sloping face. Abel threw out his arms. “Ti! Nothing like the bachelor life, eh? Sorry about the turbulent entry, but boy, did we have a time of it with the adjacent fauna. Did you know there’s a Colony arm only a footrace away?” “You didn’t take the usual route?” “It was that little run-in with the law. We were formally escorted, and not without a fight mind you, to a patch of infected real estate maybe a quarter mile north of here. Fraternal thanks, by the bye, for coming through.” Amantu rose deferentially. “Sir. You are in grave peril.” Mack waved him down. “Relax, Professor, relax. I know all about those morons. That bizarre behavior of theirs is the result of some doctored history I’ve been catalo—but, this is exactly why I wanted to see you guys this morning! And precisely why I’m so pleased to meet you, Professor Amantu.” Titus Mack offered his famous hand. Amantu, still hopped-up and giddy, seized it in both of his and held on overlong. “Titus Mack! An inexpressible honor! I stand, dilettante that I am, in the shadow of a legitimate legend.” Mack extracted his palm. “So they tell me.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully, his eyes running over the professor’s beautiful golden robes. “And a grand night for celebrating it is! I promise you a spectacle, sir; one no other company could appreciate so astutely. Unless, of course, that company just happened to include, oh, the distinguished mediator, AJ Lee, and the famous skullcracker, Doctor—” Mack abruptly threw his arms around the little psychoanalyst—“Izzy!” “At service!” Izzy squirmed free. He blushed and fanned his face. “And might Ti I, mention Perseffor Mantu . . . this very morn made honor Group member . . . he now . . . ‘Hammer’.” He laboriously raised a finger for each man in the room. “We . . . now . . . four!” Mack zoned out, savoring the nickname. “. . . Hammer . . .” The astronomer’s whole face lit up, and he embraced Amantu like a long-lost friend. “Dubious congratulations, Professor! And I apologize for inconveniencing you on the holiday: I don’t make a habit of ringing strangers. That said, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making a hole in your schedule, and 25

Solomon sincerely beg your forgiveness regarding the untoward treatment en route. This must all seem a most unfunny holiday prank. I assure you, it is not.” “You . . . you wish to thank me? Sir, when my students learn of our association I will be all but unapproachable.” “So you shall, so you shall.” Mack drummed his palms on his thighs. “All right, then.” He leaned to Izzy’s tray, poured himself some dark amber spirit or other, and addressed the room with his glass. “For the last several years I’ve been chasing these exceedingly faint signals, totally unrelated to the waves I’m used to handling. They were some kind of magnetic residue, here one minute, gone the next. I had the deuce of a time, but once I’d sampled and digitized a specimen I found myself studying a terrestrial wave pattern—yet one that was electrically inverted; what I’ve come to know as a ‘waveprint.’ By accident, I had it played back in A/V. So here I was, absolutely certain I’d detected the path of an exotic new particle. Imagine my expression when I picked out the distinct sawing of my shaving razor. “I put out a seek right away, hoping the lens could find more specimens, and then—oh, what a floodgate I’ve opened.” Mack set down his drink and forcibly folded his hands. “I tried to run in time, but I was too slow; I was infernally slow. One day I sold a few scans to the university and used the proceeds to purchase an axon accelerator off the black market. I got . . . close with the skin. Real close. I will confess to becoming addicted. I allowed it to vivisect my virtual brain.” Abel coughed loudly. Amantu discretely fingered a golden hem. Izzy angrily wolfed his drink. “There go party.” “Gentlemen,” Mack said. “My sins are off my chest.” He rose philosophically. “Now to the order of business. We all know that thought is merely a process; that the ‘mind,’ when it comes right down to it, is actually a verb, as opposed to that noun we so familiarly call the ‘brain.’ Our comprehension, our emotions, our memories, are utterly reliant upon the living brain. When the body dies the brain stops, and when the brain stops the mind ceases to exist. As I say, we know all this. But when the skin apprehended it—that a man’s mind is unbounded potential, as opposed to the closed and predictable thing it was used to running in—it began processing my thoughts as electrical phenomena exclusive of real time.” Mack nodded at the room. “Mind-reading isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, you guys. Not when it’s a program doing the reading. Let me elaborate.” He made a frame of his hands. “At any given moment a brain is active, there’re tens of thousands of synaptic clefts working synchronously, and the impulses jumping those gaps produce minute discharges the skin digitizes. Sampled instantaneously, they create an instantaneous pattern—an image, a feeling, a thought. In real time, they correspond to a continuous series of seamless mental images. So we could say, metaphorically, the living brain’s a theater, the mind’s a motion picture, and those tens of thousands of firing synapses are pixels—pulses that are read, digitized, and mapped by Solomon, the skin-written program you’re about to meet. “Solomon cross-references radially, rather than linearly, so a runner gets momentary access to a whole world of information. Literally. Not by painstakingly seeking it out, mind you, but by allowing the program free access to his head. Solomon finds what you want. And sometimes a whole lot more. How much more? Just listen: “Any occurrence outside a vacuum, no matter how subtle, produces a current in its supporting medium—for example, the vibrations of my voice are reaching your eardrums via the intervening air. 26

Solomon Every cluster of waveprints, whether produced by my vocal cords right now or by some miscellaneous rockslide half a million years ago, is unique, and can be reproduced, by Solomon here: reconstructed and digitally saved, to be studied at leisure by his runner. That’s because those currents are producing discrete magnetic profiles that are ‘encoded’ in our planet’s gravitational field in real time. Acting as a super-sensitive receiver, Solomon’s able to pick out and transpose those collected profiles—‘decode’ them—and convert them back to pulses that disrupt the medium of air, thereby reproducing the clusters, which in turn stimulate our tympanic membranes.” “Doctor Mack.” Amantu clasped his hands and cocked his head; a move so characteristic it compelled immediate mimicking from both Izzy and Abel. “Please correct me if I am in error. You are claiming your thoughts and your program’s repository are in sync while the program is electromagnetically mirroring your synaptic activity?” “Not just me. Whoever’s running in Solomon at the time. And it doesn’t have to be straightforward pulse transposition. Solomon’s voice-sensitive. He can read and bookmark vocal commands linearly, without having to deal with all the normal peripheral autonomic mental activity.” The men fiddled with their drinks. Izzy grumbled, “Some name . . . Saw . . . Sawla. Strange. I—” “The venerated name of a wise king who ruled thirty-five hundred years ago. There were lots of these so-called sacrosanct names.” Abel cuffed the psychoanalyst upside his head. “Ah, for Christ’s sake, Izzy! You just had to ask, didn’t you?” “There you go. What does ‘for Christ’s sake’ mean, Josh?” “It’s a meaningless interjection. Don’t play with me, Ti.” “Well, what if I told you that that particular meaningless interjection pertained to a figure of great historical significance, and that most personal names do, as well? ‘Israel,’ for example, is pivotal; the name of an ancient kingdom in the Eastern Hemisphere. All our names—Abel, Titus, Moses—are of great fame and antiquity.” “Then ‘for Christ’s sake!’ I second my own interjection! ‘Israel’ is the nom de plume of our skeptical little friend here, and those three syllables have no significance whatsoever. He could have been named ‘Bugaboo,’ and he’d still be the same inimitable irritant we all know and love. You’re reading too much out of your data, Ti. Besides, any fool can argue an abstraction.” Mack bowed and swept an arm. “Just so. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . . Solo.” The house lights came down and the chamber was permeated by a lazily swirling field, so tenuous the skin behind showed distinctly. Mack furrowed his brow, and his guests could have sworn the field discreetly funneled his way. A frantic ruckus began just outside. The voices of the Group burst into the room, accompanied by the noise of their violent entry and a sound like the pop-andhiss of escaping air. Moments later Abel could be heard shouting, his voice seeming to issue from an unoccupied space: “It’s only us, Titus! Sorry about the racket! Slight disagreement with your neighbors! Happy New Year!” Then the muffled response: “And to! Just give me a minute! Help yourselves!” The wispy field vanished and the lights came back up. Abel nodded slyly. “Happy New Year, indeed! Gentlemen, we’ve been acoustically monitored, probably from the moment we hit the porch. A clever bit of hopping about with the audio, but . . . c’mon, Ti. Something a tad more sophisticated.” 27

Solomon “Fair enough, Josh. What’s running isn’t a one-dimensional read. Example: as steady fields of broadcast energy, natural and artificial light register constant values. Solomon perfunctorily enters and ignores such values as structurally insignificant. However, wherever a constant value is interrupted by an opaque object Solomon reads a reduction. A plane surface will render equal reductive values over its breadth, and so be interpreted as flat. On the other hand, a complex surface, such as a man’s face, will produce countless variations in values—values Solomon automatically translates as pixels to produce three-dimensional imagery. Likewise color, depth, perspective— infinite degrees in variation are instantaneously mapped and reproduced as images readily accessible to our humble rods and cones. A quick demonstration should suffice. The program opens with a single password; his nickname. The tones comprising ‘Solomon’ mean nothing. I had to write it in that way or he’d be all over the place whenever those three syllables were innocently spoken. His runner’s thoughts are accessed the instant he’s activated. Observe.” Cocking his head, he said, “Solo.” The lights dimmed. Once more those voices exploded into the room, this time accompanied by a trio of sheer apparitions. It was the Group again, falling all over one another. Amantu’s intense likeness raced right through him while, not two feet away, the three-dimensional image of Abel scrambled to its feet, held a transparent sleeve to one nostril, and called out, “It’s only us, Titus! Sorry about all the racket! Slight disagreement with your neighbors! Happy New Year!” The field retracted and the lights came up. Abel applauded generously. “Boys, boys, boys! We’ve been scanned as well as scammed. Don’t let your guards down for a minute! And my objection stands, Titus. All you’ve done is elaborate on an illusion. A visual recording, no matter how adroitly orchestrated, is still just a technological display.” “Not so. I couldn’t possibly have incorporated Solomon’s range of detail. Solo. The Battle of the Little Bighorn.” Broad daylight displaced the interior lighting. The overhead skin’s dome was now sky-blue. The gel tiles uncannily resembled dirt and bare pasturage, while the skin proper appeared to have been replaced by open horizon. The Group were standing on a wide plain surrounded by reddish bluffs and craggy canyons. Close enough to touch, huddling cavalrymen crouched behind their steeds, discharging rustic firearms while naked savages hacked at them with stick-mounted stones. The action was so realistic everybody but Mack hit the deck. “Solo. Break.” The fighting figures dissolved. The men picked themselves up slowly, amazed and embarrassed. Faint traces of kicked dirt still appeared to hang in the air. “Those—” Amantu marveled, “those were horses!” “So they were, Hammer. What we’re seeing is actual history, not the prettified stuff we’ve been taught.” “To which I say bravo! See how he uses titillating images to lead us from analysis? Hear how convincingly they clatter? It’s all a heap of technological legerdemain.” “Titus . . .” Amantu faltered. “Your zeal is admirable. However, sir, I am thoroughly learned in Western history. Were I not so moved by your sincerity I would doubtless get comfortable and ‘enjoy the show.’ But here I must object. I feel I can accurately describe our past over thirteen millennia. These images are without foundation.” 28

Solomon “But can you show me?” The ghost of a chuckle. “If you mean, can I produce dramatic photographic imagery in three dimensions, along with realistic acoustics, well . . .” “That’s exactly what I mean. Try for yourself.” Amantu cleared his throat. “Just remember to use the pass.” All eyes were on him. Amantu very clearly enunciated, “So low.” He hesitated in the sudden glimmer of drifting fireflies. “Reveal All Hall’s Congress. Year 817, Month November, Day Eleven. It would have been a Tuesday.” The skin now presented a wide flowing parade of film clips, accompanied by thin bites of atonal audio. The clips were obviously contrived; acted out and edited, stuffed with period costumes and unconvincing sets. “Solo,” Mack said. “Break.” The fireflies disappeared. “Defective,” Amantu pronounced. “Not at all. In reality no such event took place.” “I stand vindicated,” Abel objected. “Those were educational films; I recognized at least two of ’em.” “That’s all Solomon has to draw on. That and voluminous fabricated records. The Text Alone command, when applied to the skin, would turn this place into a spherical encyclopedia. But in projected T/A, molecules in the air are vibrated to mimic pixels, creating distinct alphanumeric patterns. Solo. Today’s date. Text Alone.” Characters two feet high by a foot wide, misty-white and resembling steam, appeared hovering at eye-level: 1 JANUARY 2509 Mack took a broad step to the side. The characters swiveled to face him. He hopped back, and the display followed suit. “The program’s also voice-sensitive to its runner. In heavy research, hearing a real-time response does wonders. Solo. Today’s date, in V/S.” Titus Mack’s own voice responded, from the same general space as the dissolving characters: “January First, Twenty-Five Oh Nine.” His eyes gleamed. “Then again, you’d get that same film-like response if you requested skin text files on something called the Emancipation Proclamation and a fellow named Lincoln. But in A/V we get related graphics. Solo. Antietam. September 17, 1867. Real Time.” A melee erupted in the center of the room, blew onto the enveloping skin, and quickly metastasized throughout the apparent horizon. Suddenly hundreds of uniformed men were grappling tooth and nail, firing antique weapons, stabbing one another with short mounted sabers. An echoless cannonade issued from “distant” standing guns and from “nearby” handheld artillery. “Solo. Break.” The house lights came up and the raging soldiers dissolved. “Something called the American Civil War. On that single day over twenty-five thousand men fell in mortal combat.” Mack looked at Amantu quizzically. “As I understand it, they were in disagreement over a matter of color.” The professor returned the look. “Solo. Parsominius Beale. Year Nine-Two-Nine. The particle 29

Solomon driver prototype. Real Time.” Images of Beale, or a man supposed to be Beale, rolled round the skin, accompanied by tinny narration. “Solo. Jack the Ripper. London, England. September Seventh, 1888. 2300 hours.” A dark foggy night. The Group were standing on a sidewalk bordering a narrow cobblestone street, facing a cul-de-sac. Dripping brick buildings loomed to either side, lit fitfully by lamps that seemed to tilt with the perspective. A heavily made-up woman was sauntering toward them, her low white dress clinging, a nervous smile on her flushed cockney face. She came up to Izzy and Amantu swinging her little sequined purse, her eyes sparkling. When she was almost upon them a man stepped between them from behind, kissed her once, clamped a hand over her mouth and cleanly slit her throat. As though in a dance, he swept her into an alley between two dirty gray buildings. “Solo. Break.” Izzy looked away. “Bloody little world you dug up.” Mack studied Amantu through his eyelashes. “So tell me, Professor, in all your research have you ever come across the name Sam Butcher?” “Unfamiliar,” Amantu admitted. “How about the Hard Left? The Messiah Commission? The Black Days?” “That—” Amantu said excitedly. “‘Black Days!’ Mentioned frequently in recall sessions. You can access such an event?” “Solo. The Black Days. Winter of 2118.” He looked up, annoyed. “Anywhere. Surprise me.” A different street, a different hemisphere, another century. It was the dead of night. Orion’s belt winked cheerlessly on the overhead skin. The projected road was deserted, the neighborhood gutted. Every house was shut down, the streetlamps shot out. But in the distance could be seen several torches, approaching slowly, accompanied by the barks and whines of savage dogs. “Not safe to walk alone,” Mack commented. “Dangerous for the military also.” He began to pace and, eerily, the domed enclosure appeared to roll right along. “Anyone in a uniform was likely as not to have his brains blown out or his legs chewed off. This was real guerilla warfare. Solo. Stop.” The entire projection froze instantly. Stars ceased blinking, torches became orangey spikes of light. In this mode the tongues of flame lost their natural look, turning into tiny serrated prominences with obvious peaks and shelves. Conversely, the stars no longer showed their characteristic atmospheric winking. They were positive-value pinpricks; ice-cold holes in the electromagnetic field. “Over four hundred years ago, the Eastern and Western Hemispheres were engaged in a bloody war that employed the oceans, the atmosphere, and eventually space itself. Back then there was something known as ‘hard copy,’ which meant that records were stored materially. Believe it or not, most data could be accessed by just about anybody. Much of that data was unclassified, of course—homely stuff for basic education and entertainment. But it was right out in the open, and these continents’ borders were so porous your best friend could easily have been your worst enemy; at one time it was estimated that the ratio of citizen-to-foreign agent was roughly one-to-one. Our enemies were communicating internally by a method known as ‘effacement.’ In this process, bound leaves of paper are subtly graven in a manner invisible to the naked eye, but readily picked out by a trained agent. All a man had to do was go to a ‘library’ or ‘newspaper rack,’ locate an adroitly dogeared ‘book’ or ‘newspaper,’ and use a special, pressure-sensitive cloth to obtain orders or pass on intelligence. 30

Solomon “Our solution was to scan all data, then destroy every bit of the old hard copy. Logic held that saved public-use data could be reprinted at war’s end, while classified data remained encrypted. But by war’s end technology had perfected scrollers and IBCs. The average man had access to more information than all the world’s universities and museums combined. Hard copy had become obsolete. “Now, I’m telling you this because it pertains strongly to what you’re about to learn. That original hard copy held historical data accrued from the dawn of civilization. It was the written record of all that we are, and the sacred history of ancient peoples in the Eastern Hemisphere. Our laws and mores were built around the worship of their divinity. Citizens were tortured, armies perished. Whole states rose and fell in the name of this imaginary ruler.” “Here we go again! And just when I thought we were getting real.” “I didn’t say it was real, Josh. I said it was imaginary.” “Then,” demanded Amantu, “you are claiming that international conflict, rather than plaguedriven insanity, was responsible for these Black Days. You are prepared to prove this?” “There is no plague, Professor, and insanity is insanity. The history we’ve grown up with is a lie. You’re all free to watch and come to your own conclusions. Consider this my New Year’s gift.” “Then drop the divinity hogwash, and let’s just relax and enjoy ourselves. We’re not rubes, Ti. And as far as your new toy goes, blaze away. But bear in mind that a lifetime of practical experience will never be undone by a roomful of clever imaging.” “Examine these records for yourself, Josh. You’ll see that a whole continent full of schemers couldn’t produce all the data Solomon can access. It would take millennia—damn it, it did take millennia!” He poked a cocky forefinger at the professor’s chest. “I’m telling you, ‘Hammer,’ you and I’ll become the best of friends. You’ll have a blast here; the same jaw-dropping joyride I’ve been on for months. Solo. The Black Death. Overhead Sweep.” And the room was all azure sky, with two hundred feet of apparent air where the floor used to be. Miles and miles of rolling countryside made up the seeming far-below. A quiet world; just primitive villages, winding dirt roads, and woods interspersed with hills and streams. A few walled cities could be seen, heavily guarded by sentries. Adjoining roads were blockaded or dug up. “Over a thousand years ago,” Mack went on, “our forebears had a plague of their own. The disease that depopulated the world below us was of the bubonic-pneumonic variety. I’ve seen fields littered with the corpses of cattle and sheep, houses deliberately burned to the ground, carts porting bloated human remains. I had Solomon cross-reference the A/V with subsequent related clusters. Rat fleas were the vectors. Back then sanitation was a terrible problem, and medicine practically nonexistent. Solo. The ‘Satellite Frays.’ Deep Zoom. Fast Motion.” The chamber was now a hemispheric module in the upper stratosphere, with the visual panorama and technological feel of an orbiting observation station. The infinite black grandeur, brilliant with a billion white stars, was eclipsed by a dizzying video game-like battle between batteries of globular satellites. Mirror-plated orbiters took hits, automatically spun to return fire, spun back. This was a robotic war, viewed at an accelerated rate. True to the absence of a medium, the crystal-clear visual was absolutely soundless. “Solo. Ground Zero, Hiroshima, August Sixth, 1945. Real Time. Zoom Out.” A piece of sun shot up from a coastal city and blew out into a hot smoky umbrella. There came a blinding flash that did not blind, followed by a stunning rumble that grew into a tidal roar. A raging 31

Solomon wall of water swallowed the room as if it were a sea polyp. And, though it sounded for all the world like a giant had just stepped on the place, the contents of the room were entirely unaffected. “Solo. Break.” Mack spun around. “What did I tell you!” Abel shook his head sadly. “1945? Come on, Ti. Why not 9945?” “Balls descending!” Izzy wheezed. “Could’ve swear. Entire city . . . wipe out!” Amantu faced his host critically. “I am unclear. How does all this pertain to your summons of yesterday? I will concede to a genuine fascination with the visual proceedings. However, this is not history. It is an impertinent series of sophisticated projections, which, albeit convincing in their breadth and drama, titillate without validation.” “But this is history, Professor. I didn’t bring you all the way out here just for a light show. And as to pertinence; every fact, no matter how insignificant, pertains to every other fact.” Mack drummed his fingers on the drink stand. “Look, let me take you guys back—all the way to the dawn of actual history. Not that history recorded by scribes and geologists, but to the Original recall event; a calamity so devastating it became imprinted for good in our collective consciousness. It was,” Mack said, “our first great memory as a species.” He nodded. “Solo. The Deluge. Step Back ten seconds and Stand in Still Motion until Mark.” The skin was washed in daylight. The phantom horizon expanded. And expanded, and expanded; adding layers of apparent distance in zooms meted out hexadecimally. The theater of Solomon was now a primitive, temperate arena that went on forever in every direction. “To all appearances we are standing in the Eastern Hemisphere, in Northern Africa, in a vast basin that prehistoric man, had he the wits about him, would have designated the Mediterranean Valley. It’s the place where we started; the cradle of man. We’d barely gone from grunts to syllables, but we were true men, not progenitors. Here’s where homo sapiens sapiens tribalized, under a fair sky, with no end to tomorrow. Sorry, fellows. Civilization didn’t break out in the Upper West, fostered by a line of secular scientists under the happiest of circumstances. “In the Mediterranean the potential was limitless. Gathering accommodated hunting. There were laws, there were taboos, there were incentives for growth; intellectual, spiritual, economic. As mammals we grouped, and as men we expanded. As a tribe we extended to the very limits of that great valley. “One day the Inevitable caught up with us. The Atlantic Ocean had been worrying at the Valley’s natural western barrier for millennia. It was eaten away only gradually, of course, but the tide pool became a seething reservoir. Something had to give, and when it did it was on a scale grand even by terran standards.” Mack turned to the west skin. “Gentlemen. I suggest you hang onto your bladders. Solo. Mark.” Immediately the room filled up with the sound of thunder. The floor seemed to pound away like a thrashing beast, though the Group’s feet remained firmly planted. Even the sky appeared to shake. Then, almighty spectacle, a wide blue horror came crashing out of the west. Walls of water flew hundreds of feet high, left and right, so vast they appeared to leap along in slow motion. When the howling monster arrived, the impression of impact was so realistic it all but knocked the Group off their feet. “Solo. Stop!” The observatory was swallowed up in blue. But not a static blue. All around the men, pixel streaks showed a frozen turmoil, electronically indicating air displaced, earth dispatched, fluid 32

Solomon dispelled. “Solo. Zoom out. Deep Overview, Wide Pan. Fast Motion Times Ten.” All that blue was instantly replaced by air. The planet fell away with a sound like air through a straw, atmospheric particulates appearing to granulate in the rapid remapping of data. The Group stood in apparent suspension, staring down between their feet. Mack’s zodiacal floor showed the Mediterranean Valley, now partitioned by unsteady lines of grid, irresistibly on its way to becoming the Mediterranean Sea. They watched the brown-and-green basin being covered by an inching blue carpet, even at this rate looking like it would take forever. Their narrator’s voice was dreamlike. “The human race was nearly extinguished. Only those folks nearest the rim had time to get out. They spread across the virgin land; over the ages those in the north growing fairer due to the higher latitudes, those moving down the African continent developing darker characteristics. The ones migrating eastward retained our basic stock’s brownness and propensity to swart. But the catastrophe was firmly established in our subconscious. In almost all cultures there exists this legend of a Great Flood, which destroyed the ‘World.’ Also, there are innumerable references to obliterated fabulous sites; among them an ‘Eden,’ likely man’s first homestead, and an island called ‘Atlantis’ that was forever submerged. The big exception to these ensconced Flood fables is the Orient, which developed collaterally.” Mack looked into Amantu’s eyes. “Professor Amantu, cultural recall is a hybrid phenomenon; a combination of a): evolutionary changes brought about in the brain as a special extension of the self-preservation instinct, and b): mental adaptation coerced by tribal lore enforced over generations.” Amantu nodded appreciatively. “Solo. The ‘Holy Land’.” The scene “below” instantly shifted to the Mediterranean Sea’s easternmost crescent. “What we’re now observing is far more recent; a scant twenty-five centuries ago. It’s the roots of Western commercial civilization. There were two superpowers; in the north an empire known as Babylonia, and to the south the great dynastic state of Egypt. Solo. Highlight.” The mentioned waveclusters took on an amber glow. “The natural trade route was a thin strip of land between the Mediterranean on our left, and that blue line to the right, the Dead Sea. “In those days there were wooly ruminants known as ‘sheep,’ used both for their wool and as food. Their handlers were called ‘shepherds.’ One of these shepherds, a man named Abram, took up husbandry on that strip of land and became the patriarch of several tribes called ‘Israel’—and there’s the origin of our dear bobbing colleague’s name. Well, as you can imagine, these tribes were not amenable to those superpowers’ commercial flux, nor were they about to move. When things got sticky, the Egyptian kingpin neatly solved the problem by relocating Abram’s entire clan to a prison in Babylonia. There they were left to rot, an utterly vanquished people, for nigh on fifty years. But while there, their jailers entertained them with a crude old Babylonian legend about a so-called ‘Messiah’.” Here Amantu had to object. “Sir—” “Please, Hammer. Just call me Ti.” The professor seethed. “Sir, forgive me, but I find this line of expression dangerously close to snatching.” Mack took a swallow and emphatically shook his head. “Uh-uh, my friend. No. I beg your patience; I’m simply defining the mindset directly responsible for the illusion we labor under today. 33

Solomon Nobody will be snaught on my watch. As it stands, I’m already condensing like crazy.” He blew out a sigh. “Now, when those prisoners were released, they yearned only to return to their homeland. A great leader named Moses—and there’s your bid, Professor—shepherded them thereto, and represented them in their further misadventures with the head Egyptian. They claimed an elite status with their divinity, decried the Egyptian’s divinity as a dirty fraud, and insisted their almighty divinity could whip the Egyptian’s puny divinity any day of the week. “Okay. In due time a great empire called Rome dominated affairs around the Mediterranean. By then Abram’s diehard descendants had established grazing states that were in direct conflict with the imperial Roman political system. These were some barbaric times. The homesteaders were subjected to all kinds of unmentionable persecutions. “A local prophet, their ‘messiah,’ attained great fame as an orator. Since his series of sermons were uncompromisingly system-damning, the empire made a particularly tragic example of him. As I said, these were barbaric times. It was all too much for this proud, much-subjugated people. Unable to retaliate militarily, they capitalized on their prophet’s execution by propagating stories of a divine connection, and proclaimed their people would rise in his name and, with the supernatural legerdemain of their wrathful God, appropriate the planet in his honor. “Gentlemen, this campaign was no caprice. It reigned for over twenty-one centuries, in the process shaking governments, felling armies, and radically altering uncountable lives. Solo. The Second Crusade.” In an instant a ragtag army was trudging through the observatory, leading trains of marchers, followers, and pack animals without end. Several naked and scourged individuals were shouldering wooden crosses ten feet high and half as broad. “Solo. Tomas de Torquemada.” The blink of an eye, and an old man in dark robes was standing in the Group’s midst, watching dispassionately while a screaming woman burned at the stake in a walled dirt field. The skin’s phantom horizon produced throbbing checkerboard patterns where flames rose above the crude wall into sunlight. There was a brief and very chilly interlude, when the inquisitor turned and appeared to glare at Amantu. False firelight made his wizened face a splotchy death mask. “Solo. Flagellants. A specimen.” A pack of frenzied men danced around the room, flogging themselves with whips, slats, and birch rods. They screamed hysterically while flailing, tossing their heads like demented children. It was hard to tell if they were enjoying the ritual or merely crying out for the attention of their peers. “Solo. Break.” Abel shook his head in the familiar soft white light. “You’ve shown us nothing, Ti. All we’ve seen is a freak show reminiscent of a thousand carrier tales.” But Mack just smiled. “Izzy, do you think you could manage another tray?” He called up chairs and cigars. “There’s stuff to munch on in the galley, and Solomon’ll run the heat or air if it gets uncomfortable. The lavatory’s right through that port, so if anybody’s gotta go, please do so now. Because this is just about to get interesting.”

34

Chapter Five History Lesson When the butts were situated and the tumblers all tall, Mack buffed his palms and turned to Amantu. “Now for the main event. This is especially for you, Hammer. But even if Solomon’s data comes off as incredible, I think it’s safe to say we’ll all agree that the experience is worth our full and erudite attention.” Abel’s eyes gleamed. “And I think it’s safe to say we expected nothing less.” “Solo. Samuel Obadiah Butcher. The Republican Convention of 2116. Still Motion.” The skin immediately reconfigured. The men were now standing in an apparent chamber of four right-angled apparent walls ninety feet apart: Mack’s roomy observatory had become a packed auditorium. A thousand black-robed, black-brimmed statues were crammed inside this huge teakand-mahogany image of a room, each one mesmerized by a gaunt, fierce-eyed elderly man behind a cruciform podium on a backlit stage. “Sam Butcher,” Mack said evenly. “The Republican Party’s man of the hour. Raised in a famous evangelical family, ‘The Barnstorming Butchers,’ as I recall. Born entertainer, stand-up orator, and multimillionaire at forty. As patriarch of a bay-to-cape web of Faith Families, he attacked the Americas’ moral decay with venom and resolve.” “Ven-ge . . .” Izzy sputtered. “I . . . gevenny . . . what? Clarify, man! Even-who-ical?” “Evangelical. Back-formation of the word ‘angel,’ meant to signify a supernatural agent of the pre-Colonial divinity. Evangelists were the forerunners of our modern snatchers. But this was way before telepresence. The evangelism of Butcher’s day was a perfectly legal system promoting the tenets of a globally-accepted supreme being’s teaching, complete with aggressive campaigning and ritualistic behavior.” Abel slapped his knees. “Oh, please.” “Now wait a minute, AJ. These people were sincere. What’s more, they were desperate. 35

History Lesson There’d been a deep schism in the machinery of democracy for forty years, with liberals and conservatives leaning ever farther from the middle; the left wing becoming the Hard Left and the right wing the Hard Right, the former growing deliberately dirtier in retaliation to the vaunted spotlessness of the latter. Our political system was in civil war. And with the election nearing, fully half the population were ready to fight to the death for Mister Butcher here, while the other half were rowdily impassioned over their candidate. Solo. Harry Riser. Two hours later. Still Motion.” The black-garbed statues dissolved like men of foam. In their place arose an equal number of men and women, all outrageously coiffed and costumed. Many were nearly naked, wearing only scraps of fleshtone underwear strung with bizarrely-dyed feathers and lewdly-shaped baubles. By their posture it was evident they’d been captured in a highly suggestive dance. Up onstage, a chubby beaming man posed like a gaudy gift to humanity. “Harry Riser was a gadabout, a publicity hound and, well, quite frankly, a flaming homosexual. He represented a popular interpretation of the constitution that equates liberty with license—as though the meaning of a free society is getting away with all you can. There’s no doubt that under any other circumstances he and his hedonistic circus would have been laughed into obscurity, but the Hard Right represented something that, to freemen everywhere, was even more unpalatable: the utter annihilation of that hard-won liberty. A week before the election the consensus was plain: the Left was going to win in a landslide. Sam Butcher was shouted down and threatened, his speeches parodied and his platform ridiculed. At the close of the campaign he was all but impotent.” Izzy considered the crowd through his glass, his head rocking left and right. “But . . . Gad, man! Was no—middle ground?” “None. The pendulum had swung too far. Now skip a beat. Mysterious rumors surface alleging improprieties between Riser and a retarded boy; a boy whose mother boasted a red-letter reputation with congressmen and various welfare personnel. Although this woman is reported receiving a million dollars from unnamed sources before evaporating from public view, it’s already too late for Riser. A kind of tribal rage against child molestation takes the mind of man and media. Rider is hounded, assaulted, placed under full Secret Service protection. The Butcher camp leap on the moment like piranha. Sam’s eleventh-hour slogan trembles on every lip: ‘Cop or con, man or child; no one likes a pedophile!’ Riser is consigned to the bowels of history. Solo. Harry Riser. Two days Forward. Real Time.” An instant later the men were outdoors. All those dancing statues had been replaced by a wildly screaming mob of frenetic projections, blowing in and out of focus as they ran. Fists passed through Abel’s and Amantu’s gaping faces while Izzy scrambled under nonexistent feet. The din-andflurry was so realistic it all but obscured a phalanx of riot police fighting to escort a haunted-looking Riser to safety. “Solo. Break.” Mack clasped his hands behind his back and absently watched his guests recover. “Now, Butcher did win the presidency, but less by electoral college than by acclamation. As things turned out, we’d all have been a lot better off if they’d just stuck with Riser. “Sam was a born showman with a tremendous ego. His speeches became sermons, his Oval Office objections outright chastisements. He turned the highest office on the planet into his personal pulpit. This was too much for the Senate and House. “Butcher was impeached, found mad, and removed unto the wailing bereavement of over a 36

History Lesson billion ‘Little Butchers.’ His Vice bailed out right behind him. The interim rule of the House Speaker was so deliberately neutral the man was nicknamed the ‘Plain Vanilla President.’ “Butcher began wandering across the country, preaching from the stage of a motorized sound system. Solo. The ‘Soul Tsunami.’ Overhead Zoom. Real Time.” The skin’s phantom horizon gave way to hills crawling with people. The Group again received the distinct impression of observing from on high, though their feet remained in direct contact with Mack’s floor. The big difference between this scene and Solomon’s Black Death rendition was the level of activity—the mob ‘below’ was beyond belief; blue hills black with millions of followers, all crammed about the tiny creeping dot that was the rolling stage bearing Samuel Obadiah Butcher. The Group could hear him hollering over a powerful public address system; of repentance and remittance, of demons slain in virtuous battle. “Sam knew how to hold a crowd; he used repetition to keep them in a trancelike state. This was one of the oldest tricks in the evangelical book. Listen to how he uses a simple sing-song phrase, ‘Oh Soul,’ to control pheromonal output and blood pressure. Solo. Locate a Tsunami Chant. Enhance the Butcher audio file.” The scene shifted to late afternoon. Now Butcher’s voice came through with exceptional clarity, while the mass responses of the crowd sounded as though on a separate track. “Oh Soul of the burning night!” “Oh Soul!” “Oh Soul of the deepest sea!” “Oh Soul!” “Oh Soul, do we, cry un-to thee!” “Oh Soul! Oh Soul! Oh Soul!” Mack was noting his friends’ puzzled expressions while the chant progressed. “Solo. Stop.” The mob froze, though its rhythm and passion still filled the room. “A ‘soul’,” Mack explained, “was a supposed entity, non-corporeal, that departed a cadaver to join the divinity in its otherworldly domain. It was essentially one’s consciousness, freed from the unclean body for purification in an ‘afterlife.’ A neat trick if you can pull it off: mental immortality. As expressed in Tsunami philosophy, ‘soul of’ meant the deity itself; kind of a universal entelechy.” Abel laughed appropriately, but Amantu mused, “Rather like a signature, albeit one infused with self-will.” Mack kneaded his chin. “Y’know, Hammer, you’re a funny guy. A dynamic signature!” He winked at Abel. “Anyway, to stir up this kind of feeling was to waken a potentially wild animal, one that could go into stampede-mode at the drop of a hat. So from their earliest barnstorming days the Butchers had kept an ensemble of bodyguards; as much family as employees. By the time of the Tsunami, Sam was abundantly aware of his own mortality. Solo. Zoom in on Security. Real Time.” Solomon instantly magnified a bare ring surrounding the slowly proceeding stage. Within this ring were hundreds of burly men, stepping back and forth, turning on their toes while staring into the crowd with looks of exaggerated menace. Security wore black shovel hats, very dark sunglasses, plush sable-lined parkas, black paratrooper pants, black combat boots. Each sloping hat bore a slender white cross emblazoned on its crown. Continuing this theme were bolo ties designed to resemble long white dangling crucifixes over black rayon dress shirts. Whenever these men turned, and they turned often, similar bone-white crosses could be seen running down the backs of their 37

History Lesson parkas; vertical beams corresponding to spines, horizontals to outstretched arms. “Mark well those men. They, and their descendants, play a pivotal role in the fun to come. “Everywhere Butcher paused, this astounding entourage halted with him. Whole cities erupted on these sites, bearing strange names like Davidtown, Miracle House, Jericho Junction. Some still exist. That entourage included media of every level and caliber, National Guardsmen and special agents, sympathizers and camp followers, the dysfunctional and the dispossessed. And, thanks to those media, the details of his movements spread like wildfire. Finally Butcher, claiming to be directed by a voice on high, staked his claim in an area known as Kentucky, now the Colony-proper’s dead-center. He named this area New Nazareth, and it became a magnet for millions upon millions of citizens from every coast. There was no way on earth to take care of sanitation in such a situation. A hardy breed of field rat came out of the hills and ran rampant in the garbage and half-buried fecal matter. Sexually-transmitted diseases went unchecked. The place began to look more like a battlefield than a mass celebration, and soon death walked boldly among the faithful. The Guard and Crosses worked heroically, the rats were fought with cleavers and gate wire, but in the end it was Butcher’s charisma that held everybody together. The worse it got, the more they saw Sam as their savior. These were some odd times. In all major cities, his supporters erected supply lines, darkened the windows of their houses, and walked around dressed entirely in black, making no secret of their allegiance. At the same time, perfectly stable citizens were quitting their jobs and selling their homes, packing up their families and joyously crossing the country to support the Tsunami. Solo. Break.” The lights came up. “Gentlemen, this was no fad or public caprice. So far as the government was concerned, the Soul Tsunami’s mass migration was tantamount to anarchy.” Mack stabbed a forefinger in the air to make his points. “Minimally, its effects were a staggered economy, a breakdown of law and order, and a dramatic increase in civil polarization. “The Hard Left’s abiding resentment over Riser’s foiling, and their burning hatred of the Little Butchers’ haughty divinity-worship, grew into a cult, the cult into a movement, and the movement into a crusade. There were some despicable beatings of those black-draped followers, right in public. Their children were ostracized, their wives ridiculed and sexually assaulted. Then in 2118, on a special divinity-holiday known as ‘Christmas,’ a coast-to-coast coalition of university students, goaded by rage, pharmaceuticals, and peer pressure, introduced a digital virus into every municipal mainframe. This virus, the so-called ‘Messiah Bug,’ instantly deleted every reference to religion. The divinity-worshippers’ overpowering word of history and law, a two thousand year-old tome known as ‘Bible,’ was wiped from the annals of history in a heartbeat. “My friends, it’s impossible to overstate the effect this single act had upon millions and millions of human beings. Beyond outrage, beyond violation, beyond imagination—the record of all they believed and prized . . . gone! After an interim of shock the faithful went berserk, attacking anyone in uniform. They felt that the system, and that technology itself, were somehow to blame— that the government, having transferred all hard copy into a digital format, was directly responsible for the complete loss of their profound teaching. All over the continent, appliances in general, and digital devices in particular, were attacked with great vengeance. Fueled by religious sermons on every street corner, mobs dressed entirely in black stormed archives and governmental offices, smashing to pieces all equipment responsible for data storage and manipulation . . . for filtration, for power, for sewage. Officials—even minor bureaucrats—were torn limb from limb, buildings were 38

History Lesson burned to the ground. In their frenzy the faithful destroyed the foundation of their very survival. “When word of the tome’s deletion reached New Nazareth, the Little Butchers went through various stages of denial and hysteria before breaking down completely. Butcher himself collapsed as though struck by lightning. Once recovered, he claimed to have undergone some kind of subliminal interview with the divinity, who told him that prayer must not be a meek mumbling but a ‘begging outcry.’ And ‘prayer,’ in this context, means a vocal attempt to attract a busy divinity’s attention. So the heart of New Nazareth bleated out its plaint, and the fringes joined in. The urgency went out in waves, until it seemed that every North American voice was involved. Throats were screamed bloody raw, women swooned, elderly men died in their passion. “One night not long after, a divine vision appeared in New Nazareth for a period of just over eleven seconds before vanishing altogether. But it was enough to convince the Little Butchers that Sam was their ‘New Messiah,’ which meant he was, practically speaking, an heir in the divine line, essentially a second son of the divinity itself. Butcher thereupon wandered off in a trance, his path cleared by hundreds of thousands of scrabbling men and women. With millions more hard on his heels, he staggered up to Crystal Cave, the mouth of a vast underground caverns system, known, preColony, as Mammoth. Standing in a sea of jabbering humanity, Sam informed a breathless world by video that his deity had ordered him to produce a new divine literature in their beloved old, centuries-tested hard copy, complete with an updated set of laws and admonitions. This work-ofworks was to be known as the New Faith, and its word was to be absolute, with Butcher’s interpretation final. Additionally he, Samuel Obadiah Butcher, had been divinely-directed to select a body of assistants. Solo. Crystal Cave. Mark. Zoom out. Still Motion.” From an apparent rise some two hundred yards off the Mammoth entrance, the Group watched Butcher standing in a pose of beatific submission, his arms thrown high. So sensitive to human viewpoint was Solomon that the contemporary observers were aligned in perfect juxtaposition with the proximate projections, as opposed to those seemingly-smaller figures in the “distance.” At this magnification there were already thousands upon thousands of men and women squeezed about the Group, their eyes and hands raised passionately. “Zoom Out times ten.” The breadth of vantage increased tenfold, showing countless ever-tinier people cascading to the cave’s mouth, now a black pinprick in the hills. “Times one hundred.” At this point the Group were staring from high upon a relief map, yet still swallowed up by raving humanity. Butcher and his new inner circle were but mist. “You see what I mean? This is the effect religion had on people. Solo. Zoom in. Slow Clock at Mark.” The perspective rocketed back to Mark, whereupon the imagery moved along at a retarded rate. Butcher was turning in slow motion, a thousand men and women in his wake. The women were all very comely, the men strapping and intimidating. The mouth of Crystal Cave, really an antechamber to the staggering Mammoth Caverns system, was blockaded by Butcher’s security. Their uniform had evolved to meet the leader’s heady status. The men now wore hooded black leather trench coats with elongated white crosses on the arms, fronts, and backs. Black leather gloves, heavily studded black belts, black steel-toed boots. The same huge shades covered their eyes, and the same white crosses showed on the fronts of their hoods, but now white paint representing vertical crossbeams ran down the faces, foreheads-to-throats, and, in like fashion representing horizontal crossbeams, across the mouths to the ears. “Solo. Break. These people accompanying Butcher were to be his personal attendants while he 39

History Lesson undertook the awesome task of dictating the divinity’s mighty word. He led them into a dark and dangerous world, courageously calling out platitudes to an unseen deity, his arms encumbered by a pair of blank flat stones. The rats followed them down. “Conditions were deplorable. Unfettered by the regulations of civilization, the baser aspects of human nature quickly took hold. The caverns became savage cloistered arenas, and Sam little more than a cartoonish father figure. Torches contributed a fearsome ambience, injuries went untreated, sickness and claustrophobia brought many to the brink of insanity. At the entrance, Security assured the anxious multitude that everything downstairs was just dandy, and stomped the daylights out of anybody who got too curious. Food came down in a fairly steady stream, but the scraps were thrown into miscellaneous passages to rot, and any old hole served for a toilet. As the diseases of antiquity reemerged, the dying were left screaming in the dark. The rats grew bolder. In time a cult of the rat grew, blending almost seamlessly with the ancient religious tenets Butcher had been trying so hard to preserve. Even though he was grandstanding bravely, everybody knew he was scared out of his wits. He realized he’d have to resurface eventually, and knew, too, that when he did he’d better have something pretty damned impressive to show the impatient millions. What he didn’t know is that blind fate will always trump blind faith.

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Chapter Six Madame Rat “By now Sam was well into his eighties. His joints were wracked, his bowels shot, his mind going. But he was, after all, a man. The women he brought down with him were selected for their sexual attractiveness, as well as for their pliability. And he was a very, very scared little man. The males he’d picked were the biggest and dumbest he could find. Sam was counting on their loyalty, but in due course progressive senility made him clinically paranoid; afraid of his circle, afraid of the dark, afraid of his own security men. And, more than anything, deathly afraid of the next showing of his deity. Solo. The Honeycomb Heart. Still Motion.” The observatory’s interior became a deep stone vault lit by standing torches, their eerie peaked flames frozen in space and time. On a rock stage stacked with rat skulls sat a decrepit, weary Sam Butcher, the picture of profound depression, surrounded by black-robed men holding black-leaved manuscripts with black-dyed covers made of human parchment. Behind these men, soot-painted nude women could be seen in apparent pantomime, their arms thrown out and their heads tossed back. The scene in front of that stage was a paused full-blown orgy; naked men and women flung on the dirt floor, their glistening flesh smeared with fresh soot. Others were chained to the walls or heaped semiconscious on the stage. Caught in the act of wading through all these bodies were Butcher’s security men, whips and prods in their beefy gloved fists. Their black cloaks had evolved to meet the circumstances; they were now full-length hooded affairs with elastic bands that kept the faces prominent, and featured bone-white crosses down the chests, backs, and limbs. That white facial paint had expanded to cover the entire face, making Security’s visages, with those ominous dark glasses now like eye sockets, uncannily similar to death’s heads. “Here the New Messiah held court, haunted by demons and doubts and the natural afflictions of the aged. And here he handed down the edicts he claimed were set forth by the divinity, while his conspiring circle of disciples—that somber group of barefooted men standing round him in the black 41

Madame Rat hooded cloaks—entered his ravings in the secret ink of urine on the Black Book’s leaves, freely mistranslating as they went along. Those brawny men with the prods and lashes are the elite remnants of his old security team, the infamous ‘Butcher’s Butchers,’ seen here engaged in their holy work and favorite pastime: torturing those made demented by religious fervor. These guys’ predecessors were recruited from prize fighters and heavyweight wrestlers; even in his early postbarnstorming days Butcher was fearful enough to require a measure of viciousness in his protection. When he reached icon-status he had to turn over the job of hiring to team members themselves, and they engaged in recruitment tactics that were all-out contests of strength and violence. Underground competitions—fights to the death—were initially held for the New Messiah’s sake, then as gory entertainments to gratify the Butchers’ own egos and sick tribal impulses. Solo. Real Time.” The women began to dance and writhe. The torches’ flicking umbrae slid across their painted curves. Security plucked up random souls and punched them back down, engrossed by a strangely methodical form of brutality. “At this point it was still important to keep up an imperious front. Butcher took his pesthole’s loveliest crawler for queen; a petite, pallid, manipulative brunette temptress he pet-named ‘Little Mother,’ but who was known by the inmates as Black Mary. To please her, and to justify their intimacy, he had her written into the New Faith as his divinely-graced personal bodyguard. Then, when things got hotter, he proclaimed her the divinity’s chosen executioner. Little Mary took to her task with zeal, using rat fangs as stilettos. This is the origin of all those legends about a plague passer, the underground’s notorious ‘Infector Mater.’ “Butcher fell wildly in love with this little porcelain pervert; demented as she was, demented as they all were. I say ‘pervert’ because the woman was a flat-out masochist, as well as a sadist. She could take as much punishment as she dished out—the one thing she couldn’t take was sentiment. Sam could only gratify her with beatings, which were never quite ferocious enough. The circle were into it, Security were all thumbs-up; the ambience was one hundred percent encouragement. Somewhere in there he lost it completely. Butcher had his little rat-queen nailed to a cross on the divinity-channeling stage. There’s a real symbolism to this act, which I’ll show you guys in a minute. The people took to torturing Mary ritualistically, egged-on by her ecstatic screams. The Honeycomb rapidly evolved into a bloody madhouse. “When Sam couldn’t stand it any longer he took the only out open to him—he went into convulsions, claimed a revelation, and jabbered his way back to the surface. In front of the whole hemisphere he announced that the divinity had commanded him to lead the world in a Final Crusade. Solo. The Upcoming. Still Motion.” And they were back outside, on what must have been a very cold, very dark night. Hundreds of generator-operated searchlights stood trained on Crystal Cave, painting one patch of the skin a brilliant white without increasing the room’s illuminative content a whit. Butcher was crouching amongst countless prostrated black-clothed followers, his arms wrapped round his torso. It didn’t require sound and motion to illustrate the mob’s wracked passion: the faces around the Group were maniacally contorted. “According to the New Messiah, ‘God’ had declared war on the ‘Devil’; the former being his omniscient personal bodyguard, the latter being pretty much everything that didn’t conform to the niceties of Western religion. All technology was to be destroyed, along with everybody not of Butcher’s ‘Divine Phalanx.’ A cushy immortality would come to those who died in righteous battle, 42

Madame Rat eternal damnation to anyone who hesitated. Butcher first commanded that the permanent National Guard encampments around New Nazareth be attacked by his hastily-organized Faith Catapult; really just a mad dash of shrieking followers wielding any weapons they could jerry-rig. Incredulous troops were slaughtered in the frenzy, and many thousands of Butcher’s Catapult mortally injured in the stampede. “The military’s retaliation was swift and panicky. Units of the Army and Air Force cut the faithful down in their tracks, causing an hysterical three-day mass exodus into the bowels of Mammoth.” He inclined his head and said, “Solo.” And they were caught in a riot. The observatory was filled with bright daylight, the air clotted by confused voices, the artificial horizon made fuzzy by the all-out frenzy of uncountable scrabbling followers. Flesh was scraped away by rock as men, women, and children squeezed screaming into Crystal. In the apparent distance, a few fighter jets and half a dozen attack helicopters circled for additional runs. The Group stood riveted as a pair of copters swept over the mob, spewing bullets that left pockets of humanity flopping. Amantu instinctively threw up his arms as a hammering column of lead tore through him and passed. “Back down below,” Mack said while the slaughter raged around them, “Butcher had to fight in the dark. He was a lousy general; almost every command he gave ended in a massacre. Solo. Stop. Meanwhile survivors continued to pile in, one on top of the other. Eventually they blocked off the entrance and turned the place into a wailing asylum. These interconnecting caverns are enormous— according to Solomon over three hundred and fifty miles long, and in some spots deep beyond measure. There were myriad uncharted breaks to the outside world, flues and the like, where locals were able to set up supply lines from the cities by tunneling around troops. Many of these excavations comprise the root system of our present-day Colony. “The Army blew the blocked entrance to grit and poured inside. Butcher’s people retreated one cavern for every lost battle, while he muttered and paced like some lunatic commander in a besieged bunker. Yet despite their New Messiah’s delirium, or maybe because of it, they continued to fight savagely, relying on ambush, a secret code based on echoes, and a selfless will to engage that awed as much as frustrated the advancing soldiers. They were driven back by an antique, gasoline-based gel called ‘napalm.’ No one knew for sure if it was tunnel fever or tacit agreement—and Solomon is unable to pinpoint a direct order for me—but when the faithful were at last pressed into an unbelievably vast blind chamber, which also happened to be a natural crude basin, the troops, who were only to use their napalm as a means of prodding, turned all they had on Butcher and Company, incinerating the lot on the spot. I won’t try your stomachs with that visual. The gale of data produces a highly distorted playback anyway. Solo. The Aftermath. Zoom Out.” New Nazareth on a dreary autumnal morn. Files of body bags on stretchers, winding up a temporary road out of Crystal, en route to a series of makeshift hospitals separated by columns of troop transports. Helicopters hovering like dragonflies. Teams carrying out black-draped crates and litters heaped with miscellaneous items. “All of New Nazareth was placed under quarantine. Uncounted survivors, guerrillas and the like, escaped into the hills, where they took to digging out tunnels in earnest, eventually hooking up with the supply lines and bringing in refugees from the cities. See all those boxes with the black covers? They contain cribs. Secure vaults were discovered in the depths, peopled only by nursemaids watching over infants in black swaddling cloths. Notes, written in urine on soot-coated rags, were 43

Madame Rat pinned to these cloths with messages like, ‘Please let little Nehemiah walk with the Lord,’ et cetera. Solo. Stop.” The grim picture froze. Mack looked at the Group thoughtfully. “Solomon tabulated the body bags, using Fast Motion in a temporal Zoom mode. Forget exactitude: over five million, seven hundred and thirteen thousand were carried out over the course of eleven weeks; all burned beyond recognition. The troops were buried in a hush military ceremony in a place called Virginia, the infants put up for adoption on military bases. Butcher’s followers were interred in various paupers’ cemeteries around the country. It was all highly classified. “The government was hard-pressed for an out, and admission to genocide was definitely not an option. Solo. The Messiah Commission. Still Motion.” Seated at a broad table against the skin’s southern face were seventeen dour men in age breaks measuring middle-aged to quite elderly. At first blush they presented all the appearance of colleagues posing for a group portrait, but closer examination exposed a panel of fuming arbiters going out of their way to avoid one another. “Take a hard look at these very exclusive gentlemen. The commissioners were assigned to find a single, unassailable solution that would mollify the public, exonerate the government, and permanently prevent a recurrence of disaster on this scale. Finally admitting defeat, they narrowly passed a vote to solicit the assistance of a logic program. All pertinent data were entered. The program was unable to process the illogic of faith, but it established the condition of faith as the lynchpin, and demonstrated that this condition’s insane consequences were made inevitable by an ages-old mindset under the mounting pressures of a burgeoning population. The Butcher explosion was cited as merely the initial catastrophe in a projected series of social cataclysms. The only-human commissioners were forced to beg the program for a livable solution, and the program responded in the time it takes to point a cursor: “With Biblical references already deleted from record, with Butcher and his Tsunami followers all carbonized, and with the only people still shouting hosanna quarantined under military guard, the logical step was to delete those quarantined, establish means to obviate further religious influence from outside our borders, and rewrite history—a better history; one without smiting and persecution, one teeming with sane, dispassionate heroes. Something more palatable to subsequent generations. When prodded, the Commission’s new digital tutor even offered up an improved version of reality. It simply removed everything related to religiosity, and left the great works of science and exploration intact. “Yet that removal amounted, cumulatively, to thousands of years. The program, considering the way historical events were chronologically patterned, invented alternate causes and concerns. Prominent contemporary novelists, dramatists, and artists were commissioned to fill in the gaps, and their completed new history is pretty much the one we’ve grown up accepting as factual. “Since the Commission refused to accept the liquidation of Butcher’s followers, the program recommended they remain quarantined. It thereupon invented a mysterious virological factor, what became known as the ‘Messiah Plague,’ to justify an enforced isolation, projecting that, should these ‘carriers’ be allowed to die out naturally, the condition of religiosity would die out with them. In the meantime, the ‘well’ public would be told that the ‘ill’ Colonists’ religious declamations were the natural result of an insidious, but completely contained, brain fever. As stipulated by the program, the government would keep up the necessary propaganda—quashing rumors and caramelizing facts—for 44

Madame Rat as long as it took. According to the culled probability curves, Butcher’s divinity would, in time, go the way of all rabble-rousers. “The vote was seventeen over naught for revision on these terms. “Gentlemen, I’ve come to appreciate the Messiah Commission’s members as genuine heroes. Their regard for the betterment of our species far outweighed their personal wants. And, even though suicide was officially condemned by their deity, they’d made a pact. With the votes tallied, all seventeen sucked cyanide in a black-draped war room made up as a house of worship. “Of course, the dying-out of Butcher’s followers didn’t solve a thing. They’d passed their beliefs onto their children, and when the youngsters grew up they smuggled in new converts from the cities. The Colony developed on its own underground, sequestered and provisioned by the government while it kept up the incurable disease ruse. But it’s a funny thing about time. The brain adjusts beautifully. After centuries of repetition fiction ‘becomes’ truth. Even today, men thought to be snatchers are shot in cold blood by perfectly sincere agents. Mothers still spook their children with stories about carriers under the bed. Drunken teenagers still sneak into the Colony with guns and razors, still tell stories about fights to the death with subterranean zombie armies. Even though the Messiah Plague was yesterday’s news four hundred years ago. “Yet, you know, in the end that damned program was right. Men have come to favor their intellects over their passions. Our children grow up fascinated by the real rather than the imaginary. There’s room for both humor and beauty in the grand mosaic.” Abel pushed himself to his feet. “But, Titus—humor and beauty aside, intellectual honesty prevents my accepting this notion of citizens wreaking havoc on their own civilization. Show me a war, show me a campaign—show me any time in history where so many people have behaved so violently in concert.” “You’ve got to absorb the psychological impact of this Bible-expunging thing, AJ. Imagine, as a comparison, all science wiped out, without the least vestige of evidence to show for centuries of heroic research.” “New calculations could be made. New heroes would arise.” Mack nodded, more to himself than to the room. “Well, there was one thing the Commission hadn’t counted on, one thing the program wasn’t able to deal with, one thing even Samuel Butcher wasn’t ready for. As a matter of fact, millions upon millions of vigilant men and women were caught completely off guard.” “Of course they were.” Abel’s teeth glinted under the house lights. “And that would have been . . . because?” “Do you remember that vision I mentioned earlier, the one that precipitated Sam’s abrupt elevation to Messiah-hood? Solo. Vision One. Real Time. Full Pan, Short Zoom. Observer’s Vantage, two-second delay.” And they were back outdoors on a black, searchlight-shredded night, locked elbow-to-elbow in a mob that stretched as far as the skin could capture. Now an incredible din—some kind of singsong chant—was cut off mid-verse. The projections surrounding the Group jerked to the northwest, their eyes bugged-out and their jaws hanging. As though choreographed, men and women on all sides immediately and simultaneously fell to their knees. The effect went out in the motion of ripples. Within seconds, projections horizon-to-horizon were flat on their bellies, facing a skull-shaped hill two hundred apparent-yards to the Group’s left. In a hastily-cleared space atop that hill leaned a 45

Madame Rat watery, free-standing shape. The figure was indisputably that of a man, as opposed to something manlike; the limbs were of human proportions and the bearing upright, though the spread arms and limp digits gave it an impression more of hanging than standing. Knees were closed, the pelvis sunken, the chin resting on the chest at a bad angle. It was a posture of complete submission to suffering, of spirit crushed, of life run out. In the area of the head could be seen spikes corresponding to rigid tufts, or perhaps to brambles or shards. The only indication of clothing was a series of lateral planes suggesting a rude cloth around the region of the loins. The phantom glowed dully in the night, so unstable it looked like it would phase out at any moment. Two seconds later it was hit by a hundred searchlight beams. “Solo. Stop.” Standing knee-deep in groveling humanity, Mack turned to Abel and said, “Because, Josh, it sure as hell looks like old Sam delivered.”

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Chapter Seven Visions Mack swept his arm at the hilltop phantom, stepping through bodies as he turned back. “The anomaly came up pretty much by accident. I was monitoring what looked like a night rally, watching Sam scream himself hoarse on his big old sound stage. For all his frailty and advanced age, the man was an absolutely spellbinding orator. Fully swallowed up in bleating humanity, and still able to make himself heard. Phenomenal. “That object appeared just as he was peaking. I say ‘object’ because I don’t know what else to call it—it doesn’t read normally. Every time Solomon puts out a seek, it pops up somewhere else around the planet, without any conformity to time or space; at least not as I understand them. We’ve followed it down through the ages, and seen awesome things: vintage warfare, natural calamities, odd movements of man and machine. More than that. To the bowels of prehistory, to the Cretaceous Age. Deeper. We’ve been all the way to the solar system’s formation, just piggy-backing along with this thing. Solo. Resume.” The apparition seemed to flicker in the searchlights’ beams. A second later it was gone. After a goose-pimpling minute of dead silence, the entire human panorama rose as though from sleep, threw out their million arms, and shrieked with boundless elation. “Solo. Stop.” The sound cut off cleanly. “Soon after, the audio again becomes decipherable. The crowd repeatedly chants the name ‘Jesus,’ as though soliciting the object’s return.” “A contemporary of theirs?” Amantu wondered. “A celebrity, perhaps?” “No, ‘Jesus’ was one of those ‘sacrosanct’ names, forbidden from casual usage during Butcher’s era and, thanks to the Messiah Commission, buried since. I’ve had Solomon crossreference it extensively, and all reads inevitably lead back to that humble little spot of sheep and shepherds. Solo. World Map Overlay. But lose the grid.” 47

Visions The floor disappeared; a room-sized scoop of foundation had just been replaced by apparent space. The skin now appeared backlit and papered blue, with the browns and greens of continents plainly delineated. “The inverse image we’re observing represents the world of two and a half centuries ago. Solo. Show us ‘Galilee’.” The great blue area was sucked aside, leaving a mostly-brown skin. “Jesus lived and died on this patch. He was born of a poor carpenter, and grew up to be one himself. It was a very harsh world back then, more like the Outs than our present, civilized society. Solo. Jordan, Real Time.” A dry plain surrounded by rolling hills under a hanging sun. Half a mile into the phantom horizon, a line of colorfully-robed men led a lazy line of dromedaries across an aching brown desert. “As an adult, Jesus preached a kind of democratic doctrine that didn’t sit at all well with authorities. Branded a fomenter, he was arrested, tried, and executed like a common thief just outside the city walls of a place called Jerusalem. Solo. The Crucifixion of Jesus. Zoom Out, Small Wide.” Four unseen figures on a ragged hillside, the Group cringed while a man wearing only a loincloth and a crown of thorns was nailed to a standing wood cross. His knot of kneeling observers cried out at each new agony, as though taking the blows themselves. Two other men, one on either side, already hung dead or dying. It was a wretched little scene, terribly painful to witness. Only the fact of its apparentness made it at all bearable. “Solo. The Death of Jesus.” Solomon reconfigured the angle of sun, reducing the highlights and extending the shadows. The man on the center cross raised his eyes one last time, spoke a few words and dropped his head. As his body sagged the house lights came back up. “That executed fellow,” Amantu muttered. “Uncannily similar to the figure we observed only minutes ago. Your anomaly—the ghostly thing outside the caves.” Mack’s eyes gleamed. “Solo. Vision One. Still Motion. Zoom in tight.” Night returned under the dome. Thousands upon thousands of prostrate followers were revealed, quadrant by quadrant, as Solomon ordered dense fields of data. The men now stood in that cleared space not two feet from the apparition; a very blurry, life-sized figure of a slumping man with arms raised to the sides and closed knees bent to his right. It was without doubt the crucified prisoner, straight down to the hints of a loincloth and brambly tiara, yet without any sign of a supporting cross. The same hard angle to the fallen chin, the same points of light marking forehead, cheekbone, and nose. There the sternum and ribcage, there and there the kneecaps and outer thighs. Mack and Amantu circled the specter from opposing poles, pondering details. The professor stopped and looked over a misty raised shoulder, directly into Mack’s eyes. “I am at a loss.” “Solo. Analyze.” Mack bowed his head and looked back up. “What we’re studying is unrelated to wavecluster images. This object represents a displacement of waveprints. There’s nothing there.” “Yet now,” Amantu observed coolly, “our nothing has a name. Solo. Cross-reference this projection with the person ‘Jesus of Galilee’.” The skin became a fuzzy curved screen. Innumerable files were partitioned into a hemispherical grid, with each cell instantaneously producing its own sub-grid, and so on. “Solo,” said Mack. “Stop.” The process froze startlingly, leaving the skin with a radiant byteon-white wallpaper. This hard shift produced a strange subliminal effect akin to surfacing from a petit mal, complete with the necessary few seconds’ mental recovery. 48

Visions “Now there’s some history for you, Professor. All these files pertain not only to the personage of Jesus, but to every contiguous datum, including affected persons, parties, and whole populations.” Amantu pulled himself out of it, his voice thick, his tongue a half-step behind his mind. “Then you have done this before.” “Over and over. Extensively. Habitually.” The room was absolutely silent. “Why, sir, am I here?” “To observe. As a scholar and friend. Solo. Resume. Random Thumbnail, Fast Motion.” Maybe a minute’s worth of A/V graphics blew stuttering through the room, jumping centuries, climes, and participants. Women knelt, armies clashed, preachers raved. A dozen cities burned on the skin before Amantu, his brain reeling, barked, “Solo! Stop!” The Group were in a stone hall somewhere, pondering a number of robed men poised like mannequins. Crude furniture, cheap utensils, simple décor; these were aesthetes. One man was frozen in the act of washing another’s feet. Activity had been captured between steps, so that a ghostly transparency pervaded all. The stilted shafts of sun appeared more real than the projected solids. Abel’s eyes burned in the half-light. “Why show us all this carrier rot, Ti? As I see it, you’re defeating your whole point here. These images would indicate an entire race of lunatics—spouting, flailing, and coalescing from Day One. Neither you nor your contraption will ever convince me that homo sapiens was mentally ill until four hundred years ago, when some mindless logic program set us straight.” “I’m not implying illness, AJ. We come from healthy stock.” “You think insanity’s healthy?” “These are the projections of men perfectly sane.” Abel and Izzy exchanged glances. The little psychoanalyst’s jaw was hanging. Now his eyes relit and a slow smirk crept up his face. “Quite.” Mack tried Amantu directly. “We all know Solomon has the answers. Never in the history of thinking man has there been a real opportunity to put to rest the biggest question of all. As our resident historian, I think you should have the honor. What do you say, Professor? Would you like to see what all the brouhaha was about? Go ahead and judge for yourself. Just ask.” Amantu’s head rolled up. There was something peculiarly comforting about the moment. His old programming was dissolving; he could feel it. For the first time in his life he understood the warmth of friendship; not as an annoying entertainment of the masses, but as a shared real-time experience, profound, whimsical, pregnant with memory-becoming. It struck him as a funny and very human thing to do; to accept the implied silly dare and step up to the plate. When he went into his old erect-with-hands-clasped stance this time, he did so with a boyish twinkle in his eyes. Amantu looked into his friends’ expectant faces and said, “All right, colleagues o’mine. I will bite.” He grinned sarcastically. “Solo. Show me ‘God’.” And the monks dissolved, and the skin went white. The moment froze. The world blew in. And there was light.

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Chapter Eight The Honeycomb Mack, realizing what had happened, was first to turn. The Group’s three-man reception committee stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the skin’s breached north face, backed by the wide-open Outs. A filthy rag of a bandage peeked from beneath Micah’s listing hood. “Did I lie?” he crowed, brandishing Abel’s signet gleefully. “She goes ‘Blinkety-blank, blinkety-blank. Bring us hither, lead us yon.’ And so out of the wild we wanders, and into the Citydel we goes.” “He keyed me!” Abel spat. “The son of a bitch keyed me!” Mack clenched his fists and snarled, “You idiots!” He took a huge breath. “Now wait just a minute. You people have no quarrel with us. There’s a bunch of stuff in the bed and lab.” He called back the Messrs Ivory. “This table alone is worth your trouble. Plus, there’s food in the galley, and all the spirits you can handle. Just take what you want and go.” Micah’s jaw dropped. “No quarrel?” He lifted the table with his peeling boot and kicked it sailing across the room. “I’ll give you a quarrel, Barberus! This is all pilfered crap anyway. You’ll pay, and pay sweet, for the trouble what you caused.” He stepped up nose-to-nose with Mack while his mates moved laterally to cover the Group. “The same hilltop. The same first name, the same gang of googly-eyed gapers. But what gived you the right to flit off pretty whilst the good Lord suffered? That’s what’s got me ear up. Could it be you done a rat on him?” He whirled and stuck a finger in Izzy’s face. “You’ll get yours that much more for singing to the Pilot!” He turned back, said, “I salute ye!” and punched Mack flush in the nose. Before the astronomer could recover, Micah followed up with a left-right to the solar plexus. Mack went straight down. Micah repeatedly kicked him in the head while Ezekiel restrained Abel and Amantu by the throats. “You dirty thieving Barberus! You think you can run around jabbing forks in the tongues of serpents and the Good Lord’ll just look the other way! Palms fifty-two double-dot thirteen: ‘This is my bloody bread, 50

The Honeycomb Yahoo!’ Well, you old spiller of fire, Mama’s got a special space reserved just for you!” He hauled Mack up by the hair, slammed his back against the skin and spat in his glassy eyes. “Chris!” he shouted, slapping him hard across the right cheek. “Cross!” and he back-slapped the left cheek. “Double-cross!” He slapped him back and forth, then whipped out his blade. “North!” He slashed Mack’s forehead. “East!” He stabbed him in the right palm. “West!” He stabbed the other hand and hurled the blade upright in the floor. “South, you bastard!” He kneed him directly in the scrotum. Mack was unconscious before he hit the floor. “Enough!” Abel cried. “You’ll kill him!” Micah turned slowly, his hood tilting side to side. “Haven’t we—didn’t we—ain’t we spake before? I could of sweared—” His eyes lit up in their painted splotches. “Blinkety-blank! Blinketyblank!” Up went Micah’s great sledge of a fist. Down it came on Abel’s waiting crown. The big man snatched Malachi’s noose and lash, drew the rope tight around the necks of Amantu, Abel, and Izzy, and snapped the whip twice before handing it back. “Hippity-hop, me lambs! Mal, you’ll be escorting our three fairy friends, and Easy, you’ll be helping me along with our little cross-jumper here.” Ezekiel obediently took one of Mack’s arms. Micah squeezed under the other, and they hauled him out like a load of dirty laundry. Malachi, shrieking and lashing all the while, dragged and goaded the Group along behind. Ezekiel’s and Micah’s eyes flashed every time they checked back over their shoulders. Micah abruptly wheeled under Mack’s dangling arm and began to backpedal. Proceeding thusly, with Ezekiel still pacing directly and Mack’s toes passively plowing the filth, he commenced a running monologue. “We ain’t real partial to city slime. Y’hear me? That’s a naughty little mess you made in the hole, and it won’t be us what’ll be cleaning her up. And that big white light what you shot—we gots laws about bringing fancified technology downstairs. That’s just one more count against you; one of many. Let me read ’em to you straight, just in case you feel you ain’t getting the good Lord’s justice. Le’s see now. They’s moral trespass, burnt offings, and cavern images, not to mention wearing clashing blouses and tippy-toeing through the Outs in the first place. But most of all you been conspiring with a thief. Don’t think we ain’t been watching you prissy pirates over the years, and don’t think we just done met all accidental-like back there. You gots careless; you gots caught. Should of stuck to the well-beat path, like always. We had our eyes on Barbs here for the longest time; he’s ‘Number Three for the Cavalry,’ as we likes to call him. A big gun, indeed.” He did a goofy pirouette, forcing Ezekiel to turn along with Mack between them. The doctor’s arms were now strung out in a mockery of crucifixion. “Ain’t she pretty?” Micah beamed. “Just how she’s gonna look for Mama.” He studied Mack critically before raising the drooping head with a fist, singing, “Look up, little thief, look up for a while! Show us that long-long ’waited, dead man’s smile.” Mack’s head rolled off the fist. Micah frowned. “No sleeping on the set!” He began slapping Mack’s slack face back and forth. Ezekiel laughed and drew back his free arm. He was just balling up his fist when Abel, barely cognizant, bleated, “Animals!” Micah and Ezekiel froze as though electrocuted. They ratcheted round to stare, their painted jaws hanging. Micah stepped from under the arm and Mack dropped in a heap. It was a break. The men squirmed free of the noose and lunged forward while Malachi hung back snapping the whip and looking stupid. Hurriedly lifting Mack upright, the reformed Group created a tight shield of interlaced arms. 51

The Honeycomb “Security!” Micah howled. “The prisoners is revolting!” Ezekiel called back, “Is they ever!” All three brigands leaped on the living shield, laughing, peeling away fingers and wrestling back arms. The surrounded Group scrapped hysterically, and for a crazy few seconds it appeared the hooligans might actually be beaten back. Out of the confusion came a chunk of metal debris, hard onto Abel’s tender skull. Everything stopped on a dime. In a few seconds the action resumed centripetally, but it was hard to tell who was doing the pushing and who the pushing-back, for the men were all tied up around the two principals like Sumo wrestlers. Abel lay on the verge of unconsciousness, peering up at a raving Ezekiel. It was a situation right out of every schoolboy’s nightmare—the restrained onlookers, the looming bully planted squarely over your midsection with his legs spread wide and his fists clenched. Abel dribbled something incoherent. Ezekiel hauled him up by the collar. “What did you call me, punk?” He cocked back an arm and threw a haymaker that almost broke Abel’s jaw. Ezekiel then dropped to his knees, directly onto Abel’s passively splayed forearms, and began whaling with both fists about the skull and face. “What did you call my mama? Huh, queerboy?” If not for Malachi, Ezekiel might have beaten Abel to death right then and there. At a barked command from Micah he used his whip to drag Ezekiel off by the throat, then swung him round to face the leader, who merely slapped his lieutenant back and forth and was done with it. The big man easily righted Abel and dusted him off. He checked the tongue, rolled back an eyelid. “How you feeling, son?” Abel jerked away his head. Micah fluffed up his hair and wagged a big gloved finger in his face. “Now don’t you think you owe Easy here a ’pology? What you said wasn’t real nice at all.” Abel lowered his eyes. “He’s sorry, sir,” Izzy called. “Really he is.” Micah turned and pensively considered the shivering doctor. After a long minute he breathed, “I should certainly hope so,” and bent to lift Mack. Then, with Micah gloomily discoursing on the paucity of city manners, the party inched across the Outs, much subdued. But the nearer they came to that filthy hole, the lighter his temper grew, and by the time they’d reached the camouflaged entrance he was all genial host. “Welcome one, welcome all! The whole crowd’s a-waiting. They’s snacks in the rats’ nests and blood in the gutters. Now you get your blasphemous butts down them steps, and don’t pleat your petticoats in the process.” But the captives were so shaky, and their captors so heavy-handed, that the whole human knot went tumbling head over heels. At the bottom there was a blind grope-and-scuffle, and when the Group were finally raised by the scruffs of their necks the brigands were thoroughly pissed. Micah shook them one by one, like dusty rugs. “Now don’t you be in such a hurry to get to the party! And once you’re mingled you best not bother trying to run.” He jerked a thumb at the bright chamber. “You in your silky dandies—with all that floundering flesh in there you’ll stick out like flags.” Following through on his own gesture, he stomped up to the opening and, in a stance reminiscent of the Group’s first entrance, leaned in with his hands braced on the walls and yelled, “Hosea! Nahum! Let go of that sphincter and get over here. We gone and bagged us the big one!” Two similarly costumed brutes pushed their way in, leering at the Group. Their painted-round eyes lit up at the sight of Mack. Roughly hoisting him between them, they swung back into the light and began 52

The Honeycomb lashing out with their tatterdemalion boots. Micah smacked his big hands together. “Okay! Mal, get the gate. Easy, hold this harlot still so’s I can brand her.” A familiar scrape and rattle, and the gate came crashing down. Izzy almost jumped out of his socks at the sound. Dead sober, he leapt for the side tunnel with Abel hard on his heels. Micah snatched their collars. “Not this time you don’t! And none of your slickety-tricks, neither.” He tossed his head. “Boys!” Malachi and Ezekiel immediately commenced a very physical, very comprehensive, and very humiliating search of the prisoners. They weren’t in the least shy; this was a head-to-foot, full-body cavity examination. By the time they were done, the Group were meek as lambs. “You’re going to see the Possle,” the big man proclaimed, “so just you clippety-clop along there!” “What’s a—” Abel whined, pulling up his shorts, “—for Christ’s sake, sir, what’s a postle?” “The Possle’s our wise man. He’s a thinker and a stinker and a real pretty boy. And he’s the one who’s gonna spit on your phony story before Mama gores you. Used to be twelve, according to the Black Book, but a certain little Judas,” and he kicked Izzy squarely in the behind, “poisoned all their suppers. Now move, the lot of you!” The cavern was hot from the heads of a hundred leaping torches. Everywhere were naked, soot-smeared men and women, many of them cripples, pulling themselves along the rock floor and into black recesses, their moans tinged with the strangest inflection of rapture. At the sight of prisoners being kicked through the chamber, these unfortunates began screaming insanely, slapping legs and faces, biting themselves and anyone proximate. The Group, calling out to one another in the most plaintive fashion, were shoved hopping and squealing through the flopping shiny bodies. Micah squeezed between them, shouting into their ears. “So you think this is exciting, do you? You should see it when the new queen gets mated, man! I already been privy to twice of them juicy little affairs in me lifetime. The whole place turns into a great big nonstop orgy; blood and guts everywhere! And the lucky stiff what gets to pitch the goods, man—well, he’s just like torn to bits by the crowd. Literally, baby! Smashety-smite! Bashety-boom! And so off to God he goes, whilst the queen hunkers back down to her flogging.” “You mean—” Amantu gasped, “you mean to say you torture your leader?” “From the day she’s old enough to sing in the key of pain! She’s cultivated, man. Bred to take it and love it, bred to show ’em all how Jesus took it and loved it. That’s the ticket, me little ficklefooted Judas goats: the key to immortality is takin’ it! All you gots to do is peek into the Black Book, though I personally doubts your gentlemen’s pee would have the stuff to render a decent read. God loves to see us suffer. Loves it! Just take a look at the world. And, since God do duly love him what suffers for Him, it only stands to reason He loves him most what suffers for Him most.” “But no culture—” Izzy gasped “—no culture can subsist on pain! Mercy and compassion are what bond us. Your leaders must be sensitive to grief. Your women must yield to their tender nature. For Christ’s sake, man, everybody can’t be inured to pain!” Micah punched him thoughtfully. “Oh, they’s a whole spectrum of sorts what lives down here. Some manages from the shadows, some snatches city folk, some works for real like me and the boys, and some wallows in mindless bliss like these swimming pretty parasites. Now us, we’s what’s knowed as butchers. We keeps the floor babies in line with a stomp and a bite and a good Godly gonading, but, y’see, the real reason these crawly goobers is so into it is cause they’s soft. Soft in the psyche. Their relations schools ’em in the ways of God, and they just goes bonkos with the whole 53

The Honeycomb process. They’s a long rite of passage—who can lay out the most slapping around, then who can take it best, then who can deal it to his self with the hardest eye, and so on. I mean, after generations like.” He looked around disdainfully. “Sure as David stoned the Big Guy, no regular man started out goosing his self. I mean,” he said diplomatically, “they do very truly believes in the One Holy—as does we all—but they gots it bad, man. They gots the Bug.” “One point,” Abel tried, “sir—just a word about that postulated pestilence. We’ve only recently witnessed recorded evidence regarding a massive governmental cover-u—” “Flog all that!” Micah twisted Abel’s and Izzy’s collars in his fists, then hammered their heads forward and backward rapidly, like a man doing an intensive workout set. “One word about that postulated government, Senators! Y’all been playing screw-me since the day before anyone can remember who first begetted who and whatever became of whatnot! But what we do know is that your super-great-great granddaddies done something really Lucyfur-dark a long-long time ago, okay?” “Four hundred yea—” Amantu got out before taking Ezekiel’s elbow in the ribs. Micah turned his fright-face on the professor. “I don’t give a good holy-arse damn about what all your little-dots machines says! You got me? I spits on your unholy works and lies. It’s you what gots us down here in the first place! But, that spat, I’m yet to see a truly sick man in these here caves. The folks is just nuts cause they’s programmed. And, like I said, cause they’s soft. Still—and I’ll be thumbing out your ugly city eyes at the moment you scumsuckers sees it—we gots God, and that’s something you damned atheists’ll never get back!” “Exactly!” snipped Abel. “No plague! Official lie—terrible thing—most egregious nature! But sir, please, the whole divinity business . . . our friend Titus discovered an anomaly—it’s—it’s—how do I put it—” “It’s a lie is what it is! Everything what comes from machines and thinking mens is lies, meant only to cast dirty thought-clouds on he what climbed up on the cross and taked it for us! You remember that when you’re begging the Possle to keep your innies, you nasty agnostics. And I want you to go ahead and tell him it was Micah who gived you the pew on it all.” He grabbed a fistful of Izzy’s butt and squeezed until the psychoanalyst screamed. “And tell him I said ‘go easy’ on the little one.” Malachi and Ezekiel were delighted by Izzy’s cry of pain. Malachi shrieked and flapped in circles, while Ezekiel howled, “Whoo-oo! I says whoo-oo-oo!” “S-s-s-city,” Malachi hissed, “for s-s-s-sinn—” “Tis a fact,” Micah said, nodding gravely. “Down here the Lord don’t take no prisoners. And he don’t like conspirators none, neither. Separate, you three is just warts and bunions. Together, you gots what’s knowed as sin-ergy.” “But it’s all madness!” Izzy wept. “It’s madness, madness! It’s madness, pure and plain!” “Mad, are we? What of you, up in your ugly ivy towers with all your filthy phony finery? You think God loves you for your pretty buttons and badges? All you rich men, sticking your stinking silver needles into the eyes of camels!” He spat directly in Izzy’s face. “You bastards! I never even seen a camel!” With his elbows pressed against his ribs, Izzy could only flap his little tyrannosaur hands and cry, “Me neither! But you fellows have us all wrong! We’re professional men; not capitalists, not epicureans. And we certainly aren’t affiliated with any governmental agencies!” 54

The Honeycomb “Oh, yeah? What do you do for a living?” “I’m a psychoanalyst, sir.” “And her?” “Professor Amantu’s an historian working day and night to understand those atrocities responsible for your unwarranted situation down here, that they may be rectified for the betterment of all. Titus Mack, the man you keep calling Barbara, is also involved in work to save the Colony.” “And your bigmouthed girlfriend?” “Abel Lee is an ex-medical practitioner and legal mediator. Nowadays he speaks at universities and councils. He can direct your grievances to the proper offices. We can all help you! We’re not the bad guys here. We’re your friends!” “Saints! And all this time we thoughts you was sent by Beezly Bub his self! How could we of been so wrong? You only looks like a Roman, Senator!” He took Izzy by the hair and whirled him round twice before hurling him feet-first into the sea of naked groping humanity. “Professional men, eh? Well, Mister Ain’t-Affiliated—psychoanalyze them!” Undaunted by Amantu’s bulk, he tore the professor out of Ezekiel’s headlock and repeated the process. “Rectify that, you old Black Prince, you!” Lastly went Abel. “Mediate away, Philistine!” The man seemed even bigger and more vital for all his expended energy. He ripped the bandage from his head, raised his fists lustily, and roared like a gorilla. While his cohorts picked out distracted specimens to slap, he went wading through the glistening arms and legs, occasionally reaching down for a tongue to yank or an eye to gouge. “Brethren! Who amongst ye covets the services of professional men? Come to them for courteous counsel, seek their hands for pain over pity. What’s that? You have no gold to jangle? You fear they will do their precious punishing elsewhere? Well, we, me lambs, are not so mercenary! We dole it out for free!” He kicked a man in the mouth and received a gargling scream of pleasure. Momentarily forgotten, the Group pawed through the thrashing mass until their foreheads met. They peeked from behind a hot mound of lolling limbs. Their sadistic guards were looking this way and that, moving away gradually while stomping and punching. With their ominous peaked shadows reeling against the spit-and-hiss of torches, the brutes appeared colossal and unreal. “Disrobe immediately!” Abel gasped. Amantu gasped right back, “Sir!” “It’s the only way, Hammer. Remember what he said about us standing out like flags? Well, he’s right. We’ve got to blend in.” He shoved a sooty arm from his face. “This is no time for modesty. I don’t like the sound of this postle-person.” Izzy went absolutely white. “I’ll not! We’re educated men. We have shame, we have refinement. Dignity’s all that separates us from this mob.” “These robes,” Amantu mumbled, “have great significance.” “Then give my regards to the postle. Look, we don’t have to discard our clothes, just screen them. Keep ’em bundled out of sight.” “Reprobates?” called Micah, some thirty feet away. The Group dug deeper. Following Abel’s lead, Izzy and Amantu wriggled out of their robes and slithered through the bodies like worms, becoming increasingly moist and smudged. Abel led them to the nearest wall, and there elbowed out a channel along the jutting rock. “Ugh,” Izzy grunted, pushing off a woman either dead or unconscious. “Shut up!” 55

The Honeycomb “Sybarites?” The men moved along the wall as one long segmented creature; crowns to soles, right hands clutching tightly rolled clothing, left hands brushing aside hair and assorted appendages. The occasional scarred face popped in raving. Abel urged them into a side-chamber with fewer torches and occupants, assuming, from then on, lead-man position. One wall of the chamber was a massive stone oven. There were crude ceramic plates on cut-rock tiers. The place reeked of burnt fat. It was all very close. Firelight played on the shadows, protrusions leapt and shrank. The nude Group members held their clothes uncomfortably, while Izzy turned a radiant crimson. They were just getting decent when Amantu, over-cautious with his robes, dropped the whole mess and left himself, for one agonizing moment, frontally, fatally, and fully exposed. Every eye was drawn to the spot. “Hammer!” Abel managed, as Amantu’s hands raced to cover his heart. “I didn’t—I don’t— I—” “Aortic surgery,” the Professor admitted. “A shunt was customized.” “Atheists!” Izzy blushed even deeper. “I humbly apologize, Hammer, for having goaded you earlier. Had I known—” “Oh, posh,” Amantu mumbled, “‘Izzy.’” “Gone! They’s in the Honeycomb!” “Run like hell,” Abel cried. They threw themselves into their robes and ran, not caring who or what they stepped on. The natural order of flight held sway: lanky Abel, corpulent little Izzy, and finally the thickset, puffing professor. The men ducked into a high, tube-like tunnel, letting Abel make the spot decisions whenever they came upon forks. It wasn’t long before they’d completely lost their thudding predators. Mounted torches grew rarer and weaker; on certain long sections of wall they’d petered out altogether. Faced with an endless choice of side-tunnels, some blind, some leading into tapering, pitted blowholes, Abel tentatively led them down a particularly dark left-hand passage into a surprisingly well-lit tunnel. Catching the sounds of stomping and shouting, they took a number of kneejerk zigs and zags, finally huddling in the dark against a warm left-hand wall. “Halls,” Izzy panted. “Natural. Tunnels bored out.” He blinked at the rock. “Maybe only— maybe just scraped out.” Abel whispered, “Duck!” The men scrabbled into niches. After half a minute’s dead silence they heard hard running, advancing in one breath and receding the next. Izzy peeked from his hole, said, “The acoustics are odd,” and immediately retracted his head like a turtle. “I thought—” His eyes rolled to the tunnel’s ceiling. Clopping noises met overhead and radiated in all directions. “But . . . balls descending!” The Group crept out of hiding and snuck between torches by touch, hitting the floor every time the clattering was repeated. “They’ve got to be just as confused,” Abel said, peeking into a passage with a zillion capillaries. “What did the big one call this place?” “The Honeycomb,” Amantu mumbled. “The selfsame term related by Doctor Mack—by Titus, that is.” He visually measured apparent blind alleys in the roof and walls. “And Doctor Weaver is correct. The earth has been worked extensively, perhaps over decades. Yet—there is a peculiar 56

The Honeycomb unfinished quality to the narrower passages. Do you men see these grooves? What instrument would produce them?” Abel’s fingers inspected a series of scored marks. “At all costs we must find Ti.” “Sound guidance. Lead on, ‘AJ’.” Abel crept side-to-side and rarely looked back, checking torches and tunnel floors like a mountain lion studying branches and prints. This Honeycomb section was riddled with narrowing tunnels and partial excavations, with cells and burrows, with stairways to empty pits, with chippedout handholds to nowhere. Some passageways were lit, some bare, but nearly all contained branches, wells, and flues. One of the brighter tunnels revealed warrens housing mangled bodies in varying degrees of decomposition. Abel availed himself of a sputtering torch with one hand, cupped the other over his mouth and nose, and stepped tenderly through the well-rounded portals. Outside a particularly large chamber, an enormous cross had been gouged out of the facing tunnel wall. This place featured a vault containing—along with the ubiquitous pocks, holes, and fissures—ranks of vertically aligned berths holding the skeletons of people hanged, pummeled, and otherwise murdered. Izzy winced over Abel’s shoulder. “Ugh. Criminals, you think?” “I’m not sure. There’s a message chipped out of the rock under this berth. It says, ‘Daniel, 2:29’. And under that it reads, ‘Think in thy bed’.” He straightened. “Not a whole lot to think about, now, is there?” “Mine’s name was Joel,” Izzy mumbled. “And he was 2:23, whatever that means. It says here, ‘Be joyful’.” “Well, he certainly does seem to be smiling.” Abel moved down the line. “Here’s a guy named Amos. Amos, 7:12. Amos has an admonition. It says, ‘Go, flee away’.” “Sage advice.” “These bones,” mused the professor, “appear to have been gnawed.” He peered deeper into the berths. “The cradles open into pitch. Can these be the mouths of burrows?” “Then it’s true!” Izzy cried. “The rumors!” His whole frame crimped. “Cannibals!” “Shh!” Crunching gravel, clipped exchanges. It was too late to flee, and too late to kill the torch. The men could only squeeze into a crouching huddle. The jagged shadows of Malachi and Ezekiel rippled along the tunnel wall like animated cave paintings. Hard running at the other end quickly diminished to padding, and a moment later Micah’s shadow was leaning in to join the others. For the longest time the trio of shadows vacillated there, without budging. Finally Micah’s voice bounced round the tunnel. “You know that smell what living folk gives off when they’s around the dead?” “I stink I do,” Ezekiel replied. “Comes from horror. Their gonads hitch up and the funk wells out of every pore. Only one smell’s got a sweeter stink than horror.” “And what stink would that be?” “Terror,” Micah said. “Makes a man a veritable cold-sweat flower. And when they’s more’n one around, that big ol’ stink makes for a downright dandified bouquet.” Ezekiel leaped in to one side, his eyes gleaming from Abel’s trembling torch. “Chris!” he cried and, pinching his nose, appended, “Pee-ee-you!” 57

The Honeycomb Malachi, hopping in on the other side, yelled, “C-c-cross!” and stood grinning with his fists on his hips, a psychotic adult Peter Pan. The warren’s opening was now a hellish mantelpiece; Malachi and Ezekiel the side-lit ogre bookends, fully-illuminated Micah the oval-framed grinning portrait. Micah, stepping aside to expose the gouged-out cross, said pleasantly, “And Double-Cross! It taked some fancy slitherings, but you three serpents appears to have done-finded the perfect hole.” Ezekiel and Malachi began a creepy flanking maneuver; darting their heads like snakes while flicking their tongues and flapping their arms. The Group instinctively bunched into a line, pushing Abel forward. He waved his torch back and forth uncertainly, holding it on Malachi after a faked attack. “Wawa,” said Malachi. “Wawa, wawa.” He grimaced and gritted. “Wa-wa-watch my eyes. Not my-ha, not my-ha, not my-ha.” He flapped his robe urgently, distracting Abel long enough for Ezekiel to take an enormous sideways stride. But Abel parried swiftly, shifting the torch one to the other. “I don’t wish to hurt you, sirs.” Ezekiel shook his hood hard. “Wrong! Don’t watch me. Watch him.” Upon this cue he rushed forward. Abel swung to meet him directly, allowing Malachi to swoop in from the side. Amantu’s black hand was the tip of a lash, plucking the torch from Abel’s fist and jabbing it side-to-side like an epee: flame-first into Malachi’s snarling mask, then, in the same twisting thrust, base-downward onto the closing crown of Ezekiel. Both freaks hit the floor screaming. The action froze. Everybody dropped what they were doing and stared at the professor with a new respect. Now, Moses Matthew Amantu was a most imposing man, physically as well as intellectually. With a spitting torch in his hand he was fearsome enough to give even a backward bully like Micah pause. Abel and Izzy clambered into berths, squealing as they scrambled through rotted remains. They wiggled blindly down adjoining passages, pausing to call back plaintively before wiggling on. Micah and Amantu stared each other down in the petering torchlight; a pair of facing stalagmites. The only sounds were the receding calls of Abel and Izzy, along with Malachi’s hissing whimpers, and an occasional rolling moan from Ezekiel. In time even these prominent noises were swallowed up in the Honeycomb. Still that stare went on. The torch coughed and sighed; light left the chamber as though a dimmer switch were being adjusted by an unseen hand. And still that stare went on. Now darkness permeated the warren’s interior, broken only by the intense afterglow of two steady pairs of locked eyes. Without looking away, Amantu quietly set down the spent torch, adjusted his robes, and slipped into the hewn-away berth. His friends were still calling back when he came up to them on his hands and knees. “Hammer!” Izzy gasped. “You are truly a man! We might have been—we could have been— we certainly would have been—” “Prudence,” observed the professor in the dark, “would dictate we press on.” “Hear, Hear!” coughed Abel. “Follow me.” But he didn’t budge. The men could hear him breathing hard. A minute later firelight was leaping behind them. Izzy poked him in the rear. “Then move, damn you!” Spiders in a drainpipe, the Group slapped down their palms and scuttled on. 58

Chapter Nine Caverns There was no shortage of forks or tributaries, no end to the side-tunnels, pits, and alcoves—yet not a single passage even once reached a height that would allow the men to ease their aching backs. While being pursued they were able to navigate visually, albeit with much knuckle-scraping and wounding of knees. But soon even the partial illumination of torchlight was replaced by the dreariest of ignes fatui. “I’m dying!” Izzy cried, slamming cheek-to-cheek with Amantu. “I’m parched, I’m faded, I’m fagged!” He lolled on his back, licking his lifeless lips. “Anyways, they’re not following us anymore. They’ve got to know something we don’t.” “Like?” “Like maybe all these little tunnels terminate in a mass cul-de-sac. You never stopped to consider that? Or like maybe they do have exits, but in places those maniacs know all about.” Amantu wiped his face. “It is imperative we develop a means of recognition beyond our posteriors. There is space enough to retire this most unbecoming single-file procession.” “A bad plan, man. We can’t afford to separate—not in the dark, and certainly not for the sake of moral decorum.” “Yet we are blind, AJ, in object as well as in sight. What purpose do we serve in sneaking up on the unknown?” “Hammer’s right, Josh. Since we’re not being followed, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to double back to the tunnels. Those madmen are probably swinging around ahead of us even as we speak.” “Then what’re those lights behind us?” “Spots before your eyes; they’re still adjusting. It’s residual illumination.” “I perceive them also. Yet many more than anticipated. Dozens, shining steadily, and from 59

Caverns several angles.” A scratch-and-patter in a passage to their right. A chorus of squeals to their rear. The Group froze exactly as they were; not breathing, not even blinking. Being thinking men, they weren’t particularly phobic about rodents. To the contrary, Abel was an avid squirrel-feeder, Izzy kept three golden hamsters as office pets, and Amantu had rescued a dozen black rats from university labs. But the creatures now gathering about them were a different breed altogether. With grain, seed, and vermin in short supply, four centuries of subterranean adaptation had produced an outsized animal that fed almost exclusively on human remains. Fatting originally on discarded body parts, then, as competition grew, on entire cadavers, the Honeycomb Rat developed into an aggressive, almost fearless predator, averaging in size somewhere between a large pug and a small warthog. The characteristic squeals made visual identification unnecessary. “Oh no!” wept Izzy. “Oh, no-no-no. Not like this.” “Don’t be ridiculous!” Abel’s voice rose an octave per syllable. “They can’t be after live meat!” “Shoo!” Amantu smacked down a palm. “Scat!” The squeals increased in intensity. “Don’t antagonize them!” Abel cried. “Everybody remain perfectly calm!” There was a hiss and clatter almost at his elbow. Abel scrambled away screaming, Izzy and Amantu close behind. The rats made horrible snuffling sounds as they scurried. They slammed their fellows against walls, nipping one another in their passion. Those in the fore savaged competitors popping in from side tunnels, and when the victors came upon Amantu’s furiously wagging behind there was no mistaking their intent. The lead rat bit into a flapping sandal and refused to let go, though the bellowing professor kicked frantically. Another leaped right over the leader, momentarily attaching itself to Amantu’s back before being scraped off by the tunnel’s roof. Amantu thereupon veered into a broader side passage. He whipped off his sandals and slapped them madly. Those rodents just behind the original leaders then went after Izzy, who plunged into a left-hand gap, incidentally joining Amantu. The two ricocheted through this parallel tunnel, calling to Abel at apertures. But their lanky leader had completely lost his cool. His constant screaming produced a matching frenzy in the rats; they poured by like rank water, fighting for fang-holds. “Josh!” Izzy called desperately, and flung himself into the squealing stream. Rats do not like being approached from behind. When Izzy sprang in hollering they whirled and hissed menacingly, but, vile cowards that they are, made to scatter rather than retaliate. Biting at anything and everything, the largest scraped along the walls, snapping wildly and trampling smaller members. Amantu hauled the psychoanalyst back in, but it was too late for their friend. Abel kicked and scraped along until he found himself upright, his head and shoulders protruding into a diagonally-running upper passage. He swung in on his belly while the rats rushed in below, leaping and gnashing. Abel plunged down his head. “Professor!” No answer. “Izzy!” Nothing but the sounds of squealing and snapping. He jerked back and pulled himself through the dark, relying on toes, elbows, and fingernails. Before he’d managed a yard the rats were on him. But even as he turned screaming he was swallowed up in a sinkhole-like depression. With a dozen rats tumbling behind him, Abel slid 60

Caverns headfirst down a rock chute into a huge calcite cavern, lit surreally by a bluish phosphorescent powder that clung to every limestone face. The last thing he remembered was a fissure plugged by waving snouts. Abel ran blindly, barking his shins and elbows, gasping: “Eaten alive. Eaten alive. Poor little Izzy. Eaten alive.” When he was all run-out he stopped, pressed a hand to his side, and squinted into the drear. The great cavern possessed a somber, cathedral-like quality; steep walls brushed longitudinally by that soft blue powder, along with occasional thick calcite streaks that lent an impression of gigantic painted windows. The silence was bottomless. Abel stumbled up to a pool ringed by stalagmites. The pool contained a single fat, milky-white cave pearl, deposited drop by drop from a teat-shaped stalactite a centimeter above. Over time a corresponding stalagmite had developed from the pool’s basin; this growth now rose from the pool like a lily’s pistil. The cave pearl was floating in equipoise, at the precise center of dripping stalactite and rising stalagmite, patiently awaiting that one sweet finalizing drop. Between the cavern’s floor and the pool’s rim ran a bench-shaped outcropping smoothed by centuries of overflowing rainwater. The bench seat completely spanned the pool, at one point dipping out of view. It was a natural place to rest. Abel flopped against the seat’s elegantly bowed back, his elbows dipping into the murky pool. He angrily snatched up the pearl and hurled it ricocheting across the cavern. Echoes raced away like some large obscure animal, but the clatter was clearly preceded by a hard little yelp. He hit the floor. “Who’s there?” “Ow-ow!” “Malachi?” Abel backpedaled carefully. “Are you alone, man? I don’t want any trouble with anybody.” It’s true what they say about one’s senses sharpening in the dark. Abel’s ears picked up minute movements and sounds, and in half a minute he made out the triangular figure of Malachi crouching on a dusty outgrowth with his cloaked arms tucked in like wings. Malachi’s Colony-eyes were welladapted to subterranean predation. Perceiving Abel’s shift in focus, he leapt silently and with accuracy onto a projection ten feet away. Immediately a fat swarm of bats, ghostly-white against the phosphor’s soft blue, burst out of a crevice and took off screaming. “Talk to me, Mal.” Desperation crept into Abel’s voice. “Let’s work something out.” The craggy shape approached rock-by-rock. “God’s gonna get—gonna get—God’s getcha gonna—gonna getcha—” Abel tripped over a low calcite spill and scooted away blind. “This is not the time or place, Mal. We can rationalize. We can deal.” “G-God doesn’t deal, say the Book. No-not with sin—not with sinn—” “Not now, Mal! Look, I can get you stuff. Real stuff, not promises. Me and my friends are big shots in the city. We’ve got connections.” Abel ducked into a narrow passage between ribbed outcroppings. “How long’s it been since you had a good steak, with all the trimmings? How’s about a nice Chianti?” Malachi rose almost directly above him, cawed, “Sliver tongue!” and swept up his arms. “‘Pprick and be done,’ say the Book. ‘It’s meorma, meorma—it’s me or Mama.’” One hand dipped under his cloak. Even in the dimness, the seven-inch blade showed cleanly. “‘Poke the pi—p-poke the pig,’ say the Book. ‘Poke the pig to s-save the circle.’” 61

Caverns Abel screamed, wheeled, and bolted straight into a wall at the end of a cul-de-sac. He expected an answering shriek from Malachi, so he was amazed to hear his own name called out in response. The voice was unmistakable, and appeared to be coming right out of the wall. “Izzy!” “Here, Josh!” “Professor!” “And here!” At another blast of flapping wings, Abel spun around with his arms covering his face. But the twisted spire of Malachi was gone. Abel turned back. “You’re alive!” “Very much so. Although our circumstances would recommend an ellipsis be placed on that assertion. How are you situated?” “I’ve got company. Malachi’s in here somewhere, but he took off when he heard you guys calling.” “Do not alter your position! We are experiencing another of these caverns’ acoustical phenomena.” “How’s Izzy?” A snarl appeared slightly to Abel’s left. “Okay, Josh. But so help me, if I ever get out of here alive—” “Damn it, Izzy! Hammer’s right. This is a major break, and we’ll have to work in concert. All right?” “Agreed.” “Whatever.” Abel placed his lips on the rock. “Don’t change positions, don’t raise or lower your heads, don’t look away. Face my voice directly, both of you, and continue to speak in measured tones. Judging by its feel, this whole wall’s riddled with grooves and recesses. I’ll proceed gradually to my right while you guys match my pace to your left, until we either encounter one another or our voices grow distant. If the latter, we’ll all just as carefully retrace our steps to this point and try again to our left. Sooner or later we’ll meet, or at least find the aperture that’s making it possible to communicate.” Amantu said, with exaggerated clarity, “I heartily approve of this plan, AJ. We are facing your voice now, and will endeavor to move with the utmost synchronicity. That said, we are prepared to proceed.” A minute passed. “Christ,” Izzy muttered, “I’d trade my practice for a drink.” “Do not turn your face. You heard the man. Both parties must behave concordantly.” The head swiveled defiantly. Izzy could just discern the faint outline of Amantu’s wooly skull. “How long must the blind lead the blind? Why’d you have to drag me along with you, anyway?” Amantu very slowly turned his head until he was looking down at the psychoanalyst’s dim naked crown. “Charity too can be blind. I was prey to a rash impulse, in hindsight apparently unwarranted. Nevertheless, that quick reaction preserved your ample carcass from a horde of stampeding maneaters.” “One rat over many. Josh! For Christ’s sake, get me out of here!” 62

Caverns “There is no reply. There is nothing! We have lost our sole connection. Who knows how rare that phenomenon might be?” “You’re the one who ‘guided’ us here! ‘Here’ being a foot-wide ledge in utter darkness.” “Must you whine in perpetuity? I led us to our colleague, did I not? This labyrinth, as we have observed, is peppered with means of egress. And the darkness is not utter; you exaggerate, as ever. That source of luminosity is nearer than I anticipated. Do press on, Doctor Weaver. You are blocking the road.” They argued back and forth along the precipice, feeling their way hand-over-hand until they’d stepped out upon an immense smooth-faced rock overlook. Below was a dank cavern full of massive stalagmites, petered-out stalactites, and the occasional glistening column. Illumination was provided by a pair of jagged apertures on the far wall. A single row of stalagmites rose out of the abyss like volcanic islands, forming a daunting bridge between that wall and the basaltic monolith now supporting Amantu and Izzy. To the bridge’s right ran a wide curtain of cerebella-like calcite flows, and to its left was an impenetrable void. The professor sounded that void with a dropped pebble that pinged back and forth until it was swallowed by silence. “A bottomless basin,” he noted. “A sinkhole for the ages. Our Honeycomb may be worked over by man, but she is eaten away by nature.” Izzy sat hard. “And so here we die.” He slid a foot before braking with his palms. “The Mercies’ flickering lights beckon, but we’d have to be cockroaches to negotiate that joke of a broken bridge. I’ll starve on this blasted rock, staring at my grave while some backpedaling egghead lectures me on subterranean geomorphology. There’s an irony lurking in here somewhere. Maybe it’s just too dim to see it.” Amantu stamped a sandaled foot, so great was his vexation. “There is but one source of dimness! Nearly forty years have I fumed behind the lectern, only to stand here—baby-sitting another spoiled child. Just when clear thinking is requisite, again rises that gut-wrenching wail of the comfort-bereaved. How you have juggled a career, Doctor Weaver, is a mystery to me. Do your patients arrive for sessions with kerchiefs in hand?” “That’ll be about enough of that. At least my people are above arrogance.” “I? Arrogant? Well, ‘Izzy,’ it requires a full measure of humility to tolerate your multitudinous plaints and petty outbursts. That I so recently called you friend is now an outrage even to myself. Your narrow-minded, self-pitying utterances are untenable.” “Did I say arrogance? Well, I meant ignorance! Ignorance of geography! Ignorance of teamwork! Ignorance of even the rudiments of humanity.” “And that, sir, will be about enough of that! I deem it only fair to warn you: my patience has been tried unduly. I am a thinking man, not a reactive one. But—so help me!” Izzy nearly lost his balance pushing himself to his feet. His forward position on the smooth rock’s incline increased his disadvantage in relation to the bigger man, so that now his raised eyes were barely at the level of Amantu’s sternum. “Your patience!” He scooted upward with difficulty, sliding back an inch for every three gained, until he and Amantu were facing one another perpendicularly to the apertures; the weak light setting one side of their frames aglow, the other side remaining in bleary shadow. Still the smaller man by half a head, Izzy began to cheat, inching up and around until he and the professor were eye to eye. With his very black face eclipsing an aperture, Amantu became a pair of white floating eyes against the lesser darkness. “Your patience!” Izzy repeated. “Have you any idea how frustrating this is for me? To meekly abide, in front of my learned 63

Caverns friends . . . to play along with an awkward braggadocio—solely to spare him further embarrassment!” “Enough,” Amantu snarled. Increasing his advantage by raising himself on his toes, Izzy mocked the professor’s basso profundo with biting accuracy. “‘I heartily approve of this plan, AJ!’ Well, Professor Emeritus, I think I can hear Josh cursing us rather heartily even now!” “Enough!” But Izzy was on a roll. “‘Oh, just follow me, Doctor Weaver! Exploration, Doctor Weaver, is a grand feature of my oh-so noble lineage. Doctor Weaver, it is in my genes’!” “Enough!” And with that, triggered by a lifetime of being odd man out, the Hammer came down. The heavyset professor could have inflicted considerable damage with this one roundhouse punch, but he was swinging uphill, and his balance was off. The next thing he knew he was spreadeagled flat on his belly, rigid fingers desperately seeking purchase on the smooth rock’s face while he very gradually slipped into eternity. Izzy dropped immediately and grabbed the professor’s wrists. Amantu instinctively copied the hold. “Mercy!” Izzy cried, as the heavier man’s weight pulled him along. Amantu bellowed, “Do not struggle!” Both men froze, cutouts plastered on stone. “Find a foothold!” Izzy cried, his nose banging on the rock with each hard consonant. “For Christ’s sake, Hammer!” He and the professor slid an inch. Amantu forced back his head, “There is none!” And down they slid, a foot and more. The men stopped struggling, stopped speaking, stopped breathing. Now Amantu was holding on using only the pressure of his thighs. All feeling rolled down his arms to his quaking heart. The certainty of death took him, and for a moment he was a breath away from fainting. “Professor,” Izzy gagged. “I . . . I . . . can’t.” Abruptly the cavern’s light was cut to a fraction. In the apertures were two peaked silhouettes, with accompanying coronas. A torch was thrust through each opening. Out rang the unmistakable voice of Micah. “Zounds, Easy! What lovers will do when the lights are low!” “Sirs!” Amantu snapped. And with that he and Izzy scraped down another half-foot. “Anything!” Micah and Ezekiel hopped across the bridge easily; a torch in one hand, an arm momentarily embracing each rain-rounded peak. They perched upon the final cap to taunt the anxious men, a yard from the rock and two feet below Amantu’s quivering sandals. “Show him that face you make, Easy. The one with the torch.” With the sputtering brand beneath his raised chin, Ezekiel was the Grim Reaper personified. He grimaced and gnashed, his red-tinged hood flapping. “Whoo-oo-ooo! I’m gonna get you, you nasty atheists, you. Whoo-oo-oo!” Micah roared with laughter, then shook the professor’s foot while doing a spirited jig on the lip of infinity. “I beg you,” Amantu whispered. “I can hold no longer.” “Lucky for you we happened by. Me and Easy was just strolling along, making with the mandibles, when we heared what sounded like a pair of ginger cats in heat. Had us a peek through the tribe’s windows and—oh, Lord, I about blushed with the sight of ye. I just thank the Good 64

Caverns Almighty we arrived in the nick of time.” He lifted the professor’s tattered robe and walked his fingers up the calf. Amantu kicked involuntarily. His nails dug deeper into Izzy’s wrists and the two slid another foot. “Cease, pervert! We are in dire need!” “Pervy, am I? Just who’s wearing the pretty gold party dress, that’s what I’d be asking m’self about now.” He lifted the robe again and, standing on tiptoes, ran his fingers right up the back of Amantu’s thigh. This playful act, to a man of such propriety, was an unspeakable violation. Utilizing forgotten muscles in his forearms and thighs, the bellowing professor shot up the rock like a spider, hauling Izzy with him. Micah and Ezekiel roared with laughter and set their torches in niches chipped out for just such a climb. “We’ll make rockers of ye yet, missies!” Flat on their backs, the doctor and professor peered between their knees as Micah and Ezekiel picked their way up, utilizing handholds only now visible. “Pagans, pagans,” the frighteners sang, “all fall down!” Backing up frantically, Amantu and Izzy were astonished to see Abel’s face pop out below the grinning climbers. Both monsters whirled at the displacement of torchlight. “Ha!” Izzy yelped. “Turnabout!” “That’s right,” chattered Abel, thrusting the torches left and right. “I warned you guys last time. Don’t force me. I’ll burn you if I have to.” “A wholly qualified sentiment!” Amantu crowed. “These men are psychopaths!” The climbers exchanged glances. Micah bluffed a kick. Ezekiel followed up with the real thing. Abel parried with the right-hand torch and went straight for Ezekiel’s lancing right leg with the other. The ragged old robe caught instantly. Ezekiel beat at the racing flames, lost his balance, and flew screaming off the rock back-first. Down he went like a comet, blazing all the way. Micah stared bitterly before switching his gaze to a high stalagmite just beyond that critical peak now occupied by Abel. He kicked off his perch, sailed over Abel’s torches like a huge black witch, and landed on all fours with the nimbleness of a bighorn. He righted himself soundlessly, glared at the awestruck Group, and went hopping and swaying back along the bridge of stalagmites. At the apertures he drew himself erect, cutting out half the light and breathing hard. His eyes burned in his silhouetted hood. Then he was gone. With the rock’s face lit by torches, its chipped-out handholds became plainly visible. Even so, it was the hardest thing in the world to coach the stranded men down. Izzy, as the lightest, had to come first—Abel could catch him when he jumped, while both he and Izzy were required for the larger professor. But for Izzy, who saw Ezekiel’s death as an augur, the simple three-foot hop onto the nearest cap was an ordeal that made Abel scream himself silly. Even when he had hold of the doctor’s arms it was a fight to peel him off the big rock, and in the end only Amantu’s weight on his shoulders could make Izzy release his wide embrace. The professor himself made the little leap with a surprising nimbleness. Abel had memorized Micah’s holds and turns across the tricky stalagmite bridge. The men moved delicately, feeling their way up and around each peak before swinging over to the next, then spontaneously turned for panting congratulations on a ledge below the twin openings. Izzy puffed up and offered his paw all around. “They were wrong to underestimate the Group.” Amantu shook it well. “And a most formidable Group we are.” He was uniquely moved when 65

Caverns Abel’s hand completed the knot. “Well!” He pulled his hand away and, to conceal his embarrassment, poked his head out into the light.

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Chapter Ten

Evolution The professor found himself studying a vast cave lit by torches spaced every ten feet. Walls were painted with smudged charcoal, depicting unfamiliar scenes of black stick figures engaged in erroneous battle. In the floor’s dead-center was a low lake, apparently composed of tar or pitch, encircled by at least a hundred skin lean-tos. Mock-nativity scenes filled these half-shacks; scarecrow families, mangers of sticks and trash. Crosses were soot-painted up and down the leaning buildings’ outer walls. Isolated on a rocky knoll stood a small, roofless, kiln-like structure surrounded by stack upon stack of charred branches. The cave’s roof above this little building must have been two feet deep with soot. There wasn’t a soul about. Abel’s and Izzy’s heads poked out the other aperture. The men all exchanged glances before ducking back inside. “Deserted,” Amantu whispered. Abel shook his head. “It’s where that costumed creep went, and you just know he’s pissed. It’s a trap; that’s why it’s so quiet.” “Fortunately, this is one instance wherein lengthy discussion is obviated. We cannot retrace our steps, we must see this turn as a boon and proceed undaunted.” After a moment Abel nodded. “Hear, hear.” He turned to Izzy. “Too quiet!” The analyst shrank before them, licking his lips. “You’re right, Josh. No, no, I agree with Hammer! No, no, no . . . wait! Let’s work this out.” Abel grabbed him by the belt and collar. “One side, Professor. I’m stuffing this little pimiento.” He shoved Izzy through headfirst, aided, perhaps a bit vindictively, by Amantu. The Group huddled behind a short screen of boulders. “Not limestone,” Amantu panted. “Both caverns were formed through the action of seepage, but this side lacked the calcium carbonate. That lake appears to be either vented crude or a tar pit.” 67

Evolution “Not so.” Abel indicated a black channel beaten out of the rock, running from the little building down to the lake. “It’s rain water stained by liquefied charcoal.” “Balls descending,” Izzy whispered. “To what end?” As if cued, a pair of huge coiled spiders dropped from an overhead ledge, landing in the heart of the little crescent formed by the men. They sprang up screaming, revealing themselves to be naked children all but coated in lampblack—only the white masks of their faces, and the crude skeletal outlines on their torsos and limbs, were unpainted. These boys immediately began dancing about like the rudest of monkeys; pointing, shrieking, making obscene noises with their mouths. The men kept low against the wall as they retreated, but the youngsters were relentless in their hooting pursuit. Soon the Group were locked in among heaped rocks and the wall: three grown men cowed by a couple of obnoxious brats. In the distance commenced a great cry, followed by the quick thunder of running feet. A crowd of adults appeared, calling to the hopping children in modulated hoots as they ran. These folks were likewise painted with soot, and all showed old welt scars across their backs and limbs. Self-mutilation was a tribal theme; there were women with rat ribs plunged into cheeks and throats, men bearing their own amputated toes strung round their necks like good luck charms. One particularly unappealing gentleman boasted a pair of sharp stones crammed up his nostrils, a wife with a porcupine-like collection of bone spurs pounded through her tongue into the lower palate, and a pair of children minus lips and eyelids. All the women, according to the wont of their gender, used soot ornamentally, creating rings, crescents, and whorls around their most private areas. To the men of civilization, the result was anything but comely. Over two dozen teenagers shoved through the gawkers. Their leader’s face was startling, unforgettable, and just as pathetic as it was frightening. The eyes were permanently raccoon-ringed from bashings, the mouth a lopsided, gummy snarl, the nose—smashed flat from the center out—a broad, mangled flap. After so much punishment, this young man had to be unimaginably tough to keep his lieutenants close and his contenders at their distance. That fiber was evinced now, as he strode right up to Amantu and stared him up and down. The professor slowly rose to his full height and their eyes locked. Ever so gradually, the young man raised his fist until it was hovering halfway between them, made a right angle of his wrist, and swiveled the fist like a cobra’s head. Never had Amantu imagined knuckles so scarred. The professor instinctively closed his eyes an instant before the young man pulled back the fist and punched himself in the nose as hard as he could. Amantu’s eyes popped open. Though that smashed-in face was gushing blood, the expression hadn’t changed a line. To their right, a trio of youngsters responded with an all-out slugfest. “Off it!” the bleeding young man spewed. The little ruffians immediately broke up. He turned back, holding Amantu’s eyes like the fiercer of strays. “Could you do that?” He socked himself in the face again. The nose-flap surrendered a spurt and trickle. He hit himself repeatedly, with mounting ferocity. “How about that? And that? And that?” The crowd went nuts. Men slapped and gouged themselves with mindless machismo, women shook their stuff hysterically. A young man ripped out a clump of hair, another viciously twisted an ear that had become, through years of abuse, a shapeless string of hanging taffy. “Smite him!” called a voice in the rear. The chant began. “Smite him, smite him, smite him.” “Off it!” the leader sobbed. He punched himself furiously, until the professor bellowed, 68

Evolution “Cease!” Everybody froze. Amantu squared himself. “What is your name, lad?” The young man spat blood between them. “It’s Sampsun. After the baddest cat in the Book.” He rocked back and forth aggressively. “My boys call me Sammy. But to the likes of you, it’s Sampsun.” “Well, Sammy, I too have a nickname, earned from more humbled students than I care to enumerate. They call me ‘Old Iron Hand.’ But behind my back, mind you, always behind my back. Now, rather than demonstrate this sobriquet’s origin, I shall acquiesce to you, sir, and without further confrontation. I hereby deem you the ‘badder cat’ of we two. And, if it will abet mollification, I will go so far as to admit you are the toughest man I have ever known.” The human monkeys screamed, and a moment later were both dancing maniacally. The crowd turned. Without breaking his stare, Sampsun sprayed a mouthful of blood on Amantu’s chin and breast. “Then slap on a clean toga, Senator. Because here comes the man.” “Sir—” “Slew you, buddy!” The professor squirmed. “The correct tense would indicate the transitive verb, ‘slay’.” “Yeah? Well, slew you anyway!” The crowd parted. It was easy to see what made the tribe’s leader their top dog. He approached with regal slowness, his haughty head held high, vacillating, like a man on stilts, on intricately whittled stalactite crutches. Children swept him a serpentine path while an entourage of women gingerly walked his terribly bowed legs. The Group members gasped with horror and disbelief as he neared, instinctively crossing their knees. The chief had earned his office by fitting, at some time during his superhuman ascent, a calcite sculpture designed to relentlessly strangle his gonads, now swollen to the size of grapefruits. The tenderness of these organs made unassisted locomotion impossible, made his trembly legs buckle and bounce, made his bleary eyes flicker. But nothing could quash this man’s spirit. Upon reaching the Group, he pushed himself upright, and his eyes ran over the quailing trespassers with the contempt of a born superior. “So they sent us women, did they? And a foppish phalanx at that.” The chief pivoted man to man, flashes raging in his pupils at each contact of crutch on ground. He clicked to a halt before Amantu, fascinated by the stranger’s ebony flesh and vivid attire. Sampsun, following his boss’s every move, spooned right up behind the professor and locked arms. The chief pressed his white mask forward until he and Amantu were nose to nose. “What land,” he whispered loudly, “produceth a man so dark? Or is it just your black nature? Could it be you’re the demon his Self? Well, then? What do they call you?” Amantu looked the chief right in his swimming eyes. “I, sir, am known as the Hammer.” The chief looked around, laughing lustily. He hoisted one of his sculpted crutches and shook it in Amantu’s face. “Now that, sir, is a hammer!” Much cheering and rib-nudging. The professor must have flinched, for the crowd pressed in keenly. “Who sent you?” the chief demanded. “Sir, we were abducted into this place. We have no quarrel with you or your people. Grant us 69

Evolution our freedom and we will exit with grace. You will have our undying gratitude.” “Grace!” The man shook with umbrage. “Grace!” He grabbed a crutch by the shaft and, incredibly, slammed it straight up between his legs. The chief let go with a scream that tore through every male within earshot. He hit the ground like a bomb. In a conditioned response, all the men and boys dropped and rolled about shrieking, their hands tucked between their knees. The Group doubled over. The tribesmen leaped back up cheering. “Enough,” Izzy moaned, stamping a foot. “Oh, Mercies! Enough already!” The chief’s women lifted him into the cradle of their arms. He hung there like a squid in a net, sweat pouring off his face. Finally his eyes rolled back up. He grasped a crutch and aimed it for his nethers. “No!” the Group yelled, withering in advance. “Anything!” cried Abel. “Anything! Yes, we’re ‘demons!’ Yes, we’re spies! Only—no more!” The crutch rose an inch. “Sir,” Amantu began, “I implore you—” He was cut off by another scream from the chief: the second upward thrust was already underway. This time, however, the man was too spent to complete the deed, and found himself propped with his arms dangling, the crutch supporting his listing torso. Now the Group were the hysterical howlers, and the tribesmen the anxious observers. The chief’s women threw themselves into a swooning dance while Sammy, beside himself, frantically punched himself in the face and, for good measure, attacked the recoiling face of each Group member in turn. The chief appeared to take heart in the mindless violence, raising himself an inch with each smack of fist into flesh. At last he squealed, “Messiah,” grabbed the shaft with both hands, and delivered himself the wallop of his career. The whole crowd dropped as one, every male rolling about in the fetal position while wailing wretchedly. In a choreographed response, the women reversed their collapse, drawing themselves erect in a complicated counterclockwise ballet that culminated in a group cruciform stance, hands holding hands, eyes raised beatifically. “Off it all!” The women froze, the males wobbled to their feet. Sammy bent to whisper in the chief’s ear, tilted his head for the reply, and shot back up, his expression triumphant. “The Bathsmith!” “John!” the people all chanted deliriously. “John! John! John-John!” Sammy thereupon launched himself on the released Group, his fists flying. But one man on three is a minor assault; Amantu and Abel, using Izzy for a shield, easily knocked him back. Now the spiders ran up to the rocky knoll, screaming all the way. They blew in through the little structure’s hide flap and blew back out, joyously dancing round a tar-colored child balancing a long sputtering torch, and a very tall, very thin, very bald man in his forties. Unlike the rest of the tribe, John was daubed black head to toe. Only his raving eyes showed white. In his gangly fingers rocked a massive tome constructed entirely of human parchment, so heavy with lampblack it puffed as he strode. This would be the fabulous Black Book, its skin pages meticulously sewn, char-painted, and scribed in urine only made visible through the heat of the Sacred Torch. John stormed out onto a little projecting bank of the lake. There he stood with the Book raised high in both hands, impaling the Group with his furious eyes. After an agonizing two minutes he plunged the Book to knee-level with finality. “On it!” Sammy exuberated, and ran off to join John while the tribe’s males bullied the Group toward a small shallow cove. 70

Evolution “Mind your hands!” Abel barked, beginning to crack. “You shut your face!” hissed a nineteen year-old, slapping him twice on the ear. The younger boys reacted excitedly, one chewing on Izzy’s leg as the doctor was dragged along wailing. Amantu’s left wrist was jammed up between his shoulder blades. “Desist!” “Rot in Hades,” a youngster replied. “Where?” Abel gasped, fighting the dark fingers. “You know where!” claimed another, striking him directly on the tailbone. The Group were hauled kicking and cursing into the murky pool. At the first touch of wetness the professor threw off his handlers. “Listen, you people! You are deluded. There is no plague; you are not carriers. We have all been bamboozled.” A hand slapped him across the face. Amantu froze. It took every ounce of self-control to feign calm, and to say reasonably, “You are not responsible for your lives or behaviour. Leave this world. Follow us back into the light.” Abel took a faceful of black water. “It’s no use, Hammer. You’re only provoking them. Reason, in a madhouse, is insanity.” The youngsters took delight in tormenting Izzy; pinching and slapping his legs and buttocks whenever they could get their hands on him. When he fell in the ooze they immediately hauled him to his feet. “Josh is right!” the little psychoanalyst gagged. “So everybody just shut up and let this thing play itself out.” Abel and Amantu paused, shoulder-to-shoulder, waist-deep and surrounded. It was an odd experience to look into two dozen flesh masks, each revealing, in the intricate application of lampblack, a distinct and perfectly flawed human personality. One teenager shied before giving Abel a particularly nasty look. “What are you staring at, pretty boy? See something you like?” His buddies laughed nervously. Amantu and Abel exchanged glances. Picking up on the vibe, Izzy joined them in a closer study of the savage circle. Many of the younger adults had decorated overzealously around the lips and eyes, and practically all the teens bore similarly-shaped blotches on their upper right foreheads. Vanity, gang affiliation, marginal effeminacy . . . disdain remade the Group’s expressions. The ring clenched and fidgeted. Under the hard light of intellectual censure for the very first time, some of those tough eyes began to slink away. The Group put their backs together and rose out of the water like men. A hard command from Sammy preceded a sudden splashing and a couple of slaps. Two teens broke the ring to admit the Bathsmith and his best boy. John towered over the circle. Only his rolling eyeballs and gnashing teeth were not covered with soot; even the lids and lips were blackened. His boy, up to his neck in murk, awkwardly balanced the heavy Book on his nose, using his palms to support the opened halves. For a moment it looked as though the weight of the thing would submerge him, but he bravely straightened and goggled at his master over the Black Book’s rim. At a signal from Sammy, the anxiously waiting monkeys came tumbling and screaming down the grade, one behind the other, passing the flaming Torch back and forth as they changed positions. Upon reaching the water, the ritual became a scrabbling struggle for possession, quickly broken up by a couple of hard smacks from John. Sammy seized the torch and moved it to and fro while the Bathsmith tore at the Book’s heavy skin leaves, looking for commandments that dealt specifically 71

Evolution with intellectuals. Finding none, he slammed the Black Book shut and raised his left hand high before dashing it across the filthy water. “Chris!” he cried. Abel and Izzy hacked as they were fouled by spray. A second later John’s right hand splashed Amantu. “Cross!” Now a terrible silence enveloped the circle. With great drama, John gradually raised his arms in tandem, his eyes popping in his skull. The instant his fingertips touched, he brought both hands down hard on the water. “Double-Cross!” Roaring with approval, the human ring leapt on their prisoners’ backs, shoved them down and held them down. Any man managing to break surface was immediately swarmed and pressed back under. This wasn’t some kind of ritualistic punishment; it was serious business. The Group were being drowned. The more they thrashed and kicked, the more determinedly their executioners piled on. When again they were brought into the air, they were barely aware of the fists in their hair, and of the voices of Micah and Malachi above them. The professor lurched along the bank, vomiting black ooze from his mouth and nostrils. Micah held down his head until the spasms were passed, then shook him by a handful of robe. He yanked up both the Hammer’s and Izzy’s heads, smashed their skulls together, and pushed his lips down right between their ears. “You’re a bushel more trouble than you’re worth, Senators! And I, for one, am filthy sick, and stinking tired, of chasey-chasing you all over the place! You got me? Now, I told you you’re going to see the Possle, and, damn you all to Hades and back, you’re going to see the Possle!”

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Chapter Eleven The Possle The Group put up no resistance as they were dragged down one long tunnel after another. Even in his semi-conscious state, Amantu was aware of an overall increase in brightness as they progressed, and more torches could only mean they were nearing the nest. Micah and Malachi savagely kicked off the groping inhabitants, but not out of fear for their own safety—these lunging men and women were vying solely for a fist or a foot in the face. It was clear, by the tenor of the bullies’ cursing, that this was all a frustrating routine of Honeycomb navigation. Eventually the flow grew to a scrabbling riot, obliging Micah to clear a path with a torch to the eyes of anyone near. When the smell of singed flesh became unbearable he handed his brand to Malachi, yanked Amantu to his feet, and slapped the professor’s cheeks back and forth until he began to weakly struggle. Micah shoved him face-first at random grappling souls. “See anybody like him in the big city? Huh, Mr. Filthy Godless Atheist? Or how’s about her? You got anyone that tough in your sissy-arse offices? And how long d’you think you, without a sheep or a shepherd, could last down here? Let me learn you something, brainy-boy. God don’t like gray matter, he ain’t above a little apropos torture now and then, and He sure ain’t partial to guys in gold skirts.” Micah twisted Amantu’s arm up behind his back until the professor bellowed with pain. “I’ll learn you something else. The Book says a long-long time ago they had someones called gladiators. You know why they was so glad? Because they got to go out and slew one another for sport and big hurrahs. Let me tell you, Senator, they was some tough pickles back then; men who really knew how to get God’s attention. Now, it occurs to both me and Mal that He might be wanting to see what stuff you’re made of, once we get you into a fighting mood proper.” “Twenty-t—” called Malachi, “—twenty t-talons on the f-fat one.” “Which?” said Micah. “Biggest!” “Not a chance. She’s my pretty bull.” He caressed Amantu’s recoiling cheek with the back of 73

The Possle his hand. “Thirty.” “On wh-who?” “Little one.” “Twenty f-five and dirty-d—dirty-d—dirty d-doubles!” “On!” Micah blew into Amantu’s sweat-soaked hair. “You won’t disappoint me now, will you, sugar? I knows good fighting blood when I smells it.” Malachi prodded Izzy over, grabbed a couple of torches, and cleared a space by singeing anyone within reach. In a minute the place was reeling with screams and the stench of burnt hair. After adamantly whispering in Izzy’s ear, Micah walked back to Amantu, jabbing a finger repeatedly at Abel as he strode. “Watch him!” Malachi obediently busied himself with Abel. Micah yanked back the professor’s head. “Okay,” he breathed. “We’s all set. You two meets in the center and you kicks the fat boy in the nuts just once. Don’t let him do you back! I telled him you’d be instructed to faint-and-perry, so he won’t be ready. It’s what we calls ‘a internal double-cross,’ just like what you done on him what taked it for us.” His eyes sizzled. “You remember how to pull a fast one now, don’t you, Senator?” The prisoners were pushed face to face. Malachi released Izzy, who stood sagging like an abandoned marionette. “Right in the nuts!” Micah hissed, and backed away. After half a minute Izzy opened his puffy, oil-soaked eyes. Trembling all over, he threw out his arms, sobbed, “Oh . . . Hammer!” and fell into the professor’s wide embrace. “F-f-forfeit!” Malachi screamed, stamping in circles while Amantu stroked Izzy’s filthy crown. “Forfeit my hoary white arse!” Micah socked Amantu upside the head. The professor didn’t budge. Cussing up a storm, the brute tore off his gloves and reached past a torn-gold shoulder for Izzy’s collar. He was absolutely stunned when Amantu, still gripping Izzy in one arm, turned halfaround and backhanded him right across the face. The two stood chin to chin, their eyes locked. “Know good fighting blood,” the Hammer said evenly, “when you smell it.” Malachi shrieked with anticipation. Picking up on the excitement, the hundreds of babbling crawlers made for the source, mucking up the ring in the process. Malachi waded through the prostrate swarm hissing, braining as many as he could reach with a torch-head. “Sometime,” Micah mumbled. “Sometime soon.” He grabbed an old man and worked him over furiously for Malachi’s sake, watching the stalwart professor all the while. Amantu turned away. With Malachi distracted, Abel was able to join his friends. The reformed Group, cowed by torches, were knocked wall-to-wall through the mob like caroming billiard balls. The flow halted at the opening to a low, unlit cave, where men and women began flogging themselves and coughing out strange garbled sentences, apparently directed to the tiny cave’s interior. Inside it was absolutely black. Micah threw his left arm around Amantu‘s neck, his right arm around the necks of Abel and Izzy, and pulled all three together until the men’s crowns were touching. He was an immensely strong man, and he stank terribly, even in this foul place. He laid his bone-white chin on the moist nest of their contiguous heads and called into the little hole. “We gone and captured us the Barberus! Caught him and his pretty fairy-mates up in the Citydel. He’s been taked to the Stone Hollow now, but Mama’ll be wanting the little-dots on these three flitty-flight fancies.” He gave Amantu a big smacking kiss on his hot wooly crown, and with that the Group were kicked headlong into the dark. They immediately drew into a tight seated huddle, panting frantically, nursing their sores while their eyes adjusted. Bad as it was outside, this 74

The Possle little hellhole reeked vilely. Micah, crouching in the entrance, spat out, “Don’t even think about leaving till he’s done with you! You make us chase you again and I swears to the almighty Soul we’ll put an end to you, splickety-splat, and right where we catches ye. So keeps your butts level, and your eyes straight ahead. We’ll be right here waiting, and boy, will we be watching.” At a barked command, Malachi hunched just outside the cave’s mouth, using his spread cloak to block the light. Izzy shuddered as he clung. “This abuse must end! I can’t brea—I can’t brea—I can’t brea—” “Hang on, man!” Abel whispered. “I’m right here.” Izzy slapped him furiously. “‘Right here!’ Where were you ten minutes ago, when I and the Hammer were standing off a madman?” Abel smacked him right back. “Getting my teeth singed, you miserable little turncoat.” He craned and squinted in the dark. “What did he mean, ‘done with’ us? Until who’s done with us?” The Group froze. A primitive dread of dens and lairs made them read strange shapes out of common contours. Every little nook and protuberance demanded varying measures of attention, but soon all eyes were fixed on a single, too-regular bulge that seemed to be pumping out of the pitch. The Possle approached in lunges and slithers, his grotesque body dipping and rising side-toside. He was unable to move otherwise, as all four limbs had been amputated long ago, leaving simple chubby outgrowths at the shoulders and hips. There were no eyes, only black sockets that appeared to search the dark. As the men backed away the heaving horror froze, and for perhaps half a minute the head felt the cave, rolling left and right a centimeter at a time. It took Abel to break the silence. “You poor wretch. Who did this to you?” The Possle came directly at him, waving his stumps for balance. When he was a yard away he stopped and raised his head like a sea lion. His struggles to articulate were expressed in sucks and whistles. “Mama say Possle stay, serve Mama: good limb make bad Possle. Mama say Possle not see elsewhere: good eye see bad thing. Mama say Possle talk too much.” He showed them the wagging nub of his severed tongue. “Now good Possle.” He flopped round to each man in turn. “Mama say Possle test all man—one man, two man, three. All man three man—sell thief to Punchus Pilot. Mama say thief belong Mama.” “Oh Mercies!” Izzy cried. “Shake me! Wake me!” The Possle wheeled on his belly, his ears pricked. “Ti . . . tus . . . Mack,” Abel over-enunciated. “Friend. Friend of three man.” The Possle’s head swiveled at the thorax. “The man’s no thief, for Christ‘s sake. He’s a brilliant astronomer. All this nonsense is ingrained behavior. You people are chasing shadows.” The Possle bumped noses. “Mama say thief belong Mama!” Abel recoiled from the stench. “Well, tell her he’s ours, damn you! And let us go. He needs medical attention.” Izzy rocked back and forth, his forearms clamped against his ears. “Oh, man! Oh, man! Oh man, oh man, oh man! Who, or what, is Mama?” The Possle bobbed as he nodded. “Mama Mary. Mary Mama. Messiah marry Mama. Rat eat Messiah. Mama gnaw, Mama gnaw.” With a horrible snuffling sound, the Possle did a nosedive, slamming his face straight into the ground. When he looked back up, scuffed and bleeding, his feral expression was twisted into something like joy. “Good God! God good! God make Mary! God make 75

The Possle Messiah! God make Possle!” Abel’s eyes burned in the dark. “What God? It’s like we’ve been trying to tell you people— you’ve been suckered. We’ve all been suckered! There is no supernature; it’s an old fairy tale. Your behavior belowground is the consequence of a primitive set of tenets contrived aboveground.” He straightened and scooched forward. “Now you’re gonna listen to me, pal! “A long time ago a mob of religious morons followed some politically-embarrassed lunatic, and he convinced them to smash up our entire technological system. He brought a bunch of them down here, where they adhered to his senile rewrite of their codification, which was probably a pretty good thing before the idiot bastardized it. All this crap grew out of all that crap! For Christ’s sake, man—get to a schoolhouse, get to a hospital, get to a loony bin. Izzy, give him your card.” The Possle’s head ratcheted around and he began to rock in a slow, contemplative spiral. “Um, Josh,” Izzy mumbled. “This is probably the last guy we need to antagonize right now. I recognize the symptoms.” He smiled and raised his voice. “We’re just having a friendly little confab here, not a dialogue. Isn’t that so, Mr. Possle?” He grinned until it hurt, spreading his arms high and wide. “We all know there’s a God. He’s just kind of hard to see in all this darkness, that’s all.” “God here,” the Possle insisted, rolling side to side to indicate universality. Coupled with his meditative rocking, the rolling threw him into a short tailspin. His brain locked up. After a long, creepy minute he snapped out of it and rose bolt-upright. “God good! Good God! God create Colony. God give Possle all this.” Abel blew it. “Good! Good? How . . . dare you! What kind of fu—what sort—what manner of divinity would sanction such suffering?” The Possle stopped rocking. Amantu broke in hurriedly. “One divinely apologetic, of that I am certain! A holy line, you say! A dynasty? That is most—that is indescribably fascinating! Please press on, Mr. Possle. Do tell us more.” The Possle jounced about until he was facing the professor, moved his head up and down and all around. It took Amantu a minute to realize he was being sniffed. The head moved in closer. When that nauseating countenance was only six inches away, the eye sockets seemed to deepen and the mouth opened wide. The Possle fell into a cobra-like swaying, mesmerized by his own stupidity. Using only his pelvic muscles, he drew himself upright and bobbed at each man in turn. “Judas one, Judas two, Judas three! All Judas go Mama!” “But,” Amantu tried. “Sir. It is not our intention to interf—” “Judas!” the Possle screamed. “Mama, Mama! Judas, Judas! Mama, Mama!” Malachi stepped aside, allowing light to flood the cave. “Judas, Judas!” the Possle wailed. “Mama, Mama!” Now a nervous clamor arose in the tunnel, growing in volume and passion with each repetition: “Mama, Mama! Mama, Mama!” “That’ll do ’er!” said Micah. He and Malachi scrambled in, thrusting their torches at the turning men. The big man waved his directly in the Possle’s face. The Group shied. “Told you he was a looker. Now, up on your twos, you nasty nihilists. We’s off to the Cavalry, and when we—” He was cut off by an explosive surge at the cave entrance. Men and women were fighting to squeeze inside, their arms and faces flapping about like the tentacles of sea anemones. “Judas all!” the Possle shrieked. The plug of bodies went mad. Micah stuck his torch in the Possle’s nightmarish face. “Shut your hole!” Malachi used his 76

The Possle own torch to press back the crowd, and, once the entrance was cleared, Micah kicked the Group out one by one. He grabbed Amantu’s collar and shoved him against the tunnel wall. “It’s party time, you big sweet parasite. Cross your knees and prays you dies, ’cause you gots a date with Mama.” “Mama!” And Abel and Izzy were riding a wave of rabid humanity, with Malachi scrabbling underfoot. Off to the side, Micah was driving Amantu by ramming him against the wall with his right shoulder, then ricocheting to clear their path with his left. The professor regained his focus as they ran. On one of these inward thrusts he surprised Micah by grabbing his arm and using the impetus to send him slamming into the hot rock. Micah recovered quickly, snatching Amantu’s arm in kind and flinging him at the naked flow. Amantu was knocked right back at him. The two found themselves whirling in and out of the mass, banging hard against the walls, spinning into the fray. Conditioned reflex caused those nearest to be thrown into fits of passion; they struck themselves and one another, bit at arms and legs. There was a minute of complete confusion; of slipping on rolling limbs and flailing every which way, and then Micah and Amantu were toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose, both heavyweights throwing bombs to the head that neither man felt. A wild left from Amantu tore off Micah’s hood, ripping out the staples and revealing the balding, very human psychopath beneath. He followed up with a roundhouse right to the ear that sent the brute sprawling among a flurry of stampeding legs. Micah bounded back to his feet with his bleeding face ablaze, his hands scrabbling for the professor’s eyes. And now, for the first time in his life, Amantu just snapped. He whaled blindly with both fists until a random haymaker caught the giant on the jaw and put him flat on his back. The professor came down hard, straddling Micah’s chest. The two went rolling underfoot, and when they surfaced in the muddle each had the other by the throat. For the longest time both squeezed furiously without breathing. Micah was sprawled on his back, his head propped on a rock, Amantu’s knees planted squarely beside his ribs. The fighters’ faces darkened, their snarls widened, their screaming eyes bugged out in a death struggle that went way beyond personal survival. When Amantu felt himself going, he blew out his razor breath, jerked up his arms to break Micah’s grip, and slammed both locked fists straight down on the monster’s rising purple face. The force of the blow split Micah’s skull on the stone like a ripe pomegranate, turning his raging expression into a meek splash of passive surprise. Blood spewed from his mouth and nostrils, his chin shot out at an angle, his eyes rolled back in his skull. Amantu heaved himself off and staggered into the mob. Abel and Izzy went bobbing by on a raft of shoulders. Amantu croaked out their names, but in the din was unsure he heard himself. There had to be a thousand people fighting along like spawning salmon, all crying out, “Mama!” in the manner of retarded children. Amantu laid into the crashing bodies; first out of desperation, then out of rage and disgust. The hot sweaty flesh smacked his mouth and eyes, the raving faces made him snarl as he swung. He came stumbling into the brightly lit Heart without realizing it, still throwing his fists indiscriminately. The human flow ceased abruptly at the entrance, so that Amantu appeared to be ejected, rather than self-propelled, from its midst. Hordes of immature rats swarmed past him, followed by a peppery explosion of hissing and squealing bats, but the professor hardly noticed. He was utterly exhausted. Any man in his condition would have instinctively grabbed at whatever would stand him, but the scene in that chamber was so mind-boggling—nothing could be so . . . never had 77

The Possle he imagined . . . Amantu’s whole frame collapsed and he dropped to his knees.

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Chapter Twelve Mama The Heart was a huge amphitheater-like depression, complete with a flat raised stage covered with the sacred skeletal remains of tortured and hanged Honeycomb Rats. There were wall niches for a hundred sputtering torches. The stage’s convex bluff featured letters carved four feet high, spelling out the word CAVALRY. Three cruciform figures dominated this stage, each with an identifying name chiseled in small caps. Chris was a four-foot cross of rusted pipe lengths, situated nearest the cavern entrance. Cross, a posted leaning six-footer at center stage, had been fashioned of thousands of bone fragments sewn with lengths of human hair. Double-Cross was a large cross-shaped hollow, with matching shackles and complementary blood gutter, chipped out of the far wall. Hunched at the foot of Double-Cross, Abel and Izzy were frantically administering to a mortally injured Titus Mack, now wearing only a bramble crown and a filthy rag wound up like a diaper. Double-Cross, by the wrist shackles and blood stains in the hollow, was obviously a stoning platform. And Mack, by his bashed appearance and wretched collapse, had just as obviously received the full treatment. Chris, a spooky affair, supported a complete human skeleton, char-painted overall except for the broken teeth and polished cave pearl eyes. The blacked bones of this skeleton, like the cross itself, were attached by long strands of woven human hair. There was hair everywhere; strung into decorative coils and streamers, hung about like cobwebs from walls that glistened with layers of plastered human fat. The stench of that burnt hair permeated the Honeycomb Heart. Tied to the skeleton’s clavicle, one end of a long hair-rope passed through its skull and out a hole bored in the cap, causing the dreadful bone monster to dance about grinning when the opposite end was pulled. This rope threaded a steel ring in the rock ceiling, and thence passed down to the central Cross, where it terminated in a noose around the scrawny neck framed by Madame Rat’s 79

Mama great waving mane of ash-white hair. Mama was an emaciated nude woman in her nineties, nailed to a cross of sewn tibias and femurs. Every square inch of the woman’s epidermis had been attacked by lash and stone, so that now her body was a red and purple monstrosity; half-healed at the sites of recent abominations, waxy pink from the lingering kisses of countless torches. Mama’s eyes had been stabbed so often that only the sockets remained, yet these two frightening hollows followed Amantu’s every movement like gun barrels. All her toes had been lopped off long ago, her nose torn from her face, her breasts ripped out of her chest like turnips from a field. A hanging prune on either side of her head showed how the constant thrashing had torn off her impaled ears. The stump of her left arm waved about crazily, while the putrefied forearm and half-hand, still spiked to the cross’s horizontal arm, hung at an angle, a withered black stem on a bone-yellow branch. Mama’s right arm was intact to the mid-palm, where the fingers and meat of the hand had been ripped off in her frenzy, leaving only a gristly thumb. From this digit grew a foot-long curved yellow nail, chipped round the edges but with a tip sharp as a razor. Despite her unbelievable condition, the Mater Infector cackled gaily as her toothless old head rocked every which way, rattling the grinning black bogeyman beside her. “Hammer!” Abel gasped, jarring the professor from his trance. “Over here, man! It’s Ti! Give us a hand!” Mama’s head swung toward the sound and back to Amantu. She laughed hysterically while he backpedaled to his friends. Mack’s eyes were rolled way up, and he didn’t appear to be breathing. His face and neck were a pox of cuts and contusions. “Grab his chest!” Abel grunted, squeezing around to raise a sprawled leg. Izzy took the other leg as Amantu, poised behind Mack, clasped his hands at the chest and strained to haul him upright. The man was a dead weight, the leverage all wrong. It took the Group three separate, protracted struggles to rock him into a standing slump. They walked him in a tight circle. With Amantu’s back to Cross, Abel and Izzy lifted on Mack’s legs. There was a giddy moment when the professor’s body weight was the winning force, and it seemed they’d be able to stand the man straight. The next moment Amantu was staggering back under his own impetus, as though in slow motion. His startled expression matched those of his friends as they stood gaping, the unconscious astronomer propped between them. A sharp pain ripped across the back of Amantu’s neck. The Hammer whirled. Mama’s sockets were fixed on him, her gummy jaw hanging. He snarled at that black empty mouth, and at the instrument that had sliced him—she was dangling her long curved thumbnail in his face, its stiletto tip gleaming with sputum and blood from her just-slit tongue—before his huge bull’s knuckle of a fist slammed flush into her mangled Halloween face. The impact doubled the frail old woman at the waist, shattering the cross and sending a hundred bone spurs through her back and out her belly. Her ecstatic death scream, echoing throughout the Heart and out into the adjacent tunnels and caves, was immediately answered by shrieks of unbearable envy. In an instant mobs of cripples were pouring into the chamber. The Group dragged Mack off the stage and slammed into a facing wall even as a dozen howling men leaped tooth and nail on the impaled corpse. Only the shared body of Titus Mack kept the Group a group. They clung tenaciously, clearing a path along the tunnel’s wall by elbowing, kicking, side-arming, and occasionally butting heads. Amantu, as backwards-striding front man, bore the brunt of the punishment. He held the position 80

Mama admirably, but was increasingly prone to bouts of faintness and confusion. The human flow thinned as it poured past. The Group found harbor in a wide hollow. Amantu smacked against the rock back-first, slowly slid to his rear, and sat slumped with his head between his knees, still hanging onto Mack. Sweat poured off his nose and chin. Abel rolled back an eyelid. “It’s his heart, damn it. Entirely too much for him. We’ve got to rest.” The black head rose and fell. “No! Titus must be evacuated. I shall recover.” Izzy found the carotid with one hand and fanned the professor’s face with the other. “He needs oxygen, Josh. This place is suffocating.” “I will be . . . right.” Amantu, squeezing out from under Mack, forced himself erect by walking his spine up the wall. He slapped a hand to the back of his neck. “No, Hammer,” Abel said, “you will not. Not without adequate rest.” But the professor was already scooping Mack back up. “Later, Josh,” he puffed. “Later.” Izzy and Abel exchanged glances, grabbed a limb apiece, and swung their way out. Something subliminal in Mama’s scream reverberated into the deepest tunnels, bringing armies of ravening rats up every passage. The monsters leapt on the thrashing cripples, driving their fangs into anything moist. The Group fought them back with torches, making their way against the stream on the theory that moving away from the Heart was moving toward an exit. The flow decreased steadily, and by the time they were stumbling alongside the tribe’s cavern only the oldest and sickest rats were hobbling past, more confused than galvanized by all the excitement. Amantu’s faltering progress made Mack’s ill-distributed weight that much more cumbersome, and Izzy was at times a nearhysterical anchor. In the end their destination was determined solely by Abel’s inspired guesswork, yet it was more luck than inspiration that brought the Group staggering up to Dan’l’s Gate. They conquered one step at a time, using their own sagging bodies to lever Mack to the top before kicking away the camouflage and collapsing as a unit on the stinking earth. Topside it was bright daylight; they could see the observatory like a white bubble in the distance. Abel shaded Mack with his body while checking vitals. He was a long while at it. “AJ,” gasped Amantu. “We must proceed. There is nothing we can do for him here.” To make his point he resumed his position as lead man, raising Mack’s torso from behind, preparing to stride in reverse. The men took their places and commenced half-carrying, half-dragging Mack. After a few yards Izzy threw on the brakes and dropped to his knees. A chill raced up Amantu’s spine and he shuddered. A dozen cripples came swarming out of the spider hole, vanishing even as he shook his head. He wiped his eyes. There was a yelp. Izzy lurched to his feet. “I’m up, damn you!” Abel kicked him again. “Then lift, damn you.” The three put their backs and hearts into it, awkwardly raising Mack a foot off the ground and stumbling along for thirty yards before staggering to a halt. Inch by inch the body dipped. When his rump touched the ground they all went down with him, Amantu keeping the body up in a sitting position. “This,” Abel gasped, “won’t . . . do!” “It will do,” grunted Amantu. He turned on his knees until he was poised back-to-back, then ran his arms under Mack’s. “It will have to do!” Throwing high his chin, he roared to his feet and began a resolute march. “By the Mercies,” Izzy gulped, “you, Hammer, are a man!” He grabbed one of Mack’s trailing 81

Mama legs. Abel hoisted the other and Amantu lowered his head. Izzy and Abel ran across the Outs pushing the professor like a plow, steering him with side-to-side thrusts. Their grunts, at first syncopated, became synchronous and locomotive-like as they blindly pressed forward. Mack’s head bounced and dangled, his frame swung side-to-side, his fingertips swept the dirt. As they picked up steam, each Group member in turn gave vent to a primal growl. Upon merging, the compound call rose in pitch and intensity until it was a sawing, full-throated howl of indomitable will. And the bubble became a blister, and the blister, a dome. And the Group slammed onto Mack’s porch almost unknowing, burst through the wall, and collapsed in a heap on the soft gel floor.

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Chapter Thirteen Signature For a while there, there were four dead men splayed out on the doctor’s comfy round zodiac. Then, one by one, the bodies returned to life; listening to the room, pushing to their hands and knees. “Brandy!” Izzy panted. “Administer. Quickly.” He called up the liquor cabinet, wolfed down a portion, and juggled back a decanter. But no way could he make Mack drink. The doctor’s mouth stood open at an angle. His cheeks were pallid and drawn. Abel ran the alcohol back and forth under Mack’s gaping nostrils. “Salts!” he called out. “Now! Somebody check the lavatory! Anybody!” Amantu wobbled across the room, pitched through the split skin, and slammed face-first into an indifferent neoprene partition. The back of his neck itched madly, his ears were ringing, nausea shook him in waves. Abel’s voice stimulated a corresponding vibration in the intervening skin: “He’s not breathing! I can’t find a pulse! Hammer!” Careening into the lavatory, Amantu was rocked by the train wreck of his reflection. He smashed the mirror aside, strewing the cabinet’s contents. Scattered about the floor were tubes and bottles containing a variety of medications devoted almost exclusively to liver ailments, along with one vial clearly marked Ammonium Carbonate. Amantu took a whiff and the jolt did him good. He lunged back through the skin. Abel shoved the vial under Mack’s nose. “Now!” Izzy lifted and lowered the knees. Abel placed an ear on that wracked mouth. “Again!” Mack was wholly unresponsive, his eyes cloudy pools. Abel grimly launched into cardiopulmonary resuscitation while Izzy vigorously rubbed Mack’s arms and legs. After a tense minute Abel sat back on his haunches and stared at the dying astronomer; filthy, near-naked, spreadeagled ignominiously, ragged skull strangled by a crude crown of hammered-in brambles. Burning resentment remade his expression. “Get him up. Get . . . him . . . up!” It took everything Amantu had to haul Mack upright. Abel swung under an arm, Amantu 83

Signature supported the other, and together they dragged him around the room, trying to walk some life back into the man. Little by little their knees caved. Abel looked around wildly. “Solo. Sign your runner.” Mack was sagging. “For Christ’s sake, sign Titus Mack!” The body seemed to flicker gently between them, but even that impression was history by the time their knees hit the tiles. “Cover,” Izzy whispered. “Oh, man. Just cover him.” In a minute he removed his own tattered outer robe and laid it tenderly over Mack’s gnarled face. The professor’s eyes banged shut. “Hammer?” Amantu jacked up his head. His friends were holding Mack half-off the floor, waiting. He took the legs this time, and they gently carried the body through the skin and onto the waiting bed. Izzy pulled a blanket over Mack’s face, tucked a corner under his head. The sense of loss, to Amantu, was oddly profound. Time ground to a halt. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees, and an electric silence filled the room. Abel leaned in close. “I’m so sorry, Ti. It’s beyond wrong, beyond unfair. Why things are as they are—” “Your work,” Izzy told the blanket. “Your name. Carry on.” “Of course. We’ll make Solomon the genius of your memory. Everybody will know you went out working.” Amantu felt Izzy’s icy fingers on his own. He looked up. Across the bed, Abel was already holding Izzy’s other hand. Amantu stuck out his big hot palm, completing the chain. All eyes were on him. The silence congealed. “I do vow,” the Hammer breathed, “to diligently honor the memory of my good friend Titus Mack.” The chain relaxed. “Come,” said Abel. “Let him have his peace.” The men filed out through the skin. Abel called up some seats. Amantu fell back, his arms dead at his sides. Izzy brought round the tray. When he reached the professor he said, “You look Hammer terrible. Afraid we insist.” Abel nodded solemnly. Sweet lava rolled down his throat. Marion Blackberry. Amantu could breathe again. He took another swallow. “So,” Izzy belched. He stared at his friends. “It behoove us. Be practical.” Abel’s reply was heavy with the bitterness of fait accompli. “‘Carry on.’ Izzy, if it leaks we’re onto an ugly massacre and cover-up, this place’ll be stripped, sealed, and buried. History will remember Ti as an infected crackpot, and we three’ll be quarantined as carriers. That’s if they don’t just shoot us first. No, Solomon’s got to be kept a secret. ” “History,” Amantu heaved, “is all we have.” He stood up. Izzy set down his drink. “Hammer.” The professor said reasonably, “Solomon must be commanded to manifest the details of our past as they truly occurred. Whether or not the ramifications appeal.” The brandy had done him good. He addressed the room as though from a lectern. “Our educable young, at least, deserve nothing less.” “Rot,” said Abel. “You’re delirious, man. Things have stabilized. You’ll only upset four hundred years of successful adaptation.” “There you are mistaken, AJ. Sincere men will always make the most of truth. Our next step is 84

Signature bigger than us.” Abel rose. “Let it lie.” “Gentlemen,” Amantu said grandly. He turned to the eastern skin. “Solo!” On that prompt the dome blew off with a roar of geysers, spun whistling a half mile overhead, and collapsed on its foundation with a delicate click. Inrushing air compressed the room to a speck of white light. That light burst into an instantaneous nova, then into a zillion radiant spikes, and upon those spikes’ dissolution the observatory’s interior grew violently alive. The floor became the eye of a hurricane, the skin a furious display of rotating lights and shadows. Countless waveprint clusters hissed and flickered past, black squiggly schools of data tamped and dispersed like iron filings round a revolving magnet. And behind it all ran a disquieting th-thud, th-thud, th-thud, accelerating and retarding in perfect sync with the images. Oddly, Amantu’s bullhorn of a voice could be heard off and on—words, grunts, sentence-fragments, popping out of the whirl before being blown to vocal shrapnel. With each demolished syllable the rushing imagery reacted correspondingly— spiderwebbing, exploding with spikes and troughs, sprouting filaments that vanished even as they formed. Abel was reeling like a man on a merry-go-round. “Solo! For Christ’s sake, break!” He caught his breath. “And please . . . whatever you do, don’t anyone say anything that’ll start him back up!” “Something—” Amantu gasped. “Wrong. Something . . . terribly wrong.” Abel turned on him. “That was your voice, Hammer. I heard it.” “I uttered not a word!” Izzy clamped his hands to his temples and folded at the waist. “O wracked and raging cerebrum—never again!” He took a deep breath and colored deeper. “I mean it this time!” “Sure you do.” Abel shook his head. “What a spectacle! The entire program’s aborting! Ti must’ve written in a security release.” “He would not. As a man of science, he would deem Solomon’s existence to be of far greater significance than his own. There is a glitch.” “Balls . . .” Izzy pulled himself together, “descending! But—we’ll never learn by pitching praise and pity. I say, there! Solo!” The skin shot round again, this time depicting an atomic shell swarming with electrons. Unrelated noises accompanied the phenomenon—rushing wind, electrical discharges, the sounds of surf. The swarm resolved, systematically, into rings, which merged, level by level, until the skin’s smooth concave surface was again an opaque field. Apparent objects blew into being and disappeared; some merely planes and geometric shapes, some vaguely recognizable persons and contrivances. Through all this, Izzy’s pipe of a voice phased in and out. A row of torches came streaming through the room, quickly followed by a rattle of gunfire and the sough of a breaching whale. A half moon shot across the upper skin. “Solo! Break!” “That . . .” sputtered Izzy, “was me! I’d know me anywhere.” “And there is our clue. First my voice, then the voice of Doctor Weaver here. The Solomon program is performing correctly by utilizing the voice of its runner. It responds to commands. But how does it verbalize independently?” “Is Ti,” Izzy said, blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “Is got to be.” “No!” Abel smacked the back of his friend’s head. “But of course! We got to him in time! 85

Signature Solo!” The room roared to life. “Titus! It’s Abel! Can you hear me?” Eerily, it was Abel’s own voice that responded: Abel! Bas-relief patterns rocketed around the skin, grotesqueries mostly, moving way too fast to decipher. The voice repeated, Abel, and the room seemed to wobble. Facial features like sculpted soap bubbles popped in the air. There rang out a single syllable—hold—and the skin became a spinning carousel of body types interspersed with miscellaneous household objects. Blood-red tendrils, shooting into the center of the room, were immediately sucked back into the maelstrom. “Solo! Break!” “Those!” Izzy announced. “Those! Many fish—manna fist—manifestations. Titus fight for program foothold while . . . still try to make sense environment.” Managing a huge breath, he articulated heroically: “It’s a healthy response to stress. But comparable to madman—forgive colloquialism—to madman trying make sense reality.” A second massive breath preceded an elegant conclusion: “Consciousness cannot compete with an encyclopedic environment! Just too much damned information.” Amantu was barely able to focus. “Then we must throw him a line.” Abel nodded. “Solo!” A six-by-nine Abel-mask somersaulted halfway across the room before blowing into a billion bits. Other faces peeled off the skin and whipped about like bats. “Memories!” Izzy shouted. “Mind seeking reestablish foundation!” “Titus! Try to think in straightforward sentences, man. Think conversationally!” A flurry of mental debris whisked around the room, compelling Abel to cup his mouth and yell, “Signed, Titus! You were signed by Solomon. The field’s supporting your signature. Or viceversa. Whatever. Your mind’s engaged in real time. Or what used to be your mind. Christ, Ti—you were . . . you were killed by those lunatics out there! I can’t believe I just said that.” The tempest skipped a beat. On restart, the room filled to the skin with a realistic impression of choking black smoke, and the Group were clinging like children as they plummeted toward a burning gray battleship on a gunmetal sea. An instant before impact, a series of splintering crashes rocked the north skin. The smoke cleared. Three men swinging double-edged axes burst in, took a quick look around, and ran straight through the Group into the skin’s rapidly-adjusting phantom horizon. Amantu swooned. By the time they got him on his feet they were back in the torch-lit Honeycomb Heart, watching dozens of painted men approach with stones in their fists and curled feet. The impression of an assault was eerily realistic; the Group instinctively turned to see what these predators were stalking, only to find dozens more seemingly closing in from behind. When they turned back they found those projected human spiders in the act of hurling their stones with malicious intent. With the barrage mere inches away, the program shifted to a massive glacial calving, complete with titanic roar and explosive impact. A second later the Group were on an unfamiliar battleground amidst countless butchered men. Digitized wind moaned over the tragedy like a bereaved old woman. The room took off again. “Reliving!” Izzy shouted. “Sperience! Mix with random—with tandem . . . that was Colony!” “He’s not even alive, you idiot. And nobody’s lived all that. You are so drunk. Solo. Break.” Amantu interjected. “You are both correct.” All he wanted was to curl up and die. “In 86

Signature appearance, Ti’s signature is attaching and detaching haphazardly. Evidently it is one thing to run this program, and quite another to run in it.” His eyes grew heavier as he spoke. The hot lids kissed, and he might have passed out on his feet, if not for a projected, gut-wrenching wail of mass supplication. His eyes popped back open. It was night again, and the Group were standing elbow-to-elbow in a crowd stretching as far as the program could handle. A thousand generator-driven searchlights probed the earth and heavens; some fixed on the wide black sky, some dancing their beams laterally to goad the crowd. Half a mile to the west lay a carousel-like ring of these bright columnar beams, dedicated to a wheeled platform stacked high with speaker towers and tiered racks of amplifiers. Numberless men and women stood close enough to chafe, mesmerized by that white-hot spot. Then, in a wild, hallucinatory break from reality, the nearest individuals whirled and stared directly at the Group. The action was repeated by a second ring, and another and another, the effect spreading smoothly and dramatically like ripples breaking up a pond. Within seconds every face in the place was gaping, and every voice within immediate earshot had been stilled. No experience could have been more unnerving; the Group, instinctively standing back-to-back, were receiving the same impression from all sides: endless startled expressions, countless hanging jaws, and two seconds later they were bombarded by searchlight beams. The men were more stunned than blinded—these beams, mere projections, were being reproduced at a candlepower that could not exceed Solomon’s partitioned output. “Solo! Break!” Throats were cleared, fists unclenched. At last Izzy muttered, “Funniest thing. Just had . . . dream. Strange. Standing there, big old crowd, everybody yelling, hooting. Alla sudden they just turn and . . . stare at me.” Abel raised an eyebrow. “Can dreams be shared? How about you, Hammer?” But Amantu was still a deer in headlights. Abel nodded. “Okay then. There we were, backed up against one another. Let’s try it again.” When they were satisfactorily aligned, Abel said, “Solo. Repeat Last Sequence. Real Time.” Again it was night. Again the Group were swallowed up in that unbelievable throng, again the nearest individuals turned to stare, again the ripple effect took place. “Solo. Stop.” Abel had paused the playback with perhaps half the observable crowd staring in astonishment and the rest captured in various stages of just catching on. He said, very clearly, “Ti, old friend . . . Titus, if you can hear me . . . you are—you were a thinking man. So you’ll forgive me if I tweak you a bit here, just a little. Solo. Zoom in and Mark. Enlarge by ten.” As the projections’ dimensions expanded tenfold, Solomon’s feathered pixilation produced images with overlapping patches of varying opacity. Butcher’s frozen followers were now splotchy see-through colossi, looking over the Group’s heads with expressions of intense surprise. From this vantage, the inner ring of filmy giants appeared to be trading stares with opposing individuals. At the ring’s dead-center, the relatively tiny real men turned about in unison, following those stares, until they found themselves facing one another, profoundly confused and embarrassed. “Solo,” Abel said. “Return to Mark.” The giants zoomed back to normal size and profusion. “Maybe I get it,” Abel muttered, “and maybe I don’t. Earlier we were watching these visuals stare at Ti’s anomaly—and now they’re checking us out.” He studied the life-sized figures carefully. 87

Signature No doubt about it; they were looking right at, and right through, the closely huddled Group. “I guess I don’t get it.” Izzy peered up blearily. “Not us, ‘idiot.’ We not there! We . . . here. They look at Ti.” Abel smacked him again. “Thirty years you wait to say something brilliant. And now: twice in one night!” Izzy colored. “Well, I . . . sometime in brainstudy find—” “Solo,” Abel said. “Break.” The house lights came back up. “Tsunami,” he mused. “A billion deluded sheep, all braying in concert.” He faced the southern skin, trying to remember verbatim while winging it. “‘Oh Soul of the burning night. Oh Soul, oh-Soul, oh . . . Souloh—’” And the room roared to life. “Break.” The lights came back up. He turned to Izzy. “Okay, skullcracker. Tell us how a disembodied dead man is able to leap four hundred years into the past.” Amantu pulled himself together. “Gentlemen. We are obviously pioneering an esoteric branch of physics here. We all know that time does not exist as a medium. These are haphazard attachments. Ti’s signature is hopping about electromagnetically, independent of our continuum notions. It is no wonder Butcher’s followers reacted so dramatically. Given the physical similarity to their executed hero, they sincerely believed they were witnessing the manifestation of their divinity.” He raised his leaden arms to demonstrate. “Poor Titus was signed even as we attempted to walk him around this room.” “Genius!” Abel marveled. “I’m surrounded by genius!” Izzy rolled up his head. “Well, I—” “Solo!” The whirl started up. “Titus!” The world went dark, save for the glow of a single sputtering candle in a dirty black cave. Facing away, Samuel Butcher knelt in genuflection, his head bowed and his hands clasped. Suddenly aware of the signature behind him, he jerked round and looked up at the Group guiltily, gave a little yelp, and collapsed on his face. He lay there with his chin in the rocks as though a heel were planted on the back of his neck. The visual accelerated. Night and day popped in and out in a dizzying stream, producing all the symptoms of vertigo. Amantu embraced his stomach and doubled over. “Damn it all, Hammer!” Abel’s voice was out of a dream. “Izzy, unhand that brandy. Get some damp towels from the lavatory, and while you’re at it check for nitroglycerine.” Amantu felt liquid dribbling between his lips. “I’m afraid it’s the real thing this time.” The dirty gold robes were ripped down to his navel. An ear pressed against his chest. Down and drifting, Amantu watched storm clouds racing across the upper skin. Part of him wanted to tell Abel that his heart wasn’t the problem, but another part told him to play it the way it looked. Artificial night and day continued to darken and brighten the room, along with that peculiar flicker produced by torches. And now a lumbering body, as large as the observatory, paused midstride, filling the entire chamber with the dingy mist of its projected shadow. In the next breath the men were to all appearances stepped on by a brontosaur. Amantu sat up and shook his head. “Solo. Stop.” The place had turned into a cretaceous greenhouse crammed with fern twenty feet high. Swamp gas pixel-clouds hung on the projected horizon like tossed pepper. The professor struggled to his feet as the scene skipped off, becoming, in quick succession, a submarine valley, some kind of celebration in an outdoor stadium, and an open-ended vista of stellar space. “So—” He tried again. “Solo! Stop!” And the men stood suspended high above the planet, staring out at a luminous young 88

Signature solar system. Dust and planetesimals were caught in the act of accumulating, backlit by a frozen blond ball. The grandeur and raw beauty were just too much. All life left Amantu’s legs, and he sagged into his friends’ embrace. Abel hauled him upright. “How’s that for history, Professor? Nothing but grit and gas.” His voice was sandpaper on Amantu’s eardrum. “But it goes back farther, Hammer. It has to. Do you want to see? How’s about you, Izzy? What do you say, guys? Let’s go all the way to inception.” He took Izzy’s right hand and the professor’s left. Izzy completed the ring. “Open your mind, Hammer, and don’t be afraid. We’ve got you, man. And we’re not letting go.” What happened next might have been one more detail in Amantu’s delirium. Mack’s house lights shot up, rudely replacing the majestic stellar projection with that familiar old world of blank white skin and gel motif. The Group broke hands and turned, expecting to find another incursion of rabid Colonists. In the skin’s wide breach stood a small mob in civilian clothes, military uniforms, and bright orange hazards suits. Between bodies could be seen slices of a special forces cavalcade. A dozen men in bulky protective gear jogged to within a few yards of the Group, went into genuflection left-toright, and leveled their firearms. When the last man’s knees hit the floor, eight simultaneous pulses, four for each man, blew Abel and Izzy off their feet in a gale of gore and body parts. Amantu’s jaw dropped, a spittle bubble forming between his gaping lips. There was blood everywhere. He stared back at the line of gunmen in dead silence. The bubble grew; it seemed every trigger finger was just waiting on it. The professor went limp. His heart almost stopped when the bubble popped.

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Chapter Fourteen Closure “Okay,” called a voice in the back. “Everybody stand down. Those bodies are not to be touched by anyone.” A man in casual wear walked to the line of executioners, looked Amantu directly in the eyes, and smiled warmly. Without looking away, he dropped his arms in a chopping motion and barked, “Lower those weapons immediately! You men move out and return to your stations!” Then, in a voice almost tender, “I’d like a moment alone with the professor.” When the room was clear he snapped on a transparent mask and worked his arms into a pair of elbow-length surgical gloves. “Moses Matthew Amantu! How I’ve longed to meet you!” The mask fogged slightly at the cheeks. “You’ll forgive me for not shaking hands. Strictest orders. My name’s Thomas Ryder—but please feel free to call me Tommy. And there’s something so distant about the term ‘Mister,’ don’t you think? Anyways, sorry about all the mess. Damned cops. But what’re you gonna do?” He glanced at the mangled bodies with distaste. “Well. I’m what’s known in the Barrier’s M Section as a Closer. Occasionally citizens get caught up in police-style actions, entitling them to financial reparation, to legal assistance, to professional counseling and—generally their first concern—to an immediate explanation.” He lowered his head while raising his eyes. “Ah, sir! Such a time you’ve had! Do take a seat. And allow me to fix you a drink.” Amantu didn’t budge. His diseased old heart was beating far too hard, yet he’d never been more aware of being alive. “Thank you, no. And I prefer to remain standing. You mentioned an explanation.” “Of course.” The Closer crimped his nose. “But please, not here. Not with the dead.” He swept an arm. “I’m afraid I must insist.” The professor, swooning, backpedaled until his shoulders met the bespattered skin. Ryder nodded crisply. “So be it.” He pursed his lips and, his eyes twinkling behind the mask’s glass, stepped right past. The skin breached, but remained open after he’d passed through. Amantu looked everywhere but down, fighting to control his breathing while the Closer checked on Mack’s 184

Closure body. A few minutes later Ryder sauntered back in, shaking his head and wiping down his gloves. “I had no idea carriers beat the crap out of their assimilators before they died.” He scrolled down his pocket scrambler. The men in protective suits, accompanied by forensics officers holding prongs and scanners, lumbered back in dragging sterilized body bags. The Closer jerked a thumb at Mack’s bedroom. “Just what—” Amantu gasped, “just what do you mean by that?” Ryder turned back. “I mean you’ve been taken for a ride, my friend, both figuratively and literally. These messy specimens, along with that beat-up and diapered individual in the bedroom— all the members of this so-called ‘Group,’ in fact—were snatchers. They were Colony agents.” Amantu pushed himself to his full height. Half a head taller than Ryder, he snarled down with all the righteousness he could muster, “And you, sir, are an outright liar! Good men have been murdered—friends of mine. Who are you people?” He was hyperventilating. “I thought this day had seen the last of lunatics and highwaymen.” The Closer’s mask fogged again. “Think back, Professor. Not too far—to just shortly after midnight. Do you remember entertaining a stranger between the hours of oh-one twenty-four and ohone forty-seven? A telepresence utilizing a stolen police scrambler dropped in on you and the gang as you merrily crossed the Burghs to meet the new year. Well, that Tp was in actuality a Colony agent, working in the guise of a gnarly street hustler. He was not a very good agent. He was only supposed to provide a certain psychotropic substance, not introduce a loaded military weapon. A Medium Range Assault arm was fired on that View, resulting in the near-instantaneous apprehension of said agent directly at the projection site. Our association proved most amenable. Over the course of half an hour he provided a wealth of insight into the Colony’s machinery; names, posts—things we hadn‘t the foggiest idea about. The man swore he’d spill the undreamable if only we’d let him live.” Ryder’s eyes warmed with secret amusement. He shrugged. “Odds are long he will. “Now, everything I’m relating came straight from him, and it’s all been verified by creatively squeezing half a dozen federally-housed carriers prized for their compliance under questioning. Now try to remember, Professor. Did that Tp import a controlled substance onto that View ride?” Amantu sagged. “Only a mild stimulant. Of what possible legal consequence—I have—I have this heart condition.” “And I’m sure it’s a good one. You were lucky your pals were there. They saved you from indulging . . . ?” “They did not. It was their common effort to revitalize me. They may have saved my life.” It struck him. “They most certainly saved my life! They were professional men. I trusted them; in their zeal, their capableness.” “A good call. Most Colony agents are every bit as qualified as their civil counterparts. Plus, they’re provided top-notch intelligence. Knowing your cardiac patterns, a member was assigned to provoke a case of angina, and another to convince you to indulge in a restorative tonic. At the appropriate moment, one of your new pals signaled the projecting agent by faking an emergency call. According to our little squealer, the assigned concoction contained a street drug known as Swirl, mixed with an Eastern synthetic capable of producing hallucinations ranging from paranoid to euphoric over a twelve-hour period. You’ve been slipped a dream, Professor. “Now, one of Swirl’s more-popular effects is its ability to open up even the toughest nut: susceptibility to suggestion, libidinous fantasies, a glorious sense of brotherly love. Users become wide-open to new ideas.” 185

Closure “Sober intellectuals are always open to new ideas.” “Oh, come on, Amantu! We know all about you and your steel-trap brain. You’ve never heard a word you didn’t want to hear, and your fondest displays of acknowledgement are grunts and truncated scowls. Given that, it was the job of these snatchers to win you over: to win your focus, your trust, your affection—no mean feat. Yet here you are, still with ’em. Not such a standoffish guy after all.” Amantu pondered the Group’s faces; not those gory distorted outrages smeared across the gel’s Pisces, but the very personal, if at times galling, countenances still fresh in memory. He heard again their jibes, their insights, their petty outbursts. These had been real people. They’d done right by him. Tommy Ryder was, by contrast, an arrogant bully with a very big bureaucratic bug up his butt. “You’d been suitably prepped. The next step was to get you here for further inducement.” “What ‘further inducement’?” “You were to be treated to a feast for the eyes and imagination, something no historian”—and he spat the word— “could resist. According to our canary, this riveting spectacle involved a lost art utilizing what he referred to as ‘dancey lights’.” Ryder’s eyes took in every detail of the skin and floor. “Looks pretty tame to me. So what did our good doctor do, lecture ad infinitum? How quaint.” He rolled his neck. “Once you’d been induced, your new buddies were to bring you into the Colony for infection and assimilation. Does any of this sound famil—” Ryder cut himself short, raising a hand and backing off as Mack’s body was rolled out in a transparent cocoon. When the specialists were out of earshot he upped the ugliness in his tone. “Here’s something you can teach your students, pal. Titus Mack was the Burghs’ Head Assimilator. Who knows how many decent citizens his boys snaught? Who knows how many he prepped, in this very toilet, for said infection and assimilation? Makes my stomach crawl. How’s ’bout yours?” Ryder’s expression behind the glass was that of a man probing a clogged drainpipe. “Why do you think he lived all the way out here, anyway?” “He was,” Amantu wheezed, “a man of research. Great men need great privacy.” “Come again? Great actor is more like it. Mack kept up his healthful front like all gifted carriers—through sheer will. Only the riffraff run around raving and biting each other. But Titus Mack was a Y-Class with terminal liver disease. The Colony needed a new man for the site, and he was thoughtful enough to volunteer your name. Nudge, nudge, Amantu: How coincidental that your work in recall should fall right in line with the Colony’s overall strategy.” “Not another word! You did not know these fine men. They were thinking individuals, not reactive ones. Seekers of truth, not fabrication.” They parted for the forensics crew. The Closer oversaw the entire affair with crisp efficiency; an important man accustomed to having his orders followed precisely. Izzy’s and Abel’s bits and pieces were systematically tagged, bagged, and sealed. The professor clung to consciousness while one crew scanned the premises and another cleaned up. The skin and floor were scrubbed meticulously. By the time the workers had departed, every trace of the lives and deaths of three men had departed with them. The skin hissed shut. The observatory was now a ghost house, but still ringing with the memories of miscellaneous commands. The whole process had taken perhaps twenty minutes, yet Ryder was able to pick up the conversation as though no interruption had occurred: “Big on truth, were they? These guys were Method masters, pros from the word go. They had you eating right out of their hands. And, speaking of hands, you been holding any lately? Joining any ‘circles’ or ‘rings?’ By the look of things, you were cozying right up when we busted in here. ‘Not snaught for naught,’ eh, Professor? Well, let me throw something else at you, Mr. Thinking Man. I’ll 186

Closure just bet that this wonderful Titus Mack of yours told you some sad story about a bunch of religious nuts who were incinerated in a great big cave a long time ago, right? And maybe he added that it was the government’s fault, so they covered it up by calling it mass suicide, and wrote it into history that way. No! Wait a minute. I’m gonna go way out on a limb here. I’m gonna guess he told you that their supernatural creator showed up, and that the government didn’t want anybody to know about that either. I’ve heard umpteen variations on the story, from every carrier sick enough to jabber his way into custody.” Ryder screwed up his expression and clenched his fists melodramatically. “Damn it all, Amantu, I’m gonna go way, way out—to the very tip of that limb! I’m gonna posit that Mack even ‘showed’ you this supernatural whatchamacallit; this ‘God,’ this glowing guy on a stick—that he proved it to you. I wish I could have been here for that one, man. I’ll bet you’re downright positive you’ve seen this thing.” He called up a draped-and-tagged gel couch, then made a pretense of peeking behind it. “How’s about you show it to me? Then we can both pull out the whips and razors. And you won’t even have to take me all the way out to see your Madame Rat—you can prick me right here, prick. I’m one of the dumb ones.” He called the couch back down. “How dare you! Just what are you implying?” “I’m trying to say you’re a carrier, Amantu.” “Liar! Liar! Liar! You have produced nothing but lies! From the moment your murderous circus violated this venerated place of research.” The skin breached. A small phalanx of medical personnel made their way in. A couple of nurses at the fore zipped themselves into transparent body stockings, activated their masks, and stepped up wielding long plastic-tipped tongs. “Aw, c’mon, Prof’! No need to get personal. But tell me; how you been feeling lately, huh? A little faint? A bit under the weather? Nausea, maybe, or flashes and sweats? How about hallucinations? I’ve heard it’s one hell of a ride at the onset of contraction. Think of it! Without an inkling, you were drugged, snaught, and infected—you’ve been all but crowned! Yet you claim to know what’s real and what’s not. How dare you!” Amantu was hit with a tranquilizer. In seconds his arms and legs were made of wood, his head stuffed with cotton. A doctor scanned his optics and an assistant cut off his filthy gold robes with sterile scissors. Nurses picked up the rags with pneumatic pincers and dropped the mess into a large see-through pouch. They draped him in a cellophane hospital gown, stuffed his bloody feet in a pair of padded slippers, and stapled a radio ID bracelet to his wrist. The nurses stepped back. Amantu was hit with a stimulant. The medical personnel picked up their gear and filed back out the skin. Amantu forced out his words. “Why then—why—why was I not also dispatched? After all you have related . . . you expect me to believe . . . you would leave a carrier here to—to carry on such despicable work? Why not put me out of my misery?” The Closer wagged his head regretfully. “Sorry, not an option: I don’t make those decisions in the field. Everything’s been figured out. No ‘despicable work’ will be done here, for the simple reason that the jig is up on this place. Your masters will learn, soon enough, that their scheme has backfired. But don’t you worry about ’em taking it out on you, Mosey. They wouldn’t think of harming one of their own.” Ryder backpedaled slowly, pausing every third step to mark his points. “We don’t want you to suffer either, okay? As Mack’s old colleague, you should appear happily engrossed in your vital recall work; freed from the burthen of students and faculty, able to transmit your findings directly to our offices for campus distribution. We want you to live long, healthily, and in complete security. You see, here you are much more valuable alive than dead. And so here you shall remain. You may, sir, consider yourself under permanent house arrest.” The Closer blurred as he 187

Closure receded. “Why—” Amantu gasped, fighting for cohesive breath, “—if what you say is truth, why should these poor people be sequestered generation after generation, locked away from the birthright of civilization? Why would a disease rage cureless for over four centuries? And why should plague data remain classified in the first place?” His head fell. “What is it my government does not want me to know?” Ryder stopped where he was. He carefully modulated his voice, speaking with the succinctness of a bully explaining the new ground rules. “Now pay close attention, ‘Hammer.’ Your government wants you to know that, as a vector, you’re quarantined here on a permanent basis. Your government wants you to know that, as its beneficiary, you’ll earn your keep by serving as its newest propaganda tool; video presentations, starring you, will be doctored to produce recall data amenable to right-thinking. Your government also wants you to know that, as your sponsor, it guarantees to provide for you throughout an extensive and highly productive tenure. “And lastly, Amantu, your government wants you to know that Barrier members, as one of the hardest and fastest rules in nature, do not like carriers, do not like plague sympathizers, and most definitely do not like intellectual busybodies, especially of the ‘historian’ ilk.” At the skin Ryder lifted his mask to flash a smile. “Don’t bother,” he said, leaning back until the new breach met his contours. “I’ll let myself out.” Behind him was dirty bright daylight. A perimeter had already been established, complete with police line, scads of official vehicles, and a mobile lab for the forensics specialists. The Closer stepped onto the porch and the skin’s lips kissed shut. The observatory’s interior dimmed steadily. Amantu rested until he’d gathered the strength to push himself off. When he could get his mouth together he whispered, “Solo!” The room dimmed further. A ghostly cocoon formed about the professor, glowing softly. “Release all security blocks. Titus! M Section has control of your property! AJ and Izzy have been shot dead, implicated in some official insanity about a carrier conspiracy. I have been infected in the Colony, and without remedy will soon collapse. Instruct Solomon to scan my physical self so as to identify the pathogen.” The slowly swirling nebula vanished. Amantu’s bleary eyes hung like pendants in the dark. “Solo. Text Alone, Free-standing. Titus! I have in some manner been set up. I am a prisoner, at my wit’s end. Explain what is going on.” The anticipated hovering text did not appear. It came to Amantu on a chill: the program wouldn’t accept an unkeyed ‘Titus’ link. It took an extra measure of courage to pursue the obvious. “Solo. Am I mad?” Cold white light brushed his eyes. A photographic image of nil value winked and was gone. In the ensuing fade-to-black Amantu spoke with exaggerated care. “So-lo. Scan . . . my . . . physical . . . self. Describe anything awry—nervous, enzymatic, organic—anything that might result in a state of altered perception.” Amantu’s insides were revealed in splendid detail. Pulmonary and respiratory organs, vividly active, blushed scarlet. Nerves, sinews, and cartilaginous bodies were etched in beautifullyhighlighted cobalt on pearl. The room went dark. Amantu’s white floating eyes fixed on the residual glow. “Solo! Text Alone!” He beetled his brows. “Have I ingested, accidentally or through a second party, any substance capable of affecting 188

Closure my senses or cognitive processes?” A snapshot and blackness. “Solo! Produce a catalyst! Search your files for any agent that might induce hallucinations in an otherwise healthy individual!” A heartbeat later, eight misty blocks were hovering at eye-level, two feet away. The word HYPNOSIS was a new one. Amantu tried it out phonetically. “Hype . . . no . . . sis. Solo. A brief description.” HYPNOSIS NOUN> SLEEP-LIKE STATE INDUCED BY A SECOND PARTY SECONDARY NOUN>HYPNOTISM “Hype . . . no-tism,” Amantu tried. “Hype-notism . . .” He dropped his eyes. Barely able to stand, he mumbled, “Oh, Solo. What manner of man would do such a thing?” The Text response was instantaneous. HYPNOTIST Amantu’s eyes flashed like a tiger’s. “Hypenotist!” He stomped through the room, calling up and smashing all things Mack. “Hype-no-tist—Fool! Hype-no-tist—Rube! ‘Dancey lights!’ Ah! I am a pawn! A patsy! A puppet played by a master!” A blast of hot air almost knocked him over. Overwrought and vertiginous, he gripped the breached skin’s lips and snapped back his head. In broad daylight, the Outskirts was the same wide-open dump he’d first seen by a drifting new year’s moon. The porch was vacant, the horizon blank, the ground devoid of fresh tracks and prints. He knuckled his eyes and loped across the porch, but the moment he violated the perimeter his ID bracelet came alive and his errant foot received a jangling thrill. It wasn’t all that bad, so he tried again, boldly extending an entire leg. And that time it hurt. Amantu stepped back, tugging on the tightening bracelet. He wasn’t going anywhere. Shrinking into his slippers and gown, Amantu wheezed and shuffled back inside. The old Mack place was palpably vacant, as quiet as a morgue. Dirty plates and utensils, unwashed robes, orthopedic furniture, dusted-over equipment and piled peripherals. The Hammer pulled his hospital gown tighter and, standing in the utter darkness of ignorance, whispered, “Solo?”

“And so,” the old man said, “for upwards of eleven decades I have labored here, patiently attempting to establish some sort of permanent contact with Titus Mack. I have been only marginally successful. You see, the Solomon program was self-written with Titus as runner. A two-way window 189

Closure will require Solomon’s adoption of my every idiosyncrasy . . . and I will confess to periods of woolgathering.” He auto-descended to near eye-level. “Yet, by dint of a most resolute nature, I have succeeded in producing a free-floating, rude shadow of the original field. This minor feat was accomplished by following the great astronomer’s instructions through a kind of digitized Morse we wrote together, diaphragmatically assisted by Solomon himself. The resulting medium, a wavesensitive field contained in a battery-powered vacuum jar, was named ‘Gist’ by Solomon. We felt he reserved that right of christening, for Ti and I could not have done it without him. After all, as Titus says, the Gist is ‘Solomon’s baby.’ “Now, it is urgently essential that you get this Gist into the hands of a man of science; a man able to complete the job. I have not been allowed a guest, nor been permitted to leave these premises, for some hundred-plus years—even though all rumors of plague are eradicated, even though civilization swept over this poor workhorse long ago, even though the Outskirts are little more than a dirty memory. “You there: child! Your forefinger should be raised in a display of rhapsodic comprehension, not nastily thrust up a distended nostril. It behooves all mankind that my words are well-marked, so pay scrupulous attention. Follow me: the Gist is analogous to a man with spinal column damage. The will is there, but the nervous bridge is down. Contact must not be long-curtailed or the field will dissipate! Ti must be prodded!” The children stared back and forth, their expressions ranging from mooning innocence to barely suppressed hilarity. A few mimicked old Amantu’s puffy cheeks and bulbous eyes, others pantomimed a supine walrus in freefall. These physical impersonations, for all their overblown outlandishness, were fairly accurate—Moses Amantu’s condition was wide open to the rudest form of mockery. At one hundred and seventy-four years of age he’d more than doubled his natural lifespan, and was now paying dearly for the dubious gift of artificially-induced longevity. He weighed four hundred and seventeen pounds, thirty-one ounces and eight grams; his body fat was stabilized at an even eighty-seven percent. The children were aware of this, as it was very clearly delineated on the frame’s liquid crystal display. What they didn’t know was that every gram of that lolling bulk had to be buoyed by a gyro-operated mattress consisting of thousands of tiny stressresponsive padded pistons, or his body would simply roll off its hovering “Crib” and plop onto the porch like a tubful of gelatin. Amantu’s blood-engorged eyes had the same problem: without the spongy cupped wings that made up the rims of his lensless goggle-like glasses, the aqueous old orbs would slide right out of their sockets at the least concussion. That sculpted pillow supporting his soft wide skull was really a padded compartment for an oxygen cylinder. A pair of slender tubes, one emerging from each side of this pillow, bent round his massive old head and clipped onto a noseshaped plate attached to the goggles. Out of sight, the tubes were sutured into nasal passages. The litter’s chassis contained computer-driven micro-devices for supporting every vital function of the 15th Century’s seniors, all ergonomically designed, all artfully secreted. Now the pumps worked overtime, compensating for a brief surge of passion as Amantu aimed the Crib at his audience and spewed, “You must—you must very carefully preserve this Gist, or . . .” he gasped, “or . . .” “Or what?” said that young smart aleck Boone, much to the delight of his little buddies. “You’ll pee all over us?” Half a dozen scattered like chickens, shrieking with hilarity. Sensors in the Crib’s armrests immediately picked up on the Hammer’s spiking blood pressure, stimulating a near-instantaneous firing of Axxons® in precise response to every nerve impulse in his left forearm. The hovering Crib swung, with digitally-controlled outrage: toes down, 190

Closure left-bearing. Warning lights ran round the litter and dimmed: old Amantu’s moment of anger had cross-kicked his adrenals. Just framing a suitable retort left him silent and spent. The knobby little bigmouth tossed his head at the gaping Callum twins. “C’mon! Let’s go. Let’s let the old frogman croak in private.” He grabbed Darla Maker’s hand as though she were a leashed dog, picked up his skimmer, and whirled it across the yard. Before the Callums could respond, Boone was running like a quarterback, still holding Darla. He swung her as he leapt, catching her waist in the same move so that the two landed photogenically on the whipping skimmer’s static hub. Boone leaned her forward. Amantu watched resentfully as the cheering twins jumped off the porch and went bounding through the flagging overgrowth. A stirring to his left triggered sensors in the goggles. Amantu rolled his eyes. The Crib turned, dipping slightly in response to pressure from his left elbow. It was that damned Archer boy—the blond pauper’s son with the rebuilt hip and femur. That execrable prosthesis whirred and ratcheted for the zillionth time as the child, having enviously watched his friends once again dash off without him, nervously gimped back around. Amantu had never liked the boy; he was slow and hollow-eyed. His silent unbroken stares were ruder, somehow, than the daily derision of that whole receding pack of snotnoses. The boy’s primitive, poor man’s prosthesis didn’t endear him either. The noise grated: Hwee, thump. Hwee, thump. Again and again. Over and over. And over and over and over and over and Amantu harumphed tinnily. Before he could draw another blank, he addressed his favorite imaginary audience, in the process forgetting all about little Archer. “It is intellectually difficult to accept, on the one hand, that Titus Mack is indeed Godbecoming—not in an omnipotent sense, of course, but in the wise of omniscience. On the other hand, he is the mind of the universe in potential; existing as a part of all things that have occurred on our little sphere, and as a part of all things that are occurring in real time. He is, to all indications, alive, alert, and vigorous. But without mantle. As a non-corporeal entity, Mack cannot feel, cannot suffer, cannot perish—and this gives him freedoms foreign to structured being. He speaks excitedly, in that rough but ever-developing code of ours, of eventually attenuating by attaching to starlight, and so forever disencumbering himself of our planet’s gravitational pull.” Amantu sighed wispily. The effort almost stalled him. His eye caught a hovering speck on the horizon. Amantu paled, and the machinery accelerated fractionally. “Demolition,” he managed. A second later the Crib’s sensors were all over the place. The nose-plate fogged. “Get underneath!” he gasped. “Place your hands on the rails.” Once the boy had complied, Amantu banked the Crib hard to lee. The skin breached and they wobbled inside. House lights waxed serenely as the skin kissed closed behind them. Amantu laboriously steered the Crib until it was hovering a few feet above the squashed couch by the dilapidated southern skin. “On that stand,” he hissed. “Underneath the black cloth . . . a bell jar. Fetch it here, and be exceedingly mindful as you do so.” Archer very carefully limped over to the stand, lifted the jar as if it were a Ming vase, and very carefully limped back to Amantu’s Crib. “Set it, with the utmost delicacy, upon this little table.” Archer did so. Amantu tightened his grip on the armrest, activating a chrome pincers on a telescoping arm. As the old man gently rocked his palm on the rest, the pincers responded by just as gently oscillating above the cloth. He closed his fingers and elevated his wrist. The pincers plucked the cloth off the jar, dragged it down one side, and dropped it on the table. Inside was two liters of empty space. The jar was airtight and rounded at the top, with a twoinch armored base containing a short stack of disk-shaped atomic batteries. Positioned on one side, just where the wall sloped into the cap, was a black vulcanized diaphragm about the size of a man’s 191

Closure palm. “Upon that diaphragm,” Amantu wheezed, “one places one’s lips when addressing the Gist. The Gist can only be activated by the spoken command ‘Solo’.” At the name the jar’s interior appeared to sparkle slightly. Archer dropped to his good knee, his expression rapt. “Fairy dust!” When he looked back up, Amantu’s face and hands were the color of tallow. The Crib dropped against the couch, auto-corrected, and resumed hovering at an awkward angle. Archer rose hesitantly, trying to keep his fake leg from squealing. He watched the purple lips writhe. “Boy . . . boy . . . that nickname—the unique vibrations produced by those two precisely articulated syllables—is a password. Those wavelengths act as a key to open the Solomon program through his Gist. You must find an adult . . . repeat to him what I have told you. Explain what is at stake for mankind—no, no—tell him to bring the Gist to men of science. At the university they will pick up where I have left off. But you must remember the password! Tell the science men to use it.” An ice-blue moan rolled out of Amantu’s depths. His head would have fallen to the side had not the equipment auto-adjusted. With the last of his strength, he willed the Crib to face Archer directly. “Cover it,” he coughed. “Put it under your coat. Keep it out of the light. Under no circumstances must a seal be broken—the Gist must not be exposed to air!” Archer obediently pulled the cloth back over the jar and tucked it under his raggedy overcoat. “Now go.” The boy hesitated. “But what about you, sir? I—I can’t leave you here.” “Be gone, boy! And do not look back. Your work is ahead of you.” Archer sniffled to the skin. As it splayed to meet him he looked back, momentarily blinded by daylight. “But I don’t want to go, sir. I want to stay here with you.” A faint snarl. “I said get out! Do as you are told!” Archer looked down at his plastic foot. “But I want to stay,” he sniffed. “I—I want to be here with you, sir.” A series of ugly wet grunts. Archer kept his eyes glued to the tiles. In a minute that faltering old voice whispered back, “But I do not want to be with you, you filthy little cripple. I have always despised you. Always! Do as you are told! Get out of my house, get out of my life. Get out of my sight!” Archer unsuccessfully fought his tears. “Sir—” “Cripple!” A couple of splats preceded a high steady whine. The Crib hissed to the floor. Archer hobbled down the observatory’s overgrown dirt path, holding the Gist tightly under his coat. Unable to think past his tears, he came upon the road unawares. A whisking sound cut right in front of him and a blow to the ear almost knocked him down. He carefully balanced the jar against his chest and looked up. Boone kept a hard eye on him as he helped Darla off his skimmer; a gentleman leading a lady from her coach. When she was on solid ground he strutted up, his expression fierce. “Gimme your bottle, Archie. C’mon! I know the old frog give it to you. Gimme that damn bubble-boogie!” Archer bent deep at the waist while Boone whaled on him. There was a smacking sound followed by a very unmanly squeal. Still shielding the Gist, Archer peeked between his crossed wrists. Darla was standing in front of the assailant with one hand raised. By the stunned look on the boy’s face it was obvious he’d just been slapped, and slapped hard. When he could face her again, he did so with only one welling eye. 192

Closure The girl was on fire. “You leave him be; he’s not hurting anybody! Let him keep his silly bottle.” She stormed back to the skimmer. Boone whirled, the eye now streaming. “Listen. You didn’t see nothing. Okay? Nothing! You blab and I’ll break off that phony leg of yours and stuff it down your throat foot-first. You got me?” Archer lowered his head and waited for the next barrage. After a few seconds Boone turned and hurled the skimmer rowdily. It was a good spin, nearly horizontal and right on the money. He and Darla jumped on in tandem, and as they pressed their bodies forward the skimmer fairly leaped along the road. The girl had just time to peer back, throwing Archer a look that would bother him well into his teens. He was crouching there, watching them recede, when a large shadow made him scrunch even deeper. A Demolition Crab was hovering over the observatory, one trembling winch at each corner. Archer banged his fake leg up the road to a cliff overlooking the new quarry. In the distance the Burghs loomed like Oz, stretching all across the horizon until the buildings were lost in smog. Archer looked back. The skin was wide open; a crew was dragging out an oversize body bag that left a slimy serpentine trail. The boy flopped down and had a good long cry. When he was all wept-out he pushed himself back up and stood looking over the quarry. There wasn’t a soul around. Archer pulled the jar from under his coat and carefully peeled up its soft cloth cover. Shading it with his body, he peeked left and right, then tentatively placed his lips on the rubbery black diaphragm. It had a funny chemical taste, so he pursed his lips and whispered quickly, “Solo!” Immediately the jar filled with a swirling haze. Archer shrieked and tossed it like a hot potato. The glass broke on the rocky grade; the bottom half going one way, the top half the other, and a widening blurry pinwheel racing down between them. Archer whirled on his prosthetic leg and, screaming like a woman, ran hwee hwee hwee all the way home.

193

Bill & Charlie (a love story)

William Bergal wasn’t exactly a survivalist. Nor was he really an outdoorsman. He had something to prove—to himself, to his God, to his pretend-posterity; he felt it vital to repay, in his own way, the gift of life itself. This urge came from a lifelong disdain for the crowd, for its icons and manifold plastic distractions, and from a very deep affinity for nature in her staggering totality. Bill hurt and he didn’t actually know why. He only knew that it was a sweet pain, and nobody’s business but his. But seekers should be outdoorsmen, minimally, if their spiritual calling outweighs their good sense to the point they’re willing to tackle Washington’s Mount Rainier, at the onset of winter, with nothing more than street clothes, a backpack full of trail mix, freeze drieds, tin heating cup, notepad and bruising literature, and a fanny pack containing utter essentials: compass, disposable lighters, flashlight and extra batteries, multivitamins . . . Bill also brought along a good strong hunting knife, though he’d never used one, and a silly philosophy defining the only real food as that which is selfattained. To support this idea he carried a pouch holding fishing line and hooks: he’d heard fishing was the easy part; throw in your line and relax over instant coffee and Disraeli. Salmon are known to leap right into frying pans. Odd. This sure wasn’t the cherry-cheeks cold of snowball fights and toboggan races. This weather dug into nerves, stinging them stiff. It tore simultaneously through mouth and nostrils, strangling a man from the inside. Bill was seriously ill on the second night out, and his unexpected staple diet of trail mix and ice water was taking a further toll. The fish must have seen him coming, the salmon had to be hopping into somebody else’s pan. But Bill’s sights were irrevocably set on a strangely sedate

Bill & Charlie hill—he reckoned three thousand feet up; a soft peaked snowball amidst streaked majestic peaks. The view must be staggering. Yet it just kept on getting colder; it seemed to drop a degree for every hour he pushed on. And there were dangerous drifts, minor crevasses, lurking stones and roots. The stately white pines were gorgeous, of course, though they appeared to close behind with impenetrable resolve. The third day found him hopping and slapping his thighs, building fires that quickly petered and died, quoting King James, Herman Hesse, and Eul Gibbons. He must have made a most comical impression on the small band swinging up from the northwest. The lead man strode right up, looking Bill over. “You see a wounded animal come by here? Brown bear, maybe three feet high at the shoulder. Hit once in the left upper hip.” “Hit?” “Shot.” The man raised his rifle symbolically. “We’re hunters. It’s season.” He swung that rifle in a lazy arc. “I’m Russ Vaden. This is Derrin, there’s Sam, and that’s Jacques.” The mentioned men watched with barely contained amusement. Vaden squinted curiously. “If you’re lost, mister, just bear downhill. Always remember that. Folks don’t settle in the hills.” “No,” Bill returned after a hard moment, “I’m not lost. I’m up here to find myself. There is great beauty in the mountains . . . everywhere.” “Nature boy,” Jacques sniggered. Derrin sniggered back. Sam laughed snot out his nose. The huntsmen relaxed. “Come on,” Vaden grinned. “We’ve got hash and fresh salmon.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re not a vegetarian, too, are you?” “No,” Bill mumbled. “Not a vegetarian.” “What he means,” Sam appended as they made for a flat space between trees, “is that sometimes guys who go off on the whole nature thing, well, they go off on the whole nature thing. Politics, womenly rights, ecologeewhiz—save the animals, kiss the babies. Stuff.” He looked like a man retaining a mouthful of castor oil. “Each to his ever-lovin’ own,” Derrin said, shaking his head. The salmon and hash were sizzling bliss. Bill swallowed guiltily, but the fire in his hole let him know it was right. He’d probably lost five pounds; not superfluous weight in the wild. The blaze between their feet was shared at a primal level, not to be dismissed by pigheaded valor. The coffee was heaven, the chewed grounds exquisite. Vaden watched him eat with a twinkle in his eye. “Friend . . .” “It’s William. Bill.” “William Bill. I don’t know anything about your leanings and whatnot, but I think, as a man among friends, you just might find that this fulfillment you’re seeking is right back home where you left it. Makes no sense at all for a fellow to be up here suffering if he don’t have to. For profit, sure. For sport, maybe; that depends on the individual.” “There are things,” Bill tried “. . . deeper.” He knew he was desperately out of place. “Things bigger than me and you. Abstract things. Immortal things.” Derrin spat grounds in the fire. “So you’re hoping to find God up here, is that it?” Jacques jumped to his feet, spread his arms, dropped his jaw and rolled his eyes. “There he goes! There he goes! Zhooom!” He flopped back down grinning. Bill studied him drearily. Jacques was one of those annoying class clowns whose sole claim to friendship was weary tolerance. Six centuries ago he’d be talking his way out of another round in the stocks. “No. Not as you put it. God, nature, beauty, life, death, friendship, this fire, that turkey 2

Bill & Charlie buzzard—it’s all the same thing. I suppose I just had to get out of the city. Traffic, greed. People running around with their heads up their rectums. The soul wasn’t designed for such an arena.” Sam sighed. “Sentiment in the mountains . . .” He gave Bill a dour look. “I give you a week, maybe two. It takes a certain constitution, neighbor, to grit your way through another day. A man don’t need God or poetry. He needs to know who he really is, and where he actually stands in the real world.” “Mountain Law,” Vaden said. His eyes lit. “And I wouldn’t do too much talking about rectums around these guys.” The men all laughed. Off to Bill’s right, Jacques made a series of obscene movements, his eyes bugged. It wasn’t all that subtle. Bill dropped his eyes. “Nothing wrong,” Vaden said, wagging his head, “with a man trying new things, so long as he keeps his mind ordered the way nature intended. We’ve seen your bright sticky dens, Friend William Bill, and we know exactly what goes on in the cities.” Derrin scooted to Bill’s far left. Vaden and Sam were anchored at ten and two o’clock. Bill studied his clasped hands, feeling very locked in. “I’m not gay,” he said quietly. Jacques, batting his lashes, cried, “I’m not gay! I’m just experimenting!” Sam laughed and gave him a good manly sock on the bicep. “Leaning,” Vaden said. Derrin ran his fingers up Bill’s calf. “Y’know, Willy, you get less wind resistance when you shave ’em down.” “Cut it out,” said Vaden. He rose and, hands cocked aggressively on hips, looked off at the broken crystal skyline. After half a minute he looked back down and kicked Bill’s thigh. “You got any ideas about getting friendly with my friends, friend?” “I am,” Bill snarled, “not gay!” “What are you then?” Vaden grabbed him by the hair, yanked him to his feet. Derrin and Jacques took the arms while Sam walked a tight circle, looking menacing. “Who are you?” Vaden shouted, and delivered a savage kick to the scrotum. “Answer!” Before Bill hit the snow he was being mauled by Jacques and Derrin while Sam maneuvered for random kicks to the head. Vaden’s demands were furious and spewed without pause for breath. “Who sent you? What are you doing up here? Who do you work for? What you got on us? How much do you know?” “Nothing!” Bill gasped. “I don’t know anything!” He scooped snow between his thighs. Sam and Derrin got to work with the fists while Jacques danced all over him. Vaden yelled, “Cut!” He dragged Bill a few feet off and slapped his cheeks. “Just to show you we’re not the bad guys, I’m provisioning you for the comparatively easy trek back down to your tea rooms and opium dens.” He hauled a backpack from the hunters’ common pile, heaved Bill to his knees and strapped it on. “There’s a good ten pounds of jerky and dried salmon in here. Anything’ll keep in this cold; anything except people. Now I want you to march downhill until you get to civilization. You didn’t see nothing up here. You tell your faggot friends this is no place for a soulsearching sissy. Do your searching in the gay bars. If I see you again I’ll kill you.” Before he’d descended five hundred feet, Bill knew he was going back up, knew he was pressing on. The human animal was the very thing he was evading; he had to get higher, to that place too desolate for his sick social species. He gave the hunters’ site wide berth, and began to watch for tracks and anomalies: this activity gave him a bizarre pride—he was learning the wild. He continued 3

Bill & Charlie to make for the white hill. And it just kept getting colder. The wind picked up; snow and ice were progressively more treacherous. Bill’s hair and beard froze over. His naked hands showed a purplewhite gradient fading to blue, his legs and arms stung, went numb, stung some more. He pushed his limits, halting only long enough to realize that to pause was to die. The little hill seemed to beckon. He managed a hundred feet, reeled, managed a dozen more. Bill, forcing each step, sank and recovered, sank and recovered, made the hill’s basic slope, pushed himself on. The cold was unbelievable . . . and now it had stopped being cold. He wasn’t just numb; he was—Jesus: Bill stamped his feet and felt nothing. His hands were locking up, his eyes swimming, his breath searing. The whole world went white . . . snowblind, frostbitten, dying in step . . . Bill hopped around, trying to feel his blood, and found only floes. He wheeled his arms, fell in a hollow. No! An ice grave. No. He banged his way out, saw a black recess in the blue-white field. A cave, a hundred feet up, a hundred miles away. And he swam for it, flailing away; hope’s madman—a place to lie down, rock instead of snow. The animal instinct was there . . . to crawl . . . a place to die out of the open. A cave, a vault, a tomb, and he reached it, somehow, fell inside, struggled along a surface that did not yield, found a space between facing boulders, and passed. There came a sibilant, rhythmic noise to his left; very close, very direct. Like a bellows pumping, but faster. Gasping. Bill was too dead for fear; he jacked his torso up with an elbow and came nose to nose with a panting brown bear. “You,” he managed, “startled me.” The animal’s lids parted and closed. “A pair of stiffs,” Bill groaned, and again reclined. After a minute he pushed himself back up. The bear was stretched out exactly parallel, on its side, its scarred black nails just grazing his coat. He could see the source of its distress: the bear had taken a shell in the back just above the butt, where the left hip joined the flank proper. The action of infection was monstrous; a great festering mound rose out of the fur. The bear was battling both terrible pain and massive hunger. “You don’t need to suffer in stereo, friend.” Bill gnawed some life back into his hand and fought out a huge hunk of jerky, held it before the animal’s peeking eyes. The nostrils quivered. The whiskers trembled, the jaw creaked open, the tongue extended like an unfurling carpet. Bill’s fingers stung from the wet warmth. No sane man would allow any part of his body to loiter between those stiletto teeth, but he knew the animal probably lacked the strength to manipulate the food otherwise, and anyway a frozen corpse with one hand is as good as a frozen corpse with two. He fed the bear one mouthful at a time, and his hand, while gently masticated, was never harmed. The warmth of that mouth kissed his fingers with life; Bill found himself feeding with greater facility . . . pushing the jerky down, reaching into the pack for a new fistful of salmon, pushing the salmon down. When the meal was done Bill whispered, “Thank you,” clasped his hands above his heart, and laid back down to die. He gradually grew conscious of a heaving presence, spreading along his legs and flank, slowly taking his chest . . . the bear was easing on top of him, heavy but not crushing, warming, warming. Bear’s breath in his face, noxious, suffocating . . . warming, warming . . . fur in his hair, paws on his arms. But softly. Warming, warming . . . human nature’s latest victims locked in a long and warming embrace; odd bugs in amber, pinned in a lost, but no-longer-lonely, naturally refrigerated morgue for two. A strange way to die. Bill dreamt of calving glaciers, melting upon impact. His subconscious sketched fingers and toes that no longer belonged to him; pus-yellow dragging coals fastened by lichen-green ligaments. He dreamed his way into a grayscale grave nestled in stone, and woke in a rank pool of sweat. The bear opened its eyes at the same time. Bill rolled his face from under that heaving muzzle, tried to flex his fingers. There was sensation. He ran his hands through the bear’s warm fur, rubbed them into 4

Bill & Charlie the hot skin. The fingers began to sting. “Thanks again,” he hissed. He made to wiggle his toes. The feet, smothered in bear over the night, were absolutely numb. But it was the good-numb. He was able to bend his arches and crimp the toes at their bases. The bear moaned. Bill could have kissed it: he’d survived frostbite intact. He worked his way out by degrees; lifting the bear’s arm over his head, sliding out his legs an inch at a time. When his limbs were his again, he gently placed his hands on the bear’s side and leaned over the wound. “Listen, girl. I’m not some fancy naturalist or anything, but I can tell from a casual glance that no vital organs are involved.” He followed the flank down, inspecting further, and at last blew out a sigh. “I neglected to tell you that I’m also not a biologist, and one thing you’re most certainly not is a girl.” He shook his wet head. “Doesn’t it figure . . . here I am, stuck with a pansy panda. Maybe those mountain creeps were right. I was gonna name you Charlotte, or something like that, but—hey, how’s about Charles? Can you deal with that?” The bear groaned from the depths. “Charles it is, then. William and Charles.” He arched his brows. “Too formal for outcasts? Okay, mon ami. It’s Bill and Charlie.” He gently ran his hand uphill. The bear’s respiration quickened. “Er . . . listen, Charlie. There’s one other little thing I failed to mention . . . and that’s that I’m no veterinarian. But I’m letting you know, right up front and just between friends, that you’ve one hell of a humongous infection. That’s what’s causing the pain, not the bullet.” He very tenderly worked his hand toward the festering wound. Charlie’s groans elongated. “The bullet must come out, Charlie. There’s no two ways around it. Kindly remain seated.” He limped outside and came back with his arms weighed by virgin snow. “Ice to numb the pain.” Bill eased out his hunting knife. “Technology to reverse the damage.” Some instinct made him show the blade, made him turn it above the bear’s laboring muzzle. Charlie’s eye rolled up, rolled back down. Bill made two hills of the ice. Into one he plunged the blade to further the chill. The other mound he scooped onto the hot purple wound. The bear sucked air, relaxed. Bill now sat as for yoga, eyes closed, palms smothered in fur. One hand found the chilled knife’s shaft, one eye opened to further its course. Bill bent to his task like a researcher to his lens. “Good Charlie.” January was much harsher, rarely climbing above 5oF. Sometimes the wind-chill factor made sedentary activity life-threatening. But Bill recovered from his ordeal, and Charlie from his wound. One irony of the wild: hardship makes a steady physician—the single-minded pursuit of day-to-day brute existence causes the entire system to perform at peak levels, regardless of the patients’ resolve. And genuine cold heats the blood. A healthy animal keeps moving or dies. Bill and Charlie turned the little cave into a home as well as a survival chamber. Bill insulated the rock walls with dirt and dead branches, Charlie showed Bill where to fish for the fattest salmon. Charlie did the rounds as watchdog, Bill demonstrated the fine art of fire building, and even constructed a highly efficient flued hearth. Charlie, habituated to snoozing right in front, was ever loth to give up his spot, though Bill made it plain that room need be made when cooking. Bill liked to tell long boring stories of his childhood; Charlie followed as best he could, prone as he was to nodding. They had songfests; Bill took lead while Charlie harmonized, sounding more like a drunken sea lion than a rightful accompanist. The hard winter was much less so at Bill’s & Charlie’s. They took hikes in the afternoons. Charlie knew just where to find the best berries; Bill dreamed of yeast. And it was on one of these brief walks—a pair doesn’t dare loiter in sub-zero weather—that Bill, fighting to build a baby fire, grew increasingly annoyed at Charlie’s typical whining dissertations on the high-scented outdoors. He tried a snowball or two, but that didn’t work; Charlie only became more vociferous, and somehow Bill wasn’t really surprised when Vaden’s voice poked out of the pines: 5

Bill & Charlie “Anybody for beans and weenies?” Somebody laughed—it may have been Sam—and then they were all oozing into the clearing. They came from four corners: bear and man were surrounded. Bill quickly stepped to Charlie’s side, ran a quieting arm around his neck. “We don’t want any more trouble.” A bullet almost took off Bill’s hand. He stared aghast, every cell in his body cringing. Charlie lay bleeding, half-buried in snow. Vaden tucked the pistol back under his belt. “We don’t either.” Vaden, looming against the false dusk, stirred the small fire with a branch, sporadically watching his bound and seated prisoner. Maybe twenty yards away, three silhouetted ghouls were busy round a larger blaze. “You know, to be perfectly honest, I have to admire a man with the gumption to come out here all on his lonesome, at this time of year, with nothing more than the grits God gave a gopher.” “Let the bear go, mister.” “Russ.” “He’ll live if he gets a chance to recuperate. I sincerely do not give a good damn what you do with me. I’ve seen enough.” “That’s a shame. But we’re hunters. And that’s a bear, not a waif.” Vaden looked off pensively, aurorae in his eyes. “So did you find Him out here? God, I mean.” “I think it’s pretty obvious what I found out here. Let the bear go.” “You sound like a guy talking to his son’s kidnappers.” Vaden rocked the rifle on his thighs. “Tell me something, Friend William Bill. How can a fella have the guts of a man and the stomach of a sissy? How does a man, armed with the iron gonads forged by fifty thousand years of goddamned evolution, end up playing canasta with a brute capable of chewing his oh-so civilized heart out?” “That’s a mammal. It will respond to compassion as well as to maltreatment.” “That’s a wild animal.” Vaden, rifle in hand, criss-crossed his arms over his head. His friends whooped and hunched over Charlie. Bill’s voice caught in his throat: “Listen, sir, I didn’t see anything and I don’t work for anybody. I don’t know or care what you’re doing up here. It’s none of my mortal business. Tell them to let the bear go. I’ll head back home like you want and wipe this whole scene from memory. I swear. I don’t care what you guys are up to. Just let the bear go.” Vaden stared hard. Determined to try again, he came down in a hunching crouch; forearm resting on extended left knee, right leg facing out at an angle. He looked inward, at peaks locked in solid by winter, and said, meditatively, “You know, you shouldn’t be all that surprised by those boys’ behavior. It’s not only unnatural, it’s downright wrong for a fellow to carry on about a dumb animal. You don’t act like a man; why do you expect to be treated like one?” “Get it over with, then. Kill us both, but be quick about it. You talk about men—what kind of man torments a helpless creature?” Vaden cocked his head. “What kind of man treats a varmint like a damned woman?” “Get it over with, you bastard.” Vaden pushed himself back up. “Don’t be in such a hurry. What kind of man executes another without first giving him a last supper?” His expression was odd; not vindictive, not humored, not angry or sad. Indifferent. “You like bear?” 6

Bill & Charlie Bill screamed each time Charlie roared in agony. The torturers weren’t laughing any more; that was only at the start, in response to Bill’s bellowing pleas for mercy. The prisoner’s screaming took all the fun out of it. But not the thrill, and certainly not the camaraderie. They’d laughed hysterically while jabbing out the bear’s eyes, hooted and howled with each application of torch to fur. Now the clubbings and stabbings were waning in response to Charlie’s abbreviated calls. The party was closing down. Vaden, standing midway between the action and his captive, swung his rifle side to side to indicate a halt. Bill wasn’t only screaming with horror. He’d used his feet to scoop a large ember from the fire, and managed, through a herculean effort of contortion, to jam this ember up between his wrists and their hide binding. The leather and his flesh were breaking up at roughly the same rate; he could smell his skin burning through the tears. Vaden walked up casually, a lilting figure made spectral by firelight before and behind. He let the rifle swing down until the bore was positioned directly between Bill’s streaming eyes. “I told you once, friend, that if I saw you again I’d kill you.” He nodded, more to himself than to Bill. “Mountain Law.” He scrunched up his nose and looked around. “Something stinks something awful.” In a heartbeat Bill was on his feet. He tore the rifle from Vaden’s hand, clubbed his skull with the butt. Shouts of surprise from the men. Bill saw Derrin and Sam go for their rifles and dropped them flat. Jacques stood splayed, torch in one hand, air in the other. Bill was just getting a bead when a grunt from Vaden caught his ear. He whirled and shot the man in the throat even as the pistol was rising. Jacques yelped and bounded into the drifts. Bill grabbed Vaden’s ammo pouch, stalked across the clearing, clenched his fist, stopped. He stood over Charlie without looking down, the breath gurgling in his throat. The bear whined pathetically. “Oh God,” Bill said, and let the barrel descend until it snagged in the fur above Charlie’s ear. “Oh God, oh God. Oh God oh God oh God.” He wept like a baby. “Oh God oh God oh God ohGod ohGodoh—” Bill squeezed the trigger and stepped over. In a trance, he watched the world quaking round him. But there was a bug floundering in white. Bill shook away his tears. The bug cried out at a turned ankle. Bill took his time reloading. “Whatsoever a man soweth . . .” he puffed, and raised the rifle like a torch bearer closing in on the finish, “. . . that shall he also reap.” Closing his mind to it all, he gripped his coat against the weather and began to march. It was tough going; far tougher for Jacques than for Bill, for this was dead-familiar turf. Every time Jacques stopped to get his bearings or wave surrender, Bill got off a shot or two. And if passion could afford room for self-analysis, Bill would have had to admit that he was aiming more to inspire terror than to kill. Yet the shots kept getting closer, and his blood brought him focus despite the cold. The course was relentlessly uphill: Jacques’s fear caused him to mindlessly recede from the steadily stalking automaton—his entire mentality was blind to anything resembling an intelligent retreat. He scrambled and thrashed like a drowning man, trading the obvious proximate hazards for a long snowy grade offering sporadic cover round a friendlier keel. But this particular slope was intimately familiar to Bill; he’d traversed it, in good company, a hundred times and more. He took a shot at Jacques’s head. His aim was wide; he followed up with a trio, then with a volley. Jacques screamed at the dusk-bound figure pausing to reload. He stared at the graying hilltop, squealed once, took a terrible breath and scampered up insanely. 7

Bill & Charlie Bill was weeping as he fought the grade; he could tell by the quick bite of new ice on his cheeks. Jacques lost his footing in a drift and clambered out, close enough to exchange looks. There was genuine horror in his eyes. “Mister . . . no! Mister . . . mister . . . NO!” Bill wasn’t taking real aim now. He cocked and fired with one hand, cocked again. A white nova appeared a foot from Jacques’s shoulder and passed. The man shrieked and kicked frantically, waving his arms as though to ward off a blow. A cracking report preceded a puff of snow between his feet, and another, eighteen inches higher. “No!” Bill’s whole face was contorted by ice. He couldn’t stop the tears, couldn’t keep his mouth from shivering. Jacques disappeared behind a bank of glistening boulders and Bill stopped to shake the rifle. “Mountain Law!” he bellowed. He plunged the rifle’s stock into the snow, using it for leverage as he clung to stunted branches with the other hand. Up to his waist in white, Bill nevertheless stormed the dimming hill, saw Jacques thrashing above, saw him look around desperately, saw him scramble into the cave. A strange quiet came over the hill. Bill could hear his heart beating; he’d never heard it before. Animal business was at hand: his senses were sharpening in direct relation to the cave’s proximity. At the entrance an extraworldly echo escaped into the chill. He could sense things he’d never felt, feel things he’d never sensed. Bill smelled prey. How better was he, then, than the basest of animals; in what secret way did this very private experience rightly become an evolved man; a man of intellect, of spirit, of self-analysis and compassion. Bill listened some more. Inside were a scuttling, a whimpering, a stifled cough. He cocked the rifle, mumbled, “Father, forgive me, for I know not what I do,” and kicked his way inside.

8

Why I Love Democracy By

Enrique Batsnuwa LaCszynevitch McGomez

In researching this paper I could not help but be struck by how very much we take for granted in our wonderful country. Less than a century ago this was a different nation indeed; a nation where femepersons were unbearably repressed, where mascupersons were allowed to perpetuate their myth of gender dominance, and where demopersons of diverse ethnicity were perennially humbled and brutalized. I speak, of course, of the reign of terror concocted by that notorious agent of subjugation, that swaggering bully, the White Indigenous Male Protestant (WIMP). Ever since the great, all-encompassing movement we know as Progressive Liberal Reform prevailed, beginning with the effective dissolution of our borders (“Illegal Alien” AntiDiscrimination Act, 2011), the changes have been sweeping and dramatic, and today it is crystal clear that the concepts freedom and liberty can only be interpreted as absolute rights; and that finding objectionable the behavior—no matter how egregious—of any person other than a WIMP is de facto prejudice. Now once-suspect demopersons have the run of our streets, and law enforcement walks a very fine line between apprehension and lawsuit. But before PLR became the single, imperative interpretation of our beloved Constitution, our great nation’s political atmosphere was divided into two basic camps. These two continuously bickering factions, originally known as Democrats and Republicans, grew even more estranged after the Unutterable Depression of 2033, evolving into those defunct camps still generally described as Left Wing, or Government Instituted for a Meaningful and Merciful Economy (GIMME), and Right Wing, or the Grand Old Trustee Commission for a Humane America (GOTCHA). Not until the so-

Why I Love Democracy called “Minority Revolt” of 2039 did the infamous conservative arm of our government see the light, disband entirely, and free itself of its barbaric ways. To document The Transition, I hope my use of subtitles in this paper will assist in manifesting our nation’s tremendous advances. The Economics of Compassion Our country’s political progress has been nothing less than spectacular, for time and again PLRs have demonstrated just how relentlessly caring they can be. I could devote pages here to the dauntlessness of those liberal American femepersons, the renowned Screaming Sheilas, who selflessly breast-fed platypus ducklings during the Tasmanian Drought of 2019, pages more to the intrepidity of the venerated Poor Dearers of the 2030s, who risked life and limb to reach a golden eagle’s aerie, there to nest-sit the eggs in freezing weather for days while the crippled mother recuperated, an entire document to the valor of the old Greenpeace organization, wiped out in a bloody confrontation with the Upper States’ Yukon “Eskimos” over the Constitutional rights of the arctic char. But the noblest case in point—and the most striking example of how even zealous PLRs can go awry—would of course be the Great Drive of 2045, when it was discovered that that rarest of rare birds, the Funnytailed Pucebreasted Slugsucker, had in fact become an endangered species. Overnight an unprecedented national campaign was undertaken on their behalf. Parades stocked with municipally-sponsored, appropriately costumed Funnytailers raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, while entrepreneurs of every sort made fortunes by dyeing their wares puce for the Conscientious Consumer. The public was besieged by Slugsucker minutia, over every medium, around the clock. Millions were raised for the birds’ preservation through cuts in defense and astrophysical research, while homeowners everywhere became proud members of the nationwide Adopt a Sucker Society (ASS). The results were fantastic, inspiring, heart-warming. The Funnytailed Pucebreasted Slugsucker began to multiply in numbers that were absolutely staggering, their little fuzzy-faced offspring popping up in cornfields, backyards, nurseries, freighters, supermarket produce sections—you name it. However, one unfortunate consequence of this marvelous application of liberal engineering was that, with so many Slugsuckers about, the slug population began to diminish at an alarming rate, until slugs likewise became an endangered species. Reformists lost no time. “Save The Slugs!” they cried, “Save The Slugs!” and this became a Progressive Liberal anthem which galvanized the nation. Soon “Slugfests” were all the rage, and teenagers were “doing The Slime” from St. Petersburg, New Haiti to Los Angeles, New Central America. Cruising was out, oozing was in; the Ughmobile caught on like wildfire. The slug quickly became our Poster Pest, and billions were raised for its welfare. In no time slugs had not only made a comeback, but were absolutely ubiquitous. The slugs were happy, the Funnytailed Pucebreasted Slugsuckers were happy, Progressive Liberal Reformists were happy. But, with a superabundance of slugs, the state of American Follaceous Health began to deteriorate at an unbelievable rate. Scarcely any leafage was safe. Finally, in a desperation move, proud Americans tightened their belts even further to finance the genetic crossbreeding of a number of supple garden strains with a hardy, fast-growing variety of African swamp grass, which was 2

Why I Love Democracy cultivated over wide areas to give the omnipresent slugs an alternate and plentiful food source. The tragic result is known to every Liberal American schoolperson. The swamp grass trapped so much rainfall that vast areas became wetlands, the wetlands became spawning grounds for alligators, and the alligators ate all the Funnytailed Pucebreasted Slugsuckers. “Let there be no misunderstanding here!” PuertoGeorgia senator Lolita Wang-Ho KumbaSanchezski said angrily as she, resplendent in Mourning Puce, confronted the Congressional Budget Committee. “Until we learn to stop throwing money away on defense programs and industry, and begin devoting more capital to the interests of meaningful domestic problems like the plight of the Funnytailed Pucebreasted Slugsucker, this kind of horror story is doomed to be repeated!” Penal Rights Modern, open-minded demopersons now understand that there are no bad human beings; there is only bad legislation. The realization that murderers, embezzlers, and arsonists were once actually punished, instead of treated with the love and compassion they deserve, still leaves many of us with an acute sense of embarrassment. This evolution—from the barbaric to the enlightened—can perhaps best be shown in the Penal Paradox Proposition, as served by Baja Louisiana senator Imran Wendell O’Mikosovitch: “They’ve lived lives of corruption, debauchery, promiscuousness, vandalism, indolence, socioeconomic subterfuge, compulsive predation, and, in more than a few cases, unprovoked and ungovernable savagery…and now you want to put them in jail? For goodness’ sake, haven’t they suffered enough?” Of course, Penal Rights has always been one of the major issues of Enlightened Liberal Reform. Ps. Helga Spatsznsteinski, in her groundbreaking work, Serial Killers Need Love, Too correctly pointed out that an overabundance of affection can have the same adverse effect as no affection at all. For example, in the early years of reformism a number of unlucky and misguided souls—formerly disparaged as “criminals”—were forced to sue the Federal Government for the right to privacy when highly competitive and overly arduous femepersons persisted in deluging many incarcerated rapists, compulsively assaultive misogynists, and child molesters with marriage proposals. As famed debutante dismemberer Ps. Muhammed-Fritz Olgafenritz (The “Hacksmith”) complained, “They only love me for my genetic makeup, not for my mind.” And just as intrusive were the lucrative contract deals from filmmakers and biographers, the unending requests for speaking engagements and intimate photo sessions, the toys-to-cologne endorsement proposals, the seemingly infinite queues of fawning dignitaries and celebrities. “Being a superstar,” Ps. Gorbafyoo I. Zeimensch-Umbawi proclaimed bitterly from the Tampa Federal Resort and Spa for Violent Repeat Offenders, “just ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.” Even before The Transition, the curse of capital punishment was mercifully on the wane. It is now no more than a slew of ugly memories, perhaps best typified by that powerfully patriotic moment when Raul Ignacio “Little Nate” Ivenski Deng-Foo berated his executioners even as he was about to be administered that despicably lethal dose of HGSN (early Reformism’s short-lived but well-intentioned Happy Go Sleep Now pill). Umbrageous at man’s mistreatment of his fellow man, Deng-Foo heroically and famously proclaimed: “You can take away my kiddie porn! You can rob me of my drugs and electro-orifice stimulators! You can deprive me of my God-given right to whip the tar out of my children, my grandmother, and even my Bichon Frise, but, damn you, you’ll never take away my dignity!” 3

Why I Love Democracy Or, of course, that shocking moment when six of the early adherents of Progressive Liberal Reform burst into the “Death Chamber” and clung tearfully to convicted cannibal and rapist David Hartford’s body while chanting the chorus to Danny and the Democrats’ 2009 hit Love Them Everlasting as Hartford was insensitively murdered by society in that notorious instrument of evil, the “electric chair”. The odious death sentence’s abolition ensures us all that these precious individuals live to a ripe old age with dignity and in comfort, resting assured that their constitutional rights will be adamantly protected by every attorney we liberals can possibly afford. Semantics Nomenclature has powerfully affected our nation’s political evolution. Symbiotic Domestic Partners, for instance, used to suffer terribly under their humiliating appellation “pets” (Faunal Emancipation Agreement, 2047). Efflorescing Abode Enhancers were finally granted the dignity they deserve by abolishing their former embarrassing cognomen “houseplants” (Floral Rights Act of 2051). In the social arena, it is now of course unthinkable that Ejaculation Engineers could actually have been demeaned as “prostitutes”, or that Ecobraves were once variously demeaned as thugs, hooligans, deadbeats, junkies, and muggers. Nowadays it is painfully obvious that such unfortunates would never have been forced to sink to their unhappy state had our nation previously been compassionate enough to bestow the tremendous grants they presently receive. Yet some throwback radical extremists, generously allowed by our great country to express their outmoded views, continue to point out that the more money our tax dollars provide for these poor victims, the more they indulge in the very behavior the policy is intended to alleviate. What could more clearly demonstrate how lack of compassion can befuddle the thinking process? These continuously suffering souls are of course martyrs, willing to maintain their grievous condition for the sake of preserving a cultural phenomenon which has long been the whipping boy of the Haves. And even our own precious American childpersons have been the target of slurslingers. When Ps. Mongo Le Ramalama Deng-Hwong had the audacity to publish her viciously titled book, Our Kids, Our Treasures, the national outrage was phenomenal. “Our children are not goats!” cried millions of offended parents. Ps. Mongo LeRamalama Deng-Hwong was ostracized, and the quickly formed Attorneys Vying for Adolescent Rights Involving the Curtailment of Epithets (AVARICE) found themselves entertaining more lawsuits than they could handle. Once we the people were made aware of the insidious subterfuge of negative semantics maintained by WIMPs, it became evident that all heterosexuals are really homophobic, and all homosexuals heterophobic; that all mascupersons are in actuality femephobic, all femepersons mascuphobic. These irrational fears and prejudices, we now understand, come from a deep underlying envy of one’s opposite pole. Enlightened Liberal Reform has allowed us to realize that, since all persons are created constitutionally equal, one’s opposite pole is in actuality one’s Natural Counterpart. Just as mascupersons and femepersons are Natural Counterparts while being diametrically opposite in nature, so too are atheophobes (“theists”) in reality the Natural Counterparts of theophobes (“atheists”). Finally, after decades of dealing with bestiphobes, dementephobes, prostiphobes, narcophobes, politiphobes, lucrephobes, penuphobes, ad infinitum; of 4

Why I Love Democracy legaphobes fearing crimiphobes and crimiphobes fearing legaphobes, of natuphobes living in mortal terror of urbaphobes while the urbaphobes lost sleep worrying over natuphobes; while illaphobes dwelt in horror of wellaphobes and wellaphobes locked doors against the encroachment of illaphobes; while necrephobes anguished over vitaphobes and the vitaphobes, presumably, were turning in their graves due to the necrephobes, PLRs were struggling to find a truly democratic solution. This solution eventually came to light in the national acceptance of Phobophobia. Progressive Liberal Spirituality That old paper tyrant, the “Bible”, was originally sullied by references to the deity as “He”. Such an obvious disparaging of femepersons was first solved by the inclusion of an “opposite-butequal” deity, which resulted in the infamous “Mrs. God” trial of 2034. This quandary was democratically solved by the admission of an androgynous deity, the very SheHe now worshipped nationwide. Then there was the matter of the former “Old” Testament, so offensive to senior citizens—vividly expressed in the great coast-to-coast Walker Brigade. Step by step, each WIMPenforced bias has met its demise. And there were of course great difficulties involving religious symbolism. Public displays of Nativity scenes, stars of David, etc., have all gone the way of the dinosaur. No single religion shall have visual dominance in our great democracy! A “Christian nation,” indeed! Our sole Yule symbol is now a giant one-eyed Buddha wearing a crown of thorns while sitting on a tortoise-shaped prayer rug before a serpent-entwined cross. From the arms of that cross dangle a crucifix, chakra, incense burner, and menorrah. And on every Nationally-Integrated Non-specific New Year’s (NINNY) all we Progressive Liberal Reformists take a neutral breath in unison and “Thank Blank” that no group has cause to be offended. Sexual Liberty Certainly, the alienation of homosexuals has always been a tremendous social blight. Their persecution knew no bounds. So, in today’s truly liberal democratic society, homosexuality, bisexuality, and transvestism are proudly taught to all schoolpersons as upstanding, wholesome lifestyles. Once a small percentage of the overall population, homosexuals now occupy over half the legislature, and it was one of the finest moments in our country’s history when, only last year, we elected our very first transsexual president. Now every National Gayday celebration features long lines of self-flagellating, terribly repentant former heterosexuals, while our military divisions proudly mandate co-sexual bunks and showers, and many thriving businesses devote themselves wholly to the production of lingerie for pre-adolescent mascupersons. Our founding fatherpersons certainly would be no less proud than we. The Renovated Constitution Of all 437 Amendments to the Constitution, the earliest retain most value, for the integrity of 5

Why I Love Democracy the Amendments tend to resolve seemingly unrelated problems. For instance, the Second Amendment worked in harmony with the First. Once the right to bear arms was firmly established, and virtually every American had become a walking armory, the Federal Government was successfully sued on the grounds that it most certainly is a guaranteed right of free speech to yell “Fire” in a crowded theater. Ps. Boris Q. de Little Feather courageously put this to the test by abruptly standing in a packed theater and yelling “Fire!” at the top of his lungs. Ps. de Little Feather’s bullet-riddled body will forever be honored in the Heroes of Progressive Liberal Reform shrine in Allah Akbar State Park. Compassion For The Masses Arguably, the greatest breakthrough of Enlightened Liberal Reform came about with passage of the Victims’ Relief Bill of 2077. What a glorious, emotion-packed day it must have been when those 170,000,000 Progressive Liberal Reformists linked arms across all 103 of the contiguous United States and chanted, “Subsidization, Not Subjugation! Subsidization, Not Subjugation!” until the very walls of the Rainbow House shook in the District of Vespuccia. And what an uplifting experience to be part of that gigantic assembly, tearfully escorting the hundreds of thousands of Aromatically Diverse and Morally Deprived unfortunates as they shuffled and jabbered into their tax-subsidized apartments to freely and democratically express themselves as Excretory Artists and Sensuality Scientists. Freedom Of Expression In closing I must again remark upon the stimulus for our awesome national pride. Only a truly liberal society such as ours would have the greatness to demand that every televised newscast crew include at least one Practicing Octogenarian Nudist, that every church sermon devote equal time to the oration of an atheist, and that every Intelligence Agency be made open to the General Public. It is we, the Progressive Liberals, who have exercised the vision to ensure that every major league team contain at least one paraplegic outfielder, that the Pentagon employ a fair quota of narcoleptics, and that, some rosy future day, the meek shall indeed inherit the earth. Ps. Antoni-Levonitszchstein, I understand it is my legal obligation to inform you, prior to your grading this paper, that any mark below passing would compromise my sense of worthiness, and possibly result in a case of Student Afflicted by Misguided Educatory Officer Leading to Despair and Broken Self-esteem (SAMEOLDBS), a gross violation of my precious and hard-won Civil Rights. Please have your attorney contact mine if you have any questions. “E.B.” La Cszynevitch McGomez

6

Thelma

Behind every shop window lies a strange and magical world; a world where half-defined shapes, busily engaged in mysterious transactions, seem to coalesce even as they pass from view. These unstable figures—customer, employee, and proprietor—are important people. They are not there to be rudely eyeballed, like so many fish in a bowl. Their business is theirs and theirs alone. But old Thelma couldn’t help staring, no matter how hard she tried, no matter how many times she was punished. Her head would be turning before she knew it, and sometimes, squinting against the mirrored sun, she would catch one or more of those murky shop-dwellers staring back importantly just as her hunched and gnarled reflection rolled by. Thelma was crazy about people. Whether they pointed and whispered, or rudely laughed out loud, she always smiled in their eyes, resisting with difficulty the urge to reach out and touch. And she loved bustle. People walked this way and that, jealously guarding their personal space, but they invariably parted when she rolled down the sidewalk, as if she were a queen being escorted through a sea of loving subjects. The sidewalks were bustling now, and Thelma could barely contain her excitement. He eyes devoured everything. When her chair finally came to a rest she found herself staring at a small box affixed to a pole. She’d seen this kind of fixture hundreds of times, and was mesmerized by the experience. The fixture poked out right at eye level, and bore a flat white plate with a wonderful little cryptogram of a funny black stick man hovering over a long black arrow. The stick man gave the impression of being in an awful hurry to discover the big secret that long black arrow was about to divulge. For some reason these fixtures always featured a blunt metal button beneath the cryptogram.

Thelma Perhaps it was the fascinating way people now all burst off the curb as one. Or maybe it was the intoxicating combination of crisp air and golden sun. But suddenly Thelma just had to solve the mystery, just had to push that stubby little button. A hand whacked her across the back of her head; not hard enough to really hurt, just hard enough to let her know she’d done wrong. Right behind the sound of the whack came Gary’s voice: “God damn you, you ugly old witch. How many times do I have to tell you to keep your fucking paws on the armrests?” The hand grabbed the white bun of her hair and twisted back her head. Gary’s eyes were burning. “The next fucking time you try that, retard, you’re gonna go to bed without dinner. You got me? You remember what it’s like going to bed without dinner? You cried like a baby all night, didn’t you? Well, that’s what you get when you fuck up, y’hear? So don’t press your luck.” He pushed her head back down, but not too hard. There were pedestrians everywhere. Thelma craned her neck to look back remorsefully. “Pleezh no be madda me, Gehr. I be good.” Gary exhaled noisily. “My ass.” He shoved the wheelchair across the intersection and rammed it against the curb, then kicked, shook, jerked, and heaved it onto the sidewalk, swearing up and down. But his demeanor changed abruptly as another old biddy, the widow Bender, approached and came to a halt directly in their path. “Widow Bender! And how are you on this lovely fall day?” “In the pink,” the widow lied. She stooped to smile in Thelma’s face. “Hi, Thelma dear! So . . . I see you and your nice young man are out enjoying the day. How’s he been treating you? Just like the princess you are, I’ll wager.” “Oh yesh,” Thelma gushed. “Gehr gooda me. Gehr always gooda Telma.” “That . . . that’s wonderful!” the widow grimaced. “I—” she managed, “I’ve got to go now, dear,” for in her passion Thelma had allowed her arthritic old talon to grasp one of the widow’s hands. The widow extracted her hand with difficulty, smiled breezily at Gary and winked. “Well, you just make sure you give him a big long kiss for me, sweetheart.” She looked back down. “Bye now, Thelma!” “That was rich,” Gary said as they continued down the sidewalk. He snickered. “‘Gehr always gooda Telma’. You bet your ass I’m good to you, crone. Who else would put up with your goddamned babytalk bullshit. Who else would have the balls to tolerate your shithole stench all fucking day long. You gnarly pig. You don’t know—you couldn’t possibly imagine—how many times I’ve dreamed of just walking off and leaving you and your stupid-ass chair in rush hour traffic.” Thelma looked back fearfully. “Oh no, Gehr! Pleezh no leave me, Gehr. Telma be good.” “Oh-h-h—you don’t gotta worry about me leaving you, witch. I’ll be pushing your spastic ass around until the day you die. And you wanna know why? I’ll tell you why. Because you’re worth a hell of a lot more alive than dead, that’s why. The state pays good money to keep corpses like you going, and a nice piece of that pie goes into my pocket for taking care of you.” He laughed harshly. “I’m your fucking guardian, you ugly old asshole; I’m your goddamn guardian angel. I’m the one who feeds you and medicates you and makes sure you don’t slobber to death. You didn’t know that, did you—that I’m as close to God as you’ll ever get, that I’m the one who’s responsible for keeping your stinking ass in one piece? Even though I’ve told you a thousand times . . . you don’t know shit, do you dimwit? So I’ll be around forever, even though you’re, what, a hundred and fifty years old? Even though you’re ugly as sin and smell like the dead . . . wait a minute! What am I saying? Like the dead? You are dead. You’re just a rotting old cadaver that some trick of fate keeps running. And you know what, you funky old skank? You’ll outlive us all! Great people, important people, will pass out of the picture naturally. But not stupid stinking Thelma. She’ll just hang in there, baby. Pissing 2

Thelma and whining and waiting for good old Gary to do everything for her. Cunt! You’re dirt, that’s all you are. Just plain dirt.” “I do betta, Gehr,” old Thelma moaned, despising herself. “I sho sharry, Gehr. I be betta, I promiss. Telma be good fum now on, Gehr. Telma be good.” Her apology was lost on Gary. He leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “And you wanna know why you don’t deserve to be alive? Because you’re worthless, y‘hear? Worthless! You’re not good for anything or anybody. You can’t take care of yourself, you can’t feed yourself, you can’t do squat. When’s the last time you did anything constructive, or had even one original thought? When’s the last time you made the slightest effort to be of value to anything? I’ll tell you when: never! ’Cause you’re a sick old piece of shit who can’t see past her goddamn wheelchair. A cockroach has more value than you. At least a fucking cockroach can get around on its own.” Gary shoved and jerked the wheelchair to make his point. “Don’t you understand, shitbrain? Life is good to you. But what good are you to life? Where on this fucking planet is there a single lifeform, not counting Yours Truly, that benefits from your being here. Name one thing. Can’t do it, moron? That’s because you’re worthless! But I’ll clue you in on something. When the golden day arrives that your filthy ass expires, tramp, you’re gonna make a whole lot of worms real happy. Party time for Ourobouros. That’s when you’re gonna contribute.” Gary abruptly turned the wheelchair to the left, steered it across the street and into the park. “Aw-w-w . . .” he concluded, “what’s the use.” This was Thelma’s favorite part of the day. Everyone in the park was always so happy, so full of vitality. Children squealed with delight, dogs chased Frisbees, lovers drifted langorously between the elms. And around them all bumped the slowly rolling chair, pushed by the mumbling and incongruously sullen man, his head down. “Jesus, here we go again! Everybody and his mother out having the time of their lives. Every guy in town but me walking along with a hot young babe on his arm. Look what I’m stuck with. Oh man, am I embarrassed! You dumb lump of shit. I’m the laughingstock of this neighborhood thanks to you.” Gary’s mood continued to deteriorate, in stark contrast to the afternoon’s waking loveliness. After wheeling her twice through the park he brought her chair to a halt next to a trash bin. “Okay, Quasimodo. Have a last look around. I’m gonna go take a leak and be right back.” He stuck a forefinger in her face. “Now don’t you move! I’m warning you. You stay put just where you are. Don’t you dare talk to anybody and don’t you dare touch anything. I’ll be right back.” He gave her a hard look and ambled over to a public restroom. Thelma sat stock-still, determined to be good. But her mind was rocking back and forth, chanting: Don’t be bad, Thelma; don’t make Gary mad. Don’t be bad, Thelma, don’t be bad! This little mantra went round and round in her head until it ceased to make sense. Thelma heard a rustling near her feet, but fought the impulse to look. Gary had told her not to move. If she could only once do what he said maybe he wouldn’t be so unhappy all the time. Again came the rustling, followed by a tiny, frightened mewing. Thelma’s hands gripped the armrests. The mewing grew in urgency until Thelma could no longer resist the temptation to peek. The tiny white kitten couldn’t have been more than three or four weeks old. It had one brown ear and a large brown spot on its forehead. It was obviously abandoned and extremely hungry. Thelma fell in love with it right away. Her rheumy old eyes went teary, and her wretched old hand reached down to caress it. The kitten recoiled at her touch, then rubbed against her thumb. Every cell in Thelma’s body trembled. “Ghity,” she said. Gary now walked back, looking bored. “Okay, fuckface. Time to wheel your stupid ass home 3

Thelma and—hey! What you got there?” Thelma looked up at Gary’s frowning face. Her cheeks were covered with tears. “Ghity,” she bubbled. Gary grimaced. “Leave it alone, damn you! What do you want with a fucking cat, anyway? Don’t I feed you enough? No! Out of the question.” He looked around, picked up a wood slat and swatted at the kitten, trying to scare it away. All he got for his effort was a sizable splinter in his index finger. Gary howled as if he’d been gored, swore and dashed over to a drinking fountain to wash off the wound. In less than a minute he was back, but not before Thelma had managed to reach down, grab the kitten, and bundle it under her sweater. “Shit!” Gary spat. “Look what you fucking caused, whore. Oh, mama, that hurts! I oughta knock your fucking head off, you know that, you old bitch? You’re good and goddamned lucky I need you alive.” Thelma withered under Gary’s invective as he wheeled her home, occasionally bashing the chair against walls, pushing it hard off curbs. She had been bad again, but it didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was the tender little source of warmth shifting position on her lap. Each small movement jangled her nerves. Under her sweater she gently stroked the tiny creature. The warmth hummed in response. “Ghity,” she whispered.

Gary unlocked and kicked open the front door in one move. He shoved Thelma’s chair in roughly. “Jesus, bitch, don’t fight me! You know the fucking routine. Sit still!” He kicked the door closed, heaved a sigh. After a moment he wordlessly pushed the chair to the ramp and up to the converted attic. The attic had been partitioned centrally to create a sunroom on one side and a small bedroom on the other. This was Thelma’s room. “Here you are, fossil: back in your digs. Enjoy. I’ll be downstairs in the real world. Do me a favor. If you need anything, call the undertaker. Stay out of my face.” He turned and walked down the stairs abutting the ramp. Thelma waited until she heard the familiar sound of the television downstairs, then carefully opened her sweater to reveal the kitten’s tiny crimped form. The poor thing was trembling in its sleep, and barely responded when Thelma tenderly cradled it in her arms. The old woman and kitten trembled together as the afternoon sun burnished the bedroom’s bare wood floor. “Ghity,” Thelma crooned, rocking slowly in her chair. “Ghity, ghity, baby ghity.” Now sunshine began to play upon a corner of the small card table that served as Thelma’s desk and dining table. She wheeled over and very gently lifted the kitten onto the warm spot. It wakened and struggled to stand while she supported it with one hand under its belly. Once it was upright it began to urgently rub its cheeks against her other hand, then attempted to suckle a finger. It was starving. Old Thelma kissed it, over and over. It was all she could do. Without any warning Gary came barging into the room. When he saw the kitten on the table he stopped dead in his tracks. His mouth fell open as he stared from Thelma to the kitten and back again. Finally he breathed, “You bitch! What did I tell you? What did I tell you?” He took a great step forward and slapped Thelma hard across the face. “I told you ‘no fucking cat’, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you that?” He scooped the kitten in his hand, stepped to the window, and screamed, “DIDN’T I TELL YOU NO FUCKING CAT?” Staring hard at her, he threw the kitten out the window as if it was so much garbage. Thelma hugged herself, horrified. Gary stormed over and grabbed her by the hair, began slapping her face back and forth, his passion ascending with each consecutive blow. Finally he caught himself, almost hysterical, but still together enough to realize the stupidest thing he 4

Thelma could do would be to leave marks. He stepped back. “You’ve crossed me for the last time, cocksucker.” He tore her mirror from the wall, smashed it on the floor. He pointed a shaking finger at the shards of glass. “You see that?” he spat, indicating a piece. “That’s you.” He jabbed his finger at other pieces. “You see that? You see that? You see that? That’s what’s gonna happen to you next time you disobey me.” He knocked a picture off the wall, moved to the closet and tore Thelma’s clothes from their hangers. Then his anger seemed to abate. He walked to the door and said coldly, almost calmly, “No more privileges. Period. No more trips to the park, no more listening to the radio. This door stays locked, and you stay in.” He appeared about to elaborate, but his anger was catching up with him again. Finally he stepped out, screamed, “Fuck you!” and slammed the door so hard it shook the walls. The aftermath was worse than the explosion. Thelma sat in shock, wondering only how she could have been so bad. She wiped away her tears with a deformed and quivering hand. This was the unhappiest she’d ever made Gary, and the first time he’d ever locked her away from him. An exaggerated sense of lonesomeness weighed upon her. She loathed herself. Gary was right. She didn’t deserve to live. Little by little the numbness grew over her. Her thoughts slunk farther from meaningful analysis, and an almost palpable silence enveloped the room. It was in this oppressive silence that she thought she heard a familiar sound. Thelma’s attention refocused, her heart began to pound. There it was again. A tiny sound, frightened and lost, seeming to come from right outside the window. Entranced, old Thelma rolled her chair over. She leaned out. The white kitten lay straddled over the rain gutter running above the eaves and just under her window, having hit a power line and fallen to its present position. If not for the line the animal, small as it was, would certainly have been killed or seriously injured by an impact with the cement drive below. Thelma’s brows ran oblique. The kitten was perched awkwardly on one of the wide steel clamps securing the rain gutter to the roof, a good seven or eight feet from the window’s trim. Thelma gripped the rain gutter, tried to shake it to get the kitten’s attention. The gutter was solidly attached and didn’t budge at all, but the kitten must have felt the vibrations, for it looked up and wailed pitifully. “Ghity!” Thelma moaned. She rolled her chair back from the window, trying to think. But she had precious little experience in problem solving. The harder she thought the more confused she became. She must have nodded, must have dozed for an hour or more. The next thing she knew it was getting chilly, and there was the sound of a key in the lock. Gary came in with a small blue plastic bowl in one hand and a plastic drinking glass half-full of water in the other. “Here’s your gruel, ghoul.” He placed the bowl and glass on the card table. “That’s right. All you get is formula. No meat, no vegetables, no sweets. It serves your stupid ass right for being such a sneaky old slut. And that’s all you’re gonna get from now on, until I think you’ve learned your lesson.” His face twisted with contempt. “You mangy whore. I’m being way too kind for the likes of you. If I had my druthers you’d starve to death up here. Oh, yeah! I’d crank up the T.V. and you could scream your ugly old head off for all I’d care.” He crashed his fist on the dresser, then swept off Thelma’s little ceramic menagerie. “But I need you alive, pigface!” He took a deep breath. “There’s enough nutrition in that slime to keep you going. But that’s all. We’ll see how tough you are after a few days of goop diet.” He turned and walked to the door. Before he slammed it he said icily, “You’ll live. But so help me, bitch, I’ll live to piss on your grave.” 5

Thelma Thelma waited a minute, then pushed herself over to the card table. She inspected the contents of the bowl. “Formula” was a vitamin-rich concoction mass-produced for the elderly, but lately Gary had been saving pennies by preparing his own version; basically a blend of milk, margarine, and sugar. Thelma anxiously looked around the pigsty of her room. There was trash and filth everywhere. Not only had Gary never once lifted a finger to clean the room, he seemed to take a vicious delight in haphazardly storing junk more properly assigned to the garage or basement. Now Thelma rooted through a pile next to her bed, looking for something that would extend her reach. After an exhaustive search she settled on a grimy aluminum curtain hanger. It was the retracting kind: two nearly identical lightweight rods that fit one into the other for sliding adjustment. One end of each rod was crooked at a right angle for securing the device to a wall. Thelma found that by forcing the assembled hanger to its greatest length she had a good six feet of extension for her arm. She had to rest. This had been a tremendous amount of effort for a crippled and sedentary nonagenarian. She was beginning to doze when the kitten’s mewing renewed its tug on her heart. Thelma continued her rooting, fished out a heavy rubber band. The band was an inch and a half wide, perhaps twice that in circumference. It was difficult to stretch. Thelma wheeled back to the card table and placed these items before her. She was breathing hard. After a minute she drank the water from the plastic glass. The room seemed to revolve, steadied. Thelma forced the rubber band around the base of the glass, then moved it upward an inch at a time. The pressure of the band cracked the plastic in three places. Puffing and wheezing, old Thelma now pushed one end of the curtain hanger under the rubber band until the two parts were secure, making a six-foot-long handle for the glass. Outside, the kitten began to cry continuously. Thelma lifted the bowl of formula and held it over the glass. Her hands were shaking so badly that this job—the simple act of pouring the contents of one vessel into another—was accomplished only with the greatest difficulty. A good deal of formula oozed out the cracks in the glass. Thelma wiped the bowl clean with her crooked old finger, then smeared this residue around the rim of the glass. She balanced her little device on the wheelchair’s armrests and rolled to the window. Thelma thrust out her head. The white kitten was still straddling the clamp over the rain gutter. When it saw her it began to wail and move its legs ineffectually. “No, ghity, no,” Thelma cooed. “Ghity stay.” She maneuvered her contraption out the window so that the base of the glass rested on the floor of the rain gutter, then began to push it slowly toward the kitten. A lot of formula was lost in the process. All this activity was hard on the old woman, and by the time the glass had reached the kitten Thelma’s arms were shaking. Very little formula remained in the glass, but the kitten attacked the nourishment ravenously, licking the inside of the glass clean and lapping up the inch of liquid on the bottom. With the last of her strength, Thelma dragged the device back inside and let her head fall on the sill. The kitten was still hanging on the clamp, still straining to lap up the spilled drops. Thelma watched it listlessly, unable to lift her head. An absolutely novel feeling began to grow in the old woman’s heart; a sense of worthiness, of responsibility. Something small and vulnerable . . . something unimportant—but something very much alive—depended on her. Life desperately needed her, contemptible as she surely was, and Thelma found herself weeping uncontrollably while her heavy head lolled on the sill and the afternoon sun gently washed her face.

6

Thelma The next day Thelma slept very late. When at last she rose she became dizzy and weak from the act of sitting upright. The normal procedure of working her misshapen body into the wheelchair was an almost Herculean task. She struggled over to the window. The kitten was sprawled exactly as she’d seen it last, and her heart skipped a beat. She passionately shook the rain gutter. When the animal finally lifted its head and sluggishly cried out she was so relieved she had to cling to the sill. All day long she remained at the window, talking as much to herself as to the kitten, her mind slipping in and out of reality. Gary came in late in the day. He glared and refused to say a word, plopped down the bowl of formula and glass of water. He scowled and slowly shook his head. Thelma was too weak to acknowledge him, so he walked back out and locked the door. After a few minutes Thelma retrieved her device from under the bed, patiently slopped formula from bowl to glass, forced her chair to the window. As soon as the glass reached the kitten it came to life. It attacked the mixture eagerly, lapping up even those drops trapped in the cracks. Old Thelma was so exhausted she fell asleep with her head and arms out the window, and didn’t wake until it was fully dark and quite chilly. It took a supreme effort to make it back to bed. That night she came to her senses alternately shivering and sweating. Her room seemed unfamiliar. Thelma pulled a heavy sweater over her flimsy nightdress, covered herself snugly, and let herself drift.

On the third day she remained in bed, her hands and feet freezing. Gary waited until near sunset to bring in her formula. Thelma feigned sleep to avoid him, then woozily fought her way through the steps of boarding her wheelchair, filling the glass, making her way to the window. The kitten cried frantically when it saw her. Thelma pushed the glass, which seemed a dead weight, to where the kitten could just reach it. Her arms began to shake terribly, but she managed to keep the glass in place until the kitten had finished. All sensation passed from her left arm. Thelma gasped. Her upper body jerked. The glass and curtain hanger flipped over the rain gutter and dropped into a hedge below the window. Thelma’s hand reflexively pushed her away from the window, the wheelchair rolling her back a few feet. There she sat quietly, wondering at the lack of feeling in the arm. It might have been made of wood. She lifted the wooden arm with her good hand, placed the arm neatly on its rest, then used the good hand to push those rigid fingers one by one into a semblance of grip. She watched the day expire, saw the full splendor of its passing face for the final time, while shadows crept along the walls and floor, steadily dabbing up random pools of light. The sky caught fire. Within the window’s frame stray plumes ignited, slowly lost their intensity and glory, then smoldered with a dull and bloody glow. As the fire subsided these plumes turned to smoke in the deepening blue, became vagabond ghosts in the dark, lost their way in the night, and were no more.

7

Thelma Death treads gently on gentle souls. The end came for Thelma not with abruptness or horror, nor did it bring her any pain. It mirrored twilight’s subtle diminuendo; measure by measure muting voice, shading tone. It was almost an elegant thing. Night stepped through the window not as a burglar but as a suitor, drawing its endless shroud about her, round and round, claiming her pulse one revolution per beat. It worked its way up her arms, her neck, her face. Thelma watched the stars writhe prettily above the horizon, burning out their hearts for no one and nothing. She watched them shimmer, languidly, until a breath of cold blew out the light in her eyes.

In the wee hours there came a tiny scuffling at the window. A brown ear appeared, then a white ear, and finally two round eyes peered liquidly into the room. The kitten mewed nervously for a few seconds, then half-jumped, half-fell to the floor. It froze where it landed, questing with its senses. In a minute it squinched and crept to where the two orthopedic shoes stood on the footrest. It climbed awkwardly over the rest and onto a shoe. There it paused to look up uncertainly. It clawed with difficulty up Thelma’s leg and onto her lap. The old woman was cold as stone. The little white kitten threw back its head and wailed. It cried on and on and on in the darkness, rocking side to side, rhythmically digging its claws left and right into her cheap cotton nightdress. When it stopped, the room was quiet as a tomb. Slowly the kitten pushed its way under her sweater until it was all but buried. It curled up tightly, began to hum. It closed its eyes and was almost immediately asleep.

8

Horizon K-19’s most striking feature has always been the peculiar plasticity of its physics. The ability of its molecules—in both its organic and inorganic aspects—to attain fluidity on the moment, and to remain mutable indefinitely, is well documented. Everything on K-19 morphs as a steady state; spontaneously, as perceived by the senses, but continuously below the visual threshold . . . in its depths. Miller knew this; had in fact written impressively on the phenomenon way back in his sophomore year. But nothing could prepare him for the eeriness of the place; for the lush mauve tendrils crawling across heaving pasturage, for the nitrogenous pips that sparkled and passed, for the solitary brooding inn that seemed to dissolve and huff in the aching night. The driver allowed his car to find a comfortable site after its sickening descent. He took his time, too, in releasing the cabin pressure. Nor did he look back, or make a move to get the door. The trip had been passed in icy silence, but Miller was prepared: he realized Earthmen were just as unpopular on K-19 as on any other developing world. But, damn it, this was an emergency. He stepped out and gave the driver his print. It was scanned and handed back without a look or a word. “The tip,” Miller enunciated, “is included.” The driver didn’t respond. Miller knew he was understood; this entire quadrant recognized Universal Tongue. Miller slid the print back on. “Thanks again,” he said quietly. The car, with the faintest shiver of protest, lifted off and began its ascent. Miller squinted in the drear. A fissure crackled in the distance, a nearby seephole kicked and spat: the first signs of real weather. A shade was pulled aside, and an odd figure stared out at him, eclipsed by the room’s shifting blushes of gradient light. The inn was the only sign of habitation for miles; Miller was certain the driver had deposited him here solely out of spite. He shouldered his case and began the gradual uphill hike. The ground worried each footfall with a tugging, sucking action; frightening at first, but only an annoyance by the time he reached the porch. An unfamiliar sprig turned at his passing, a hanging shutter leaned back and groaned. Off to his right he noticed four peering steeds mailed against the weather. They were just like the animals he’d studied remotely

Horizon so long ago; fascinating then, repulsive now—fat, sprawling, disgusting slugs that wax dynamic when stimulated by their riders. He waited. After half a minute the old door creaked open and Miller found himself staring across a dilapidated lobby at a hunched gray fellow in a state of flux. The innkeeper looked up and away, his shoulders slinking down his spine. Miller walked casually across yawing floorboards to the desk and unslung his case, peripherally observing a small group seated against the far wall; evidently the steeds’ owners. “I’ll need a room for the night, at least. Our galleon was disabled in a drift pocket and I was one of the last men off. I had to retrieve some drives.” He held up the cylindrical Rheafur case, speaking clearly in the echoes, “They’re important drives. The rescue ship was full. The company’s sending a personal vessel that’ll arrive tomorrow night at the latest.” “No rooms available,” the innkeeper muttered. “The place is closed.” Miller blinked in the flickering shadows, his face cut by sarcasm and disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘closed’? I just told you there was an accident in the drift. I’m stuck here. I’ve a graph that says all of K-19’s right on the cusp of a major storm. The company will cover my print. Where’s your ledger?” “No need,” the innkeeper mumbled. “Rooms all taken.” Miller’s jaw dropped. “Taken!” The word was the crack of a whip. He seethed for a minute, then said carefully, “I’ll sleep in the lobby then. But be absolutely clear that the company will hear all about this.” The innkeeper shrank further. From the seated group came a cold drawl: “Lobby’s taken too.” Miller’s face burned to the side. Two of the men stood. A different voice called out, “And he said the inn’s closed!” Miles off, a young iridescent moon broke from behind a peak, recasting the floor’s shadows. Miller stamped on two and the rest disappeared into the woodwork. His expression twisted round. “Do you know who I am?” “No. But we know where you’re from.” A pantry door opened and an old woman oozed into the lobby. “What’s all this racket?” “You!” Miller demanded. “Do you work here?” She looked at him hard. Miller could tell she was bristling by the sudden spikes under her cloak at the shoulders. To his utter disbelief she folded her arms and said, “The building is closed.” Miller took two broad steps forward. He stood pointing out the open door while fighting the urge to yank aside her molten misbegotten head. “Do you see that world out there? There’s a real storm brewing. I’ve never heard of a rooming race—and he almost added ‘no matter how lowly’— turning away a traveler in distress. What’s wrong with you people?” The room locked up. Outside a lateral column of shrubs fell about, caught up in a death struggle that ended as quickly as it began. The wind moaned from the marrow. The old woman said, “Come here.” After a respectable pause Miller followed her out onto the porch, the hard truth sinking in with each step. When they were out of earshot he said matter-of-factly, “Okay. How much?” Her head jerked back as though she’d been slapped. “You . . .” she said, “you . . .” and turned away. Miller waited, listening to the steeds splashing about in their own waste. He should never have gone back for the drives. They were replaceable. The company wouldn’t have blamed him for being swallowed up in the offship rush. His fantasy scenarios of a promotion and raise were already turning stale. The woman’s voice was small in the night. “There’s another inn not far from here, just down the road over that hill.” 2

Horizon “Let me guess. Also ‘full’?” “If they say so.” He carefully set down his case. “You know what? Maybe I’ll just get comfy on your porch here. You don’t think that’ll bring your property value down too far, do you? And—so help me . . . don’t you ever think this little travesty’s going unreported.” She shifted closer, her face buckling and swelling. “No. Listen to me. You can’t stay outside in a storm. You won’t last.” Miller snorted. He couldn’t help it. “What do you mean: ‘won’t last’? Maybe you should show Earthmen some respect, huh?” He blew out a lungful of stress. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you take a look at this little backwater planet of yours from an honest perspective.” He ticked off points on his fingers. “Your propulsives are notoriously unstable. Your ‘durable’ goods have preposterously fickle shelf-lives. No one will navigate anywhere near your gravitational field without first closing his eyes and crossing his fingers.” Miller’s hot white face eclipsed a wayward atmospheric globule. “Case in point: our company’s marooned galleon and my little unrequested sojourn.” He placed his hands on his hips and looked around marveling. “Say, just when is peak tourist season, anyway?” Patches of black moles cropped up on the old lady’s face. “Why . . .” Miller appended, “if it weren’t for the company’s sense of progressive fair play, this whole place would’ve just shaken and shimmied into oblivion long ago.” The woman’s body twisted and trimmed; her fingers withdrawing and protruding, her face on fire in the snapdragon wind. The mass settled back down. Her eyes became smoke-veiled embers, her voice a sandpaper hiss. “You’re from Earth; you don’t understand. Products, capital gain, your precious company— we’re not interested in all that. We’re sorry your ship was caught in the drift. But please don’t start any trouble here.” Miller fought to control his temper. “Lady, we don’t start trouble, we finish it. If any of you people have a problem with the way we run things you can always take it up with a caseworker.” She glared. A lump throbbed laterally along her forehead. “Over the hill.” “With pleasure.” He looped his case’s strap over his head and began to hike. The old lady watched him recede, watched him stare back every now and then as the occasional static electric discharge lit her cloak’s hood before crackling off. Her form appeared to be marrying the landscape molecule for molecule. Miller’s eyes, constantly torn by fluid displays of rock and foliage, burned and froze, swam and steadied as the storm picked up. When he looked back again she was gone. Maybe he was better off with a lesson learned well. If the grotesqueries at the next inn were anything like these last impudent monsters, a little tact might go a long way. It couldn’t hang more than a night, and maybe a day, anyway. He’d just fall out in his room and sleep through it. An odd sound rose back at the inn, a restless, banshee-like wailing. Miller stopped, trying to put his finger on it. Haunted K-19 imagery . . . peaked riders . . . a miscellaneous audio file, back in college . . . yes, the steeds had been roused; all four. The noise spiked radically as they rounded the intervening building. A pocket of air sizzled and exploded overhead. Miller picked up his pace. It was a struggle to make any headway at all; the road had an odd disposition that made forward movement like walking in place. The steeds’ compound wail became aggressive, phasing in and out, nearing . . . definitely nearing. Miller pressed on with an attitude, his ears popping, his eyes bulging—he had to be marching backward somehow . . . no, it was the road, the road: the road itself was flowing downhill. Miller cried out as first his left ankle, then his right, submerged in grit and was freed. He fell on his palms, felt his wrists gripped by a force unseen. Only by rolling onto his 3

Horizon back was he able to struggle free. He sprinted uphill, each sole’s contact too brief to allow a meaningful grip. The wailing increased in intensity, cutting right through his brain. He shot back a glance, saw four surreal shapes charging uphill in tandem. Miller shook to the quick and scrambled to the road’s summit, where he gasped for want of air and options: before him lay only bogs and gnarly banyanlike trees. The road itself descended into desolation; no signs of habitation, no trace of civilization. He stamped and bawled at the horror and betrayal, rewarded in seconds by a tremor underfoot and an answering howl. Miller simply lost it; blew out his mind in a flurry of shrieking gray, ran stumbling off the road into the abutting swamp. The undergrowth strained to meet him, muck underfoot grabbed and thrashed. Mustered by his cries, sulking columns of mist swept in from all sides, tangling him up, making for his airways while obscene things ran yipping through the shadows, leapt thrashing in the vapors, hopped flopping pool to pool. Racing low to the east, a pair of moons threw parallel shadows that passed tree to tree, creating a pulsing confusion of simian wraiths. Reeking fumes—sulphurous, vile, increasingly antagonistic—were stirred out of the air by his movements. Miller’s case nipped him. At first the notion was so unreal he could only stare at his shoulder in shock. Next thing he knew the case was convulsing down his arm. He flung it off with a little bark of horror, blood droplets swimming in his breath, his fingernails splitting blue. The bag flopped off in one direction, Miller in another. Crashing sounds broke just behind, accompanied by a haunted cry that built and built until it seemed right on top of him. Miller slammed his back against a tree and stared up at the quartet of steedsmen, silhouetting the erratic night from a chalky precipice. As their hoods inclined, a strong pair of limbs grabbed him by the biceps. The tree hauled him up kicking, a foot at a time. When he was eye-level with the steedsmen a pair of branches broke from the trunk; one to impel and brace his spine, the other to hold him by the throat. Miller hacked and dribbled, clinging to the iron limbs while his body jerked to and fro. “You freaks!” he coughed. “Get me down!” His focus was going. The steedsmen watched motionlessly, unmoved. Miller forced a savage breath. “I’ll see you burn! I’ll see your whole planet blacklisted, quarantined . . . shut down.” He was fading. The upper limb lifted him forward until he dangled, suspended midway between the trunk and the stolid observers. One of Miller’s eyebrows detached, his left arm seized, teeth and bits of rotting flesh spewed out before him. “Please . . .” he choked. “I’ll do anything. Anything.” His face went purple, the eyes bulged and raved, the ears crimped and folded, the scalp peeled off in layers. “I’m sorry . . . please . . . please . . .” His head fell forward. “Oh mercy,” he whispered. “Please.” A stalagmite-shaped bulge, seeping out of the slime beneath his feet, strained upward through bursting pockets of gas. The tree’s uppermost branch shook Miller hard; an alley dog thrashing a roof rat. A long shudder ran down the branch and the tree turned to stone. Immediately the bulge rushed up, clasped Miller’s feet and tugged. A stinking miasma appeared throbbing around his stretched and dangling remains. Putrefaction began at once. On the precipice the four steedsmen watched silently for a minute, turned their beasts round as one, and began the long slog downhill.

4

Why Did You Kill John Lennon The rain came down only intermittently, but it seemed every time she stepped out from under a storefront awning she was forced to skip right back under. These streets would never wash clean. The rubbish, the homeless, the graffiti—the whole setup made her cluck as she paced, though she’d seen it all a thousand times and more. Cities are just spawning grounds for sinners. Her sweet nature made her want to adopt every waif and squatter, but her good sense and a lifetime of experience caused her to keep her distance. Tonight was different, somehow. The rain was playing a tenderer symphony, the brick and asphalt glinted in the stoplights’ cherry, lemon, and lime, and her social security payment, just cashed and resting deep in her withered bosom, made her feel guilty, priveleged, and unnecessarily insular. So she resolved to assuage that guilt by heaping charity upon the next victim of the streets, and when she finally encountered him he was just made to order: washed up against Ernie’s Liquor like so much sewage, hapless and unkempt; a poster child for the area’s sprawling human waste. His poor eyes rolled heavenward when her pittance of a shadow reached him. “Lady,” Bimmy croaked, haunch-rolling against the rain-damp wall. “I mean, like, Ma’am. I ain’t ate in a week, maybe two. You know how it is. Or maybe you don’t—I ain’t tryin to be personal or nothin here, but I’m like, starvin, okay? I really hate to ask, and I know you must think this is all a put-on, and that I’m gonna hump right into this here liquor store and glom me a quick Mickey’s, but that ain’t the case. I need to eat, and I need to eat bad. Just a dollar, sweetheart; only a buck. That’s all I’m askin, okay? Could you help me out, could you please, and God bless you for your kindness. I’m really hurtin here.” She bent at the waist and her dear eyes welled. “Young man.” Her gaze fell on the empty malt liquor bottle tucked behind him, on the stinking rags of clothes, on the nicotine and urine stains. She righted herself, hands on hips, and considered. Now it was getting really cold and wet. This particular corner was fractured by a hundred pitiless headlight beams, and the pavement seemed to

Why Did You Kill John Lennon ooze underfoot. She shivered in neon, huddling her old coat about her. A remonstrative forefinger rose, only to descend in goodly Christian hindsight. The hand dipped into her brassiere and reappeared with a single neatly folded dollar bill. “Young man, each and every act of charity comes from the bidding of our sweet Lord Jesus, not from His sheeps’ will. This dollar is an investment in your soul’s immortal path. You must treat it not as a gift, but as His staff.” “Oh yes, ma’am. Bless you. And bless him and bless his staff and the whole crew. And most of all bless you for investing in my soul’s immoral path. Bless you bless you bless you.” “Now, I mean it; I want you to use this dollar wisely. I want you to promise it won’t go for any liquor.” “No booze, ma’am. Swear to god and by all that’s good and holy. You got my word.” “No drugs or tobacco.” “Perish the thought. I’m clean, I tell ya; clean as a fresh syringe. Look at my arms; you wanna see my arms? Flea bites, but that’s all. God, it’s rough, ma’am. Starvin’ in the rain and cold and fleas and searchlights, ma’am, but all I ask is that one little bill—just that buck.” “No pornography or firearms.” “I promise promise promise. Only a sweet, sweet coal for an old man’s cold grateful belly. Something to feed my spirit, ma’am, just a little something for a good Christian soldier, down on his luck and mucking it out as best he can.” It was a heap of work, but bit by bit she made it down to one knee, grasped his icy paws in her own and closed her eyes. “By the gracious Hand of Jesus,” she breathed, “do I deliver this one paper tear unto His poor broken child.” She rose. “On your promise.” “I did and do.” Bimmy ticked them off on his good hand. “No booze, dope, smokes, porno, or handguns. You can trust me, angel. May I rot with unholy Hell’s dirty dank dominion if I break my word. Swear to God; on my ailing grandmother, on my grieving wife and mistress, on my parents, on my children, on my miserable, vile, and oh-so pointless existence.” “Bless you, then,” she breathed, and handed him the dollar. “Ohbless-ohbless-ohblessyblessyoutoo.” Bimmy clasped the bill in one fist, her wizened hand in the other, and walked his butt up the wall until they near-embraced in the floodlit mist. She began, “May you find in Je—” but he was gone, pushing his way inside and through. Here at Ernie’s Liquor you have to fight to reach the MajikLotto dispenser. It’s a vending machine; the latest thing. Slide in a bill and out slides a ticket—but it was surrounded, as might be expected on a cold wet night, by the area’s top panhandlers and pickpockets. Open container laws need not be enforced; ever since Majikmania took hold of the city, there wasn’t a drunk standing who’d think of wasting good paper money on alcohol. “Outta my way!” Bimmy snarled, butting and biting through the mob. He held the dollar high overhead, called out, “This one’s from Jesus!” and shoved it in the billsucker. Bimmy snatched the dispensed ticket and collapsed from the effort. A dozen gnarly paws dragged him to his feet, shoved him staggering to the counter. Bimmy squinted at the 3 on the ticket’s face as he slung it forward. That old biddy was right: a single dollar had brought him three—there really is a . . . Bimmy’s mind was racing. That meant another MajikLotto ticket and a quart of malt liquor . . . or two tickets and a 16-ouncer of bad blue bile . . . or three whole freaking tickets and another shot at grace. “Oh, mama!” he gagged, and smashed a fist on the counter. “Just make it three more!” The clerk’s jaw was hanging. “No sir. That’s not the number 3 followed by a trail of tears. Those are zeroes. You’re our thirty million-dollar winner!” He turned, stunned, and reached for the store phone. Bimmy heard him sputtering: “Channel 5? You won’t believe this, but some guy just 2

Why Did You Kill John Lennon cracked Ernie’s thirty mil jackpot. Yeah, he’s here . . .” even as a ton of well-wishers leaned on his back. Bimmy slowly turned about, supported by the counter. Smothered in newfound love, suffocating in body odor, the truth began to dawn. He heard the clerk’s voice, “Compliments of the house,” and found himself the sudden possessor of a brandy liter normally reserved for the pale and snooty. The crowd whooped and danced. Beside himself, Bimmy knocked back half the bottle, and might have happily expired right then and there if not for a flurry of headlights, horns, and screeching rubber outside. A small army of reporters burst in as a unit, swinging microphones, videocams, and portable spotlights. A sweet young thing in pink tanktop and press badge thrust a mic in his face. “Sir, are you the winner of the big jackpot? What’s your method? How often do you buy tickets at this location? What do you plan to do with all that money?” Before he could reply the mayor blew in, and right behind him a sequined lady holding a cardboard check the size of a pool table. Three cops appeared and quickly cleared a small area for Bimmy, the grinning mayor, and the gleaming check lady, now squeezing behind the winner and mayor to pose like the homecoming queen. The brandy was already kicking in. Bimmy looked around dazedly, snapping back his head when the videocamera seemed to leap right in his face. The mayor threw an arm over Bimmy’s shoulder and leaned in smiling. “Go,” said the cameraman. The reporter wedged herself between them. “Congratulations, sir. On behalf of the mayor and city council, please accept this symbolic check for thirty million dollars!” The place went nuts. Bimmy reeled, sucking back brandy fumes. Finally he managed, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with a symbolic check? Buy a shitload of symbols?” The stunned silence was broken by laughter from the crowd, then the whole place was jumping with glee. The mayor snuck his face back in, smiling even wider. “Sir, that check isn’t for spending! It’s our proud honor,” he gushed, nodding and grinning like a bobbletoy chipmunk, “to present you with this combination debit and credit card, enabling you to draw on the Bank Of America, effective immediately, goods and services up to and not exceeding . . .” he paused for emphasis “. . . thirty million dollars!” The whole room was rocked by cheers. Bimmy took the card. It didn’t look all that much prettier than the plain old General Relief debit card. “You mean,” he wondered, “I can buy me a beer right here and now with this thing?” “As long as it’s before two a.m.” the mayor beamed. “You mean,” Bimmy ventured, “I can buy everybody here a beer?” “My friend,” the mayor bubbled, “you can buy everybody here a new car if you so desire.” Bimmy took a huge gulp and waved the bottle like an Oscar. “What the hell, then,” he cried. “New cars for everybody!” The petite figure making her way down the aisle couldn’t have weighed more than a child, though she carried herself with an authority traditionally removed from such hallowed turf. But when she saw the man draped in exotic furs and precious stones she approached the stage more like a groupie than an official. “Sir, I’m from the State Board of Trends And Statistics. I’m not sure you’re aware of it, Mr.— I mean Reverend Joseph—but the average MajikLotto winner grossing over a million dollars has 3

Why Did You Kill John Lennon only a 2.7-year shelf life on that sum. Our office is very interested in learning your plans for extending, or even intensifying, your odds, Reverend . . ?” Bimmy bowed almost to the floor. “Just ‘Joe’ will do fine, my dear. And I don’t necessarily demand use of the term ‘Reverend’—offstage, backroom, or otherwise. But should using it in any manner make you feel more comfortable, if you get my drift, then . . . please.” He swung an arm expansively. “As to increasing my odds, well, I see this church as a mighty sound investment; taxfree, humanitarian, nifty location—all that stuff. Plus, you gotta understand, since Jesus set me up with this deal, it’s pretty obvious he’s not gonna blow it for me. Then we got bingo on Sundays, Pass The Hat Tuesday, and firewalking contests for snake handlers and nursing moms all week long. Our up-and-coming House Band Cloven Tongue does some mighty fine fire-breathin’ Christian Rock, and this very church holds almost ninety percent of the copyrights.” He raised a hand and flashed his signature gummy grin. “Please . . . you’ll have to take them matters up with our legal team, but just a cautionary word: they don’t do interviews on the links.” He took a massive breath. “Not to mention we’re contracting with Alcoholics Anonymous,” and she almost collapsed from the fumes,” for late meetings on these premises.” He rubbed his thumb and contiguous fingers lustily, leaning well into her contours while lowering his voice to a hot phlegmy growl. “We do real well in crucifixes, Bibles, and Christian party trays—so how’s them for increasing the ol’ odds, eh, baby?” Bimmy now spread wide his wings. “Not to mention you being delivered right into my arms!” He embraced her deeply and with passion, but the combination of mink and ermine with old sweat and cheap cologne was so pungent the poor thing was compelled to extricate herself with a shove no less passionate. Bimmy turned away sharply. “Go then!” Without another word he stormed into his office and made straight for the refrigerator, ripped out a stale quart of Olde English, and slammed himself down at his desk. He glared at the calendar, photos collage, and finally the telephone. As if reading his mind, the little rotary monster jangled the room. Bimmy took a deep draught before picking up the receiver. “Reverend Joseph,” he said miserably. It was Papa Bear. Bimmy sat straight up, every nerve cringing. “P.B.!” he managed. “What a surprise!” “Don’t sweet talk me, Rev’.” Bimmy had to plug his free ear to hear. “You been riding this rail on a bullshit ticket since we first shared a car. I had Accounts audit your sorry setup, and that big ol’ lottery tank just don’t hold water no more.” The phone went slippery in Bimmy’s grip. “Gimme a break, huh, Papa? That whole payday’s wrapped up in inves—” “Investments? You been spending like a sailor since the day you first jumped ship. What do I look like, pastor, some kinda harbor hooker? I think it’s about time we send in the MPs.” “Papa, Papa, Papa! We don’t need to play rough here! You know what’s mine is yours.” “You got that right, Father. Su casa, mi casa. You better have some mighty big guns in that fat glass fort of yours.” The line went dead. Bimmy gently replaced the receiver, rose and looked around the room. Inch by inch his jaw dropped; the enormity of his peril weighed him down. He began to pace the table in an everwidening circle, finally slamming into the far wall. There. The mighty big gun. Bimmy tore down the stainless steel crucifix, laid it tenderly on the table. He squeezed shut his eyes and rubbed it for all he was worth. “Come on, baby, bring me the good stuff. You chose me, not anyone else. I always knowed I was put on this planet for a purpose, and I’m knowin’ equally sure that you’re just dyin’ to reveal what it’s all about. Then this is it, man; I’m ready as I’ll ever be. So go ahead and show me. Show your Chosen One the way. Let 4

Why Did You Kill John Lennon ’em all see what I’m really worth.” He kissed the crucifix a good one, set it down gently, and knocked back his malt liquor. There was a crash in the chapel. Bimmy wiped his lips. “Shit.” He killed the bottle, fluffed his Coat, and swished on out the door. The whole chapel was crawling with boys from the Backdoor Gang, smashing stained glass, breaking up walls, overturning pews. When they saw Bimmy standing there, his mouth agape, half a dozen leaped from the wings and threw him into a bearhug and headlock. Papa Bear stepped squarely through the mess, kicking and crushing as he came. “You let me down,” he wheezed. “You took me for a lousy ride in a hot Pinto, padre. Now it’s time we put on the brakes.” “I can make good!” Bimmy cried. “Just let me cut you a check.” “No dice, bummy. You ain’t worth the postage on the UPS box you’re about to call home. But the boys are gonna squeeze what they can out of you before they break out the tape and twine. Guys!” “Oh, mercy!” Papa Bear’s expression went sour. “Never could stand that word.” Bimmy was forced to hunch there while the gang smashed through the building, tearing out everything but the plumbing. Finally he was given a full-body cavity search, losing his pinocle deck, his lucky condom, and his solid gold crucifix bottle opener. “Not my BO!” he wailed. Papa Bear slung out his switchblade. “A pound of flesh,” he snarled. “How much you weigh?” And the whole gang jumped Bimmy. They beat him down the aisle, beat him across the parking lot, beat him into Papa Bear’s sinewy black Lexus. They beat him up the streets, beat him down the boulevard, beat him all the way to Ernie’s, where they dumped him on the sidewalk like so much garbage. Bimmy clawed his way to the storefront, finally sagging in a puddle of urine and blood. “Young man.” He looked up through black swollen eyes. “You didn’t use the gift of Jesus all that wisely, did you?” Bimmy dropped his head. “He let me down.” The biddy clasped his face in her hands. “The Lord so loves his children!” she exulted. “He will never give up on you young man, never!” She pulled a bill from her bra. “Now, do you promise to use this dollar with wisdom this time?” Bimmy squinted up. “Oh, yes, ma’am. I promise promise promise from the bottom of my heart.” She placed it in his cupped hands and nodded gladly. “I know the Lord will be pleased.” Bimmy hauled himself to his feet one brick at a time. “God bless—” she began, but he was gone. Bimmy fell through the door and up against a tatterdemalion wall of backs and shoulders, holding the precious dollar high. “Outta my way, you blasphemous sons of bitches! This one’s from God!”

5

The following was committed to print with painstaking accuracy. Every attempt has been made to portray the particulars in a fair and objective light. While the structures and citizens of Venice Beach are true to life, the locations of certain establishments, and the identities of several persons, have been altered for the sake of the community, and for the privacy of those individuals whose lives were so brutally disrupted. This said, the author cannot guarantee that events drawn from memory are one hundred percent accurate, for, as this account will amply reveal, eyewitness memory is never one hundred percent reliable.

Freak

Purly Abram Prentis Mars Phelps Hatch Vilenov The Fugitive The Flight The Influence The Impact The End

Chapter One Purly

The vanity mirror’s dozen rose bulbs flickered every time a neighbor switched on a major appliance. This flickering, barely perceptible under hard white light, was a dramatic event in Marilyn Purly’s perfectly dark bedroom. Her ceiling and walls were papered black, her furniture ebony-stained. Carpet, bedspread, pillowcase and sheets: all were dyed Midnight, the deepest black available. Floor-length black velvet curtains hung in her windows and doorway. But for Purly, the little black room could never be dark enough. That reflection belonged to a golden touch-me-not goddess; on the inside sick and dying, on the surface uniquely and breathtakingly attractive. Purly’s uniqueness, in heavily cosmeticized Southern California, came partly from being damaged goods, and partly from being an unadorned natural beauty surrounded by gaggles of underdressed posers. Through no fault of her own, this wounded nymph quality came off as a direct challenge to men, and as a slap in the face to women. In one of nature’s crueler little ironies, Marilyn Jayne Purly had been cursed with a pathological aversion to attention. She’d tried hoods and bonnets, scarves and veils, bangs and dark glasses; nothing could conceal her sexual charisma. Even the suffocating wraps she wore outdoors seemed only to cling and entice. Though countless young women would have killed for her looks, Purly’s deepening depression inevitably drove her to the opposite idea. It took eleven suicide attempts and half a dozen complete nervous breakdowns, but in the end the most aggressive men withered and ran. Her fiercely protective landlady took care of the rest. The hospitals and courts agreed: whether institutionalized or subsidized in the real world, Purly would not survive outside her bubble. Only a steady stream of S.S.I. checks kept her safely sealed in this crypt. All her life she’d dreamt plain; Marilyn’s make-believe self was a wisp of a woman, daintily

Purly Freak dancing for gentlemen in denim. One, the nicest one, would sweep her off her feet to a land of coffee mugs and white picket fences. The mirror was her window into this secret world. Purly began reliving her tortured adolescence in that little window; initially as a distraction, then in direct competition with the fantasy. In time the delicate dream dissolved completely, leaving her addicted to a masochistic morning ritual. Looking into that swirling glass pool was like watching a movie on a flat oval screen. She could see the halls, could hear the whistles and shouts, could almost smell the hormones as the boys of high school came stampeding; hurling themselves against her, squeezing frantically, blocking her progress as she struggled to make class. Right behind were the average girls, egging the bug-eyed boys on, slapping her too-pretty face until she ran the gauntlet screaming like a banshee. Alone in the dark, Purly still felt the boys’ horny paws, still felt the normal girls beating her into hysterics. Closing her eyes, she reached into her makeup box, picked out an unused razor blade, and guided it to her face. The jerking blade never touched flesh, but she felt every imaginary slice before lowering it to poise, for the thousandth time, above an upturned wrist. Purly opened her eyes, neatly returned the blade, and for the thousandth time watched the ghosts of adolescence drift to the mirror’s periphery. Fresher, sharper images rose in their place. First up was her landlady’s toad-like face, her fat eyes burning through the shadow of a straw hat’s brim. Next appeared the probing face of a serious man, a kind of senior policeman. Lastly came the crouching form of a muscular man facing away, the back of his jumpsuit lettered, enigmatically, HARBOR TV & VCR. These images also drifted and passed. The mirror clouded. Out of the fog rose an angular face with gray, very penetrating eyes. The eyes had a way of locking onto your movements without shifting, as on one of those imposing portraits with eyes that appear to pursue you regardless of where you stand. Immediately behind the face came a dully resonating sound, like a buoy’s bell in choppy waters. The sound produced a conditioned response: Purly placed a hand in her makeup box and extracted a tiny vial of perfume. She twisted off the cap. The ringing grew insistent. She let a few drops fall into her cleavage before loosening the big satin bow on her sweet little babydoll. Now the doorbell was clanging urgently in her skull. In a dream, she pushed herself to her feet, pulled aside the curtain, and staggered around the jamb. The bell had her by the pulse. She almost fainted when she reached the door.

Daylight was a vertical splash of acid. Purly clung to the knob while the man outside cursed her up and down; first with gentle urgency, then with real invective. Once she’d freed the chain he forced the door with a foot and forearm, steadily bumping her back until he could squeeze inside. Juggling a sloppily stuffed black plastic bag, he slammed the door, shoved the chain back in its catch, and firmly turned the knob’s heavy new, deadbolt-style lock. Vilenov dropped the bag on a coffee table and peeked between the curtain and window frame. Yes, there she was, right on cue. That fat nosy witch with the humongous straw hat, sneaking out of her apartment to pace the drive. He let the curtain fall. An edgy, lean little man, Vilenov moved in fluid spurts. In another unbroken sweep, he switched on the ceiling light with his left hand, scooped Purly by the waist in his right arm, and eased her onto the couch under the high wide mirror in the chipped plaster frame. He plopped down 2

Purly Freak beside her excitedly, ripping open the knotted bag with his teeth. Inside were a fifth of Jack Daniels, a few hundred dollars in tens and twenties, and a number of hardcore pornographic magazines. He spun off the cap and swallowed greedily before tearing away a handful of cellophane. “Gifts,” he mumbled, his eyes gleaming. “I come bearing gifts.” For a while there was nothing to be heard but the rustle of thumbed pages and an occasional swallow. At last he sighed and fell against her, a forearm balanced on her shoulder. The hand dangled only a moment. As it began its slow descent he dropped back his head. “Oh, Marilyn, Marilyn, Marilyn; oh sweet, sweet sweet Mary Jayne. How I’ve missed you, sugar pie. And you never even knew I was gone, did you?” He eased down the babydoll. “But I told you I’d be back. Just like always.” Purly stared ahead without expression. Hugging her in his left arm, Vilenov bent forward to peel off his shoes and socks. “Mary Jayne!” he hissed, pulling her back with him. “It’s on fire in here, don’t you think?” It was like talking to a rubber doll. “But that’s August for you. Even the ocean air doesn’t help much.” He lifted her hand and placed it on his thigh. The hand was cold as putty. “Why, I remember walking barefoot on the beach as a kid, and the sand would be so hot I’d come home with blisters on my feet. That kind of heat—August heat—gets sucked into anything that’s holding still.” Vilenov rocked against her playfully. “But enough about me. I know you must be sick of hearing about my crummy childhood.” He peeled off his shirt, spat out, “Damn, it’s hot!” and grabbed a handful of golden hair. Vilenov yanked her head around, his bitter gray eyes narrowing. “You’ve never told me, sweetheart. Just what are you hiding from, anyway? You think you’re too good-looking for the rest of us? Is that it? You think we common folk will just catch fire and explode if we have to endure even one teensy peek at your precious, intoxicating beauty?” He shoved her head so hard the cartilage in her neck popped. Purly’s chin rolled shoulder to shoulder, at last coming to rest buried in her chest. Vilenov ran his tongue through her long damp hair, grimacing at its sweetness. “Honey Blonde,” he mumbled. He pulled her head back up, but this time with tenderness. “Listen, lover, before I started doing you I had ’em all, and like any sane male I went for the youngest and prettiest, the dumbest and blondest tail I could find—models, beach bunnies, playgirls; you name it. Not so very PC you think? Not sensitive enough? But that’s how we men are. We’re hardwired for action, not for airs.” He turned her drooping head to face him and spoke like a confident suitor about to pop the question. “Well now, Mary Jayne, let me tell you. For twenty years I’ve been peeling back the primest poon this county has to offer. But you know what? Sooner or later a man grows up. Sooner or later he realizes that all those snotty plastic bimbos out there are purely superficial, and finds himself going after . . . strange fruit.” He released her head and shifted tighter against her, whispering in her ear while his hands roamed. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You don’t know who I am, or how many nights we’ve spent together, or just how crazy I am about you. Or how happy it makes us both when your pretty little nightie comes sliding down . . . it’s so pretty . . . so pretty.” Vilenov shuddered as Purly’s babydoll dropped to her waist. He moaned, pressed down her hand and slid it up his thigh. The hand resisted. Vilenov froze, every sense questing. For half a minute he didn’t even breathe. Then, very slowly, he reached over, gently pinched her chin in his fingers and turned her head. Purly responded with a petite cough, flecks of froth emerging at the corners of her mouth. In Vilenov’s pale gray eyes a pair of red blazes appeared and passed. He carefully studied the slack, heartbreakingly lovely face. “That chest cold of yours is getting worse, Mary. We’ll have to do something about it. Now you just sit here like a good girl while I go get the medicine. Don’t make a move.” Vilenov rose and stood absolutely still, feeling the room. He listened closely, studied every object visually, sniffed the air for 3

Purly Freak unfamiliar scents. Sweat was building round his hairline, rolling down his chest and back. The place was a freaking sauna. He took another long look around and tiptoed into the bathroom. Purly sat in a slump, staring at nothing. She thought she could hear voices outside, very much subdued. Whispers. There were also a few miscellaneous sounds: the soft turning of gravel underfoot, what might have been a radio chattering in the distance, a familiar creaking of floorboards in the apartment above. Then, except for the tiny squeaking of the medicine cabinet’s hinges, complete silence. Without knowing why, Marilyn Purly wobbled to her feet. She walked to the front door in a trance, noiselessly unlocked the knob, and returned to her place on the couch. Her eyes fell on the black oblong box of the VCR, squatting atop her television’s dull maple cabinet. Hello, she wanted to say. Vilenov walked back in; a jar of Mentholatum in his left hand, his trousers and briefs in his right. He tossed the clothes on the coffee table, liberally lathered his hands with the mentholated goop, and turned to face the hunched woman. Their knees locked. Vilenov reached down, got his hands full and began to massage. “That’s my baby,” he breathed. “That’s the girl I love.” He let go reluctantly, placed Purly’s palms on the backs of his thighs, and walked his left hand down her chest while his right hand gently pulled her head forward. Nicolas Vilenov admired his reflection. Sweat was rolling all down his body. His eyes were glazing. After a minute his right knee began to tremble. He smiled, let his head fall back, and closed his eyes.

Carre placed all his weight on the edge of his left foot, keeping his balance using only two fingertips pressed lightly against the apartment’s outer wall. He’d held his breath so long his eyes were popping. Muted, oddly rhythmic sounds came from inside; the sounds of hogs in a dream. He delicately rested his ear on the door, and the hogs took on a distinctly human quality. Except for those muffled grunts and sighs, Purly’s apartment was dead quiet. Carre soundlessly exhaled. His eyes met Vincent Beasely’s, raging just across the doorway. Carre’s head cocked warningly. He could see Beasely was ready to blow; the man’s body language was all profanities— brows knit, nostrils flared, lips drawn back in a snarl. Carre had watched these symptoms grow more pronounced with each passing day, beginning with Beasely’s first good long look at a surveillance photo of the suspect, culminating in his yearning, embarrassingly anxious comments about the Purly woman. Now, thanks to their shared hot and cold emotions, the relationship between these officers couldn’t have been more electric. Both men were comfortably married, both were immovably principled, and both were irresistibly drawn to Marilyn Jayne Purly. Beasely had it worse: he’d always been, if anything, dedicated to the letter of the law; a soft-spoken cop with a good record. Not the sort of man to lose his head or his heart. Carre was by nature on a tighter rein; stiff, pressed, and polished, and notorious for his ability to take drastic disciplinary measures without a trace of sympathy. Yet, despite Beasely’s steady and very unprofessional change, Carre had refused to have him reassigned, had instead become his staunchest supporter. For, from somewhere in his midbrain, Roland Carre hated, hated, hated Nicolas Vilenov almost as much as did Vince Beasely. Carre flicked his head and looked back at the drive. Most of the buildings’ tenants were standing in a broad crescent facing Purly’s apartment, restrained by three uniformed officers. A man in a white shirt and tie waited at midpoint, staring at an upstairs window. The rest of the tenants were leaning on the twin building’s upper rail, watching intently. 4

Purly

Freak All this crowd control should have been unnecessary. The buildings’ occupants had proved quite compliant, even shy, timidly filing into their units to peep from windows and cracked doors. There they had remained until only a few minutes ago, when their massive manager began sucking officers into a whispered shouting match over rights and procedures. One by one they had reopened their doors to mill uncertainly between the buildings. The woman became more unruly in their presence, as though readying a charge, but backed off grudgingly when officers threatened her with obstruction. She returned to pacing her assigned perimeter, only to subtly work her way back in as the raid neared the moment of truth. Carre lowered his left hand until the fingers just graced the doorknob. He pinched it lightly, turned it centimeter by centimeter. The knob was unlocked. He turned it back just as slowly. The chain might be up, but it wouldn’t stand against his and Beasely’s shoulders. The coordinating officer’s full attention was on the apartment directly above Purly’s. In that unit the drapes parted to reveal a dark standing figure. This man turned his head to look back into the room. After a tense half-minute he dropped his arm in a chopping motion, copied instantly by the man on the ground. Carre gently turned the knob. He and Beasely, with a quick exchange of glances, hit the door as one. What Carre saw stopped him dead. He barely budged when Beasely slammed into him from behind. Seated at opposite ends of the couch were a clothed man and woman. A tall glass of iced tea stood on a coffee table at their knees. Scattered about this glass were maybe two dozen supermarket coupons and a number of magazines. Carre automatically sampled titles: SAILBOATING NOW. KITTENS & PUPPIES. POETRY FOR BEGINNERS. His eyes were drawn to an old black and white TV across the room. On the screen a cartoon whirlwind raced across a cartoon desert. “Beep beep!” the whirlwind cried. A black videocassette recorder was perched on the set’s console. Carre walked over and stared into the VCR’s remote control sensor. For a weird moment he was totally in the dark. He straightened and found himself studying the faded print of a skinny, homely ballerina. As he turned back to face the room his attention seemed to drift along behind. The suspect was on his feet; every aspect of his expression and posture consistent with surprise and indignation. A cussing Beasely had one arm around his neck, the other twisting his wrist up behind his back. Marilyn Purly, dressed in happy-face muumuu and fuzzy pink slippers, was screaming out of her mind. On an end table were a green rotary telephone and a carefully folded tablecloth. Carre overcame a ridiculous urge to drape this cloth around the screaming woman. There came a repeated, dreamlike stomping above. The concussions staggered Carre. One moment he thought he would faint, the next his consciousness was struggling with two separate perceptions of a single event: he could have sworn he saw his transparent mirror image reach into a fanny pack to extract something pallid and flaccid. Carre watched dumbstruck as the apparition placed an evidence bag under Purly’s chin, signed a document on a clipboard from forensic officer Beloe, and helped the woman undersign. The hallucination blurred, shivered, and passed. “Marilyn?” Carre managed. Purly peeked between her fingers and nodded frantically. “I wonder,” Carre’s voice said, “if we could step into the kitchen for a minute. You remember me, don’t you, Ms. Purly?” She nodded again, languidly now. Carre was absolutely blown away, as though for the first time, by the woman’s terrible beauty. A tiny voice in the back of his head begged him not to stare, but he couldn’t help it. He took a couple of deep breaths and forced himself to relax. “I’m officer Roland Carre,” he said clearly, and with authority. He was back on track. “We had an 5

Purly Freak arrangement to spring a sort of trap on a man suspected of being a serial rapist in the South Bay. You were very cooperative. Does any of this ring a bell with you?” Purly’s head bobbed resignedly. She extended a shaking hand. Carre helped her to her feet and quietly led her into the tiny kitchen, sat her down on one of the cheap little chairs around the cheap little table. He used a thumb to gently peel back an eyelid. Carre saw a red, but otherwise perfectly clear, eyeball. “Ms. Purly, can you tell me what was taking place before we came in? If you’re up to it, that is.” She sobbed and nodded, shivered up and down. “We were having tea. Iced. Nicky and I were discussing catamarans and the migratory patterns of blue whales.” “Nicky?” Purly giggled spasmodically. “Nicolas,” she gushed. “It’s my pet name for him.” Her expression collapsed, and Carre found himself staring into the flickering baby-blue eyes of an unspeakably frightened woman. His fists clenched. “He . . . he calls me Mary Jayne. No one has ever called me ‘Mary Jayne’ before.” Carre grasped her shoulders and felt her flesh melt in his hands. He went down on one knee to be face to face. Exercising great control, he said with exaggerated clarity, “Ms. Purly, right before we came in, was this man Nicolas taking advantage of you sexually, or in any manner making you feel afraid for your safety?” Her reaction was so dramatic Carre had to recoil. Purly tensed up and glared, a lioness protecting her cub. “Certainly not! Nicky is a perfect gentleman!” Plush tears rose under the lids. Suddenly her eyes were rolling in her skull. “What’s going on here, officer? What are you doing in my house? Why are you asking these disgusting questions?” Carre stepped back, his cheeks and ears burning. “I’m very sorry, ma’am. And I deeply appreciate your cooperation.” He stomped into the front room and stood nose-to-nose with Vilenov. Carre’s expression underwent a complete transformation, from lovingly sympathetic to jungle-pissed. The breath hissed between his teeth as he fought to retain his professionalism. “One question,” he said icily. “Just what the fuck was going on before we blew in here?” Vilenov winced. Beasely twisted harder. “Nothing, sir,” Vilenov gasped. “Oh, please . . . nothing! We were talking about boats!” His whole face became contorted. “We were talking about whales, for Christ’s sake!” Slowly the blood drained from Carre’s face. When he turned back around, Marilyn Purly was slumped in the kitchen doorway, shivering; a wounded doe in headlights. “Ms. Purly,” he said crisply, “I’d like to use your phone, if I may.” Without waiting for a reply, he picked up the receiver and dialed Pacific Division. Carre stood facing the wall for a few minutes, his jaw hanging. At last he looked straight up and shook his head in disbelief. He nodded at Beasely. Beasely cruelly jammed the suspect’s arm while whipping out a pair of handcuffs. Vilenov cried out and dropped to his knees. Beasely slapped on the cuffs even as a trio of officers dragged the man back to his feet. “Now pay real close attention,” Beasely snarled, his lips right up against Vilenov’s ear. “I’m gonna introduce you to Miranda. Oh, I just know you’re gonna love meeting her, prick, because we’ve all seen how interested you are in rights. First off, you’ve got the right to remain silent. But I’ve got the right to make you squeal like a pig.” Beasely twisted even harder as he shouldered him out the door. Vilenov, protesting all the way, was bullied through a scattering fence of tenants. Carre turned to face the kitchen doorway. Even bundled in her floppy terrycloth muumuu, 6

Purly Freak Marilyn Purly was the classic damsel in distress, reanimating every guilty fantasy he’d died through since that first interview just outside the black little room. “My work is done here,” he said softly. “An officer will arrive shortly to help you get everything sorted out and back to normal. Because of certain inconsistencies, Ms. Purly, I’m requested to assign a crew of specialists. They’ll be gathering evidence for a very short while, and I promise you the absolute minimum of inconvenience. It’s just that something doesn’t make sense here.” He ran out of words. Carre dropped back his head and blew out a sigh. “Have a nice day,” he whispered, “Mary Jayne,” and turned on his heel.

In the apartment directly above, three men were stationed before a long folding table. On this table rested a daisy chain of patched boxes, a computer keyboard, and a large video monitor. The man in charge was seated, his two partners standing close behind his chair. The men were watching the real-time image of Purly sitting topless on the couch, apparently in a trance. “She looks gone,” said the seated man. “Jesus,” whispered the man to his right. “Would you get an eyeful of those! Oh, mama!” Sweat was trickling around his collar. He traded a nervous grin with the man on his left. It was terribly hot and stuffy in the small apartment. Windows and drapes were sealed for secrecy’s sake, fan and air conditioner shut down to preserve the integrity of electronic readings. The sitting man wiped sweat from his eyes and leaned closer to the monitor. He watched Purly step offscreen and return to the couch. Almost as if reading his mind, she slowly turned her head to face the camera. The seated man saw what appeared to be a spark of emotional pain. He tapped a finger repeatedly on a key. The image on the monitor zoomed in to feature Purly’s flawless face. He made a quick note on a pad to his right, zoomed the image back to full room. “Oh, Lord,” a voice whispered, as a naked Nicolas Vilenov walked in from the bathroom. Vilenov squeezed between Purly and the coffee table, his back to the camera. The seated man tapped rapidly on the keyboard. A bordered image appeared around the naked man’s left arm. A few more taps, and features within the border enlarged. He returned the image to normal. “Menthol something,” he said. “Mentholatum,” came a voice behind him. “Oh . . . mama!” They watched the man throw his clothes on the table and lather his hands. As he pulled her face forward, the seated man barked, “Davis!” Immediately the man to his left stepped to the window and parted the drapes. He raised his arm and looked back into the room. The two men at the monitor leaned even closer, their heads almost touching. The camera zoomed in, showing only a buttock and most of Purly’s face. Her eyes appeared to be made of glass. “Go!” said the seated man. The man at the window dropped his arm. When the officer below copied his gesture he released the drapes and crept back to the chair. The three men huddled around the monitor expectantly. Daylight burst in on the screen’s left side. The naked man whirled. One hand covered his eyes, the other his genitals. He tripped backward over the coffee table, but didn’t lose his feet. The two crouching men laughed excitedly, pounding on the chair like a couple of drunken lugs watching the Super Bowl. The long days of whispering and tiptoeing were over. Gone were the 7

Purly Freak endless hours in front of a featureless screen, waiting for Purly to turn on a light . . . to do anything. The men saw Carre and Beasely lunge into the picture. Beasely threw a vicious chokehold on the naked man, while Carre stood watching Purly going through the motions; arms embracing an invisible man, head rolling back and forth. They saw Carre bend down, saw his round brown eye look directly into the camera. Carre turned and walked over to an end table, picked up a folded tablecloth, spread it wide and draped it around the nude woman. The surveillance men groaned. “No, Rollin’!” cried one of the crouching men, stamping his foot repeatedly. “You’re covering up the wrong one!” The man beside him giggled. Carre pulled a pair of latex gloves from a fanny pack and tugged them on. He then extracted a plastic bag with a gummed label across its face, held this bag under Purly’s chin, put an arm over her shoulders, and spoke in her ear. Purly obediently leaned forward and spat. Carre sealed the evidence bag and handed it to Beloe. Beloe produced a clipboard. Carre signed, Beloe countersigned. Carre placed the pen in Purly’s cold hand and coached her signature. Beloe took the clipboard and moved out of the picture. Carre helped Purly offscreen into the kitchen. In a minute he reappeared alone. He strode up to the naked man writhing in Beasely’s grip. Carre snarled something and stepped back. The man was forced to put on his clothes, even as Beasely maintained his chokehold. Beasely twisted the man’s arm until he lashed back his head to meet his tormentor’s eyes, but Beasely, muttering rapidly, kept his cheek pressed right up against his ear. Carre looked to the kitchen and spoke a few words, then stepped to the end table, hesitated. He turned to glare at the suspect. A black cloud passed over the restrained man’s expression. His eyes swept all around the room, out the apartment’s doorway and back inside. For just a second they seemed to look straight into the camera’s lens. All three surveillance men shuddered involuntarily. Carre, facing away from the camera, dialed a number and spoke to the wall. He replaced the receiver, stared hard at the ceiling and shook his head incredulously. He looked to his left and nodded. Vincent Beasely savagely twisted Vilenov’s arm while whipping out handcuffs. Vilenov went straight down. Three officers swarmed onscreen and roughly hauled him to his feet. The knot of prisoner and officers moved offscreen into the wall of light. Roland Carre stepped out of the picture. “Okay,” said the seated man. “Show’s over.” With nervous exchanges, the two standing agents signed out on a clipboard and went jostling outside. The man in the chair tweaked the monitor’s image, made a number of observations on the legal pad by his elbow. But his eyes never left the screen.

8

Chapter Two Abram The man staring through the observation window was standing so still he might have been a cardboard cutout. The shatterproof glass of this window, as broad as the corridor’s facing wall, permitted booking officers, as well as lockdown officers, to make out every detail in the boxcarshaped visitation room. Inside were a steel table and bench, a pay phone, and a smallish, dark-haired man in Levis, loafers, and light blue long-sleeved shirt. He was sitting perfectly still with his forearms resting on his knees, deep in thought. Lawrence Abram’s eyes narrowed. The prisoner pretty much matched the impression he’d given over the phone; a contentious, physically and morally repellent character in his upper thirties, of East European descent. Even in half-profile there was something disturbing about the eyes. “All right,” Abram said softly. “I’m ready.” The guard stepped around him and unlocked the door. Nicolas Vilenov didn’t jump up as the famous defense attorney entered the room, didn’t gush with greeting and gratitude. His expression remained a spiteful scowl, but those peculiar eyes became quite focused. Abram felt an instinctive contempt for the man. It was the hardest thing in the world to recover his trademark geniality, but he smiled and extended a hand. The diamond winked on his pinky, the Rolex peeped from a silk sleeve. Vilenov offered a limp hand. At its touch the sense of contempt came back a hundredfold. Abram was aware of a real sense of anger and resentment. Unbidden, an all but forgotten word returned to him. Incubus, he thought, and released the hand. There was an unpleasant pause. Abram said, “Mr. Vilenov, when my secretary accepted your sole allotted phone call, her first inclination was to put you on what we call ‘the elevator.’ The elevator places a caller on hold for eternity, while canned Muzak dumbs him into the ozone. Eventually he’s so anaesthetized by insipid recorded garbage he forgets his imaginary dragon and returns to the couch whence he came. However, Dottie said there was ‘something’ in your voice. I’ve worked with her for seventeen years, 9

Abram Freak and have come to trust her like a lover. Now, I don’t generally conduct business on the strength of a call divulging a public storage locker’s combination, but it was a relatively slow day, the locker’s location was very near my office, and curiosity got the better of me. Or,” he said, trying the light touch, “maybe there was ‘something’ in your voice.” Vilenov glared. “At any rate,” Abram went on uncomfortably, “I discovered the locker did indeed hold sufficient cash—and then some—to retain my services. After removing a sample from the site, I reorganized my schedule around this interview but, because of ethical concerns, undertook a number of preliminary checks. The thoroughness of my investigation will explain, in part, why I’ve arrived so late in the day. In the first place, the money turned out to be unmarked.” “It’s all clean,” Vilenov muttered. “Save your energy.” Abram popped open his briefcase. Resting on parallel stacks of loose pages was a paperclipped fan of bills, ranging from tens on the left to hundreds on the right, like a hand of cards. The bills were not new or well kept. “Here’s your money, Mr. Vilenov. I want you to be aware from the outset that your property is in order.” Vilenov didn’t bother to look. “It’s yours, man. That, and all you can spend. I’m prepared to make you a very rich man, Mr. Abram, just as soon as you get the job done.” “And that job is?” “To spring me immediately, and to clear me of any and all charges.” Abram watched a prisoner being processed. “That’s pretty cut and dry.” After a minute he said, still staring out the wide window, “You, sir, are at this point what is known as a cipher. There’s no law against possessing so much cash, but it certainly doesn’t make your case look less suspect.” He turned back. “We don’t even have an address on you. Were you living under a bridge?” “I use hotels, and I always pay in cash. Is that okay with you? Is there any law saying a man has to have a permanent address?” “None whatsoever. I’m just trying to learn what I can about a prospective client. If we’re going to work together, I think it would be a good idea for us to be on the same side.” Abram clasped his hands behind his back and again looked outside. “After I visited your locker I headed back to my office and got busy on the phone. Finding information about you was like looking for water in the Mojave. According to every indication you are unemployed, do not file tax returns, and have not hit the lottery. Believe me, if you had a traceable real income the I.R.S. would know all about you. So unless you’re a very successful bank robber, a gun runner or dope dealer, I’m stumped. Have you been stashing money in a mattress all your life for just this eventuality? Have you found buried treasure? You’ll forgive my prying, but it’s not a matter of idle curiosity. I command high figures in my practice, and my clients are, as a rule, most accountable in their finances. But you, sir, as I said, are a cipher. An independently wealthy individual for whom a fairly thorough records check reveals no birth certificate, no social security number, no medical history, no rap sheet . . . the only documentation of your existence is a newly confiscated California ID card, demonstrated through a simple check with the DMV to be a quality street forgery.” Abram paused as Vilenov hawked and spat on the floor. The attorney scowled. “Excuse me, but I never got a spoken pronunciation, just Dottie’s scribble. Is it Vile, or something closer to Villain?” The prisoner’s stare was so hard Abram had to look away. “My name is Nicolas Vilenov. Vilen-ahv, if that pleases you. Or, better: V’len-of. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it quick enough. “And as to my money, chew on this: I inherited it from my father, a Romanian immigrant who passed away in California. I am hiring you, the famous Mr. Lawrence Abram, to represent me in what has the potential to become, in my life, an absolute catastrophe. What part of the above escapes 10

Abram Freak you?” “There isn’t a whole lot about you that doesn’t escape me. But you yourself, Mr. Vilenov, have missed quite a bit.” Abram exhibited an erect forefinger. “Allow me to delineate the sequence of events leading to your present incarceration. “First off, it seems that a number of weeks ago the landlady of Ms. Purly’s building, a Helga Scarboro, became highly suspicious of your dealings with her tenant.” Vilenov rolled his neck, leaned back down, stared at the floor. “I know the witch,” he muttered. “Yes. Apparently she had an ongoing altercation with you, adamantly claiming you had drugged and raped her tenant, a beautiful and helpless young woman with a history of violent selfabuse. This landlady’s defense of her lodger is undoubtedly selfish: Marilyn Purly’s tenancy is subsidized through monthly Social Security Insurance checks, direct-deposited into Scarboro’s account and guaranteed in perpetuity so long as Purly remains unable to provide for herself. At any rate, Scarboro got the rest of her boarders into a group and had them sign a petition claiming you were making a practice of taking the Purly woman against her will. Even though Purly at first refused to go along, Scarboro photocopied the petition and began circulating it throughout the neighborhood, to the media, to her congressman. She badgered Pacific Division to no end, and finally the division commander assigned a team to place you under surveillance. Over the course of the next two weeks you were tailed and photographed extensively. There are photos of you checking into various hotels for the night, dining alone, walking on the beach. If you boarded a bus, a man was dispatched to board at a stop farther on to continue the surveillance. You were followed wherever you went. And there are photographs of you paying visits to the homes of no less than eleven different women over those two weeks. All these women fit what Pacific’s men colloquially define as ‘drop-dead gorgeous.’ Yet, strange to say, none are married or romantically involved. They live quiet, lonesome lives, hold unglamorous jobs. They’re spinsters, before their time. All were interviewed by detectives, and not one had any recollection of a male visitor, but, upon viewing full-face surveillance photographs, each reacted with high emotion, in a manner the detectives described as expressing a range from repugnance to horror. Upon viewing shots of your entering or exiting their premises, these women, as a rule, went right into hysterics.” Vilenov shook his head slowly, looking more bored than offended. “Having gained these ladies’ permission,” Abram went on, “their places of residence were forensically sampled. And it was determined, as in the case of Ms. Purly’s apartment, that these residences were all littered with semen deposits, foreign hairs, fingerprints, tracks—you name it. Somebody, whether the good ladies knew it or not, had been very busy. “The inconclusiveness and rising hysteria—there were two nervous breakdowns right in Pacific Division—prompted a videotaping of Ms. Purly’s apartment. After much cajoling from her landlady, Purly agreed to go along with the setup; to be the bait, if you will. A police technician disguised as a television repairman rewired Purly’s VCR and implanted a camera, its lens positioned behind the remote control sensor’s window. Surveillance equipment was tapped into the unit’s coaxial cable, and the apartment was observed, and videotaped, from the vacated apartment directly above. Abram observed Vilenov narrowly. “The surveillance crew captured on videotape someone, who certainly appears to be you, receiving fellatio from Marilyn Jayne Purly. Purly maintains zero recollection of the event.” He raised a hand. “One of the members of this surveillance crew is trained to observe individuals for signs of intoxication, mental retardation, or any inability to respond defensively. It was this man’s professional opinion that Purly was totally out of it, and incapable of 11

Abram Freak self-will. He had a man give the go-ahead to officers below. These agents then burst in and found . . . nothing.” “She unlocked the door,” Vilenov snarled. “The bitch set me up!” For some reason Vilenov’s display of rancor created an abrupt mood shift. Abram’s expression twisted nastily, his intended word of caution erupting as a bark bordering on assault. “Please, Mr. Vilenov! Save your whining accusations for therapy!” Abram just as quickly apprehended himself, and after a hard half-minute continued with forced civility, “Besides, if anybody has some explaining to do it’s the commander at Pacific, who, uncharacteristically, didn’t have the self-control to pull out at the climax, so to speak.” He removed his glasses from a vest pocket and consulted his notebook. “Roland Carre, senior officer at the scene, told the commander over Purly’s phone that the premises were clear of any overt criminal activity—informed him, in essence, that two weeks of surveillance and setup were a bust, that the claimants’ reports were a lot of hooey, that the monitoring specialists were all full of it, and that every man involved in the investigation, himself included, was an amateurish paranoiac in an expensive parade of fools.” Abram returned the glasses to his vest. “This might have been a bit much to swallow at one sitting. At any rate, Carre was reamed over the phone; was told to clean the crap out of his eyes and make the arrest, was told if he wanted to keep his job he’d better get busy and gather every scrap of evidence he could get his incompetent little hands on. Carre immediately assigned a team to the site, and that team was striking gold long before Dottie got your call. “Oh, and one other thing: “Purly earlier agreed to help collect a semen sample. At Parker Center that sample now awaits comparison with samples taken from the eleven sites aforementioned. The Purly sample was seized in conjunction with an affidavit—signed on the scene by Purly, a forensic man, and Carre . . . although not a one professes any recollection of so doing.” “Bitch!” In the corridor a cuffed prisoner whirled on his transporting officer. The two went down biting and kicking, quickly swarmed by deputies. Abram stepped to the window and watched, strangely excited. When he turned back to Vilenov his eyes were burning. “Therein lies the rub. My investigation took me promptly to the District Attorney’s office, where I went over a copy of the videotape with Mr. Prentis, and discussed the details of your capture and the lack of pertinent records. The DA, Mr. Vilenov, simply has no eyewitness corroboration to any of this. Nothing is conclusive here. Tests for room toxicity were taken immediately. A whiskey bottle and an open jar of ointment were seized, along with an array of smut books and exactly three hundred and seventy dollars in loose cash. The contents of the refrigerator and medicine cabinet, water from the tap . . . even the air was sampled. Results so far, to the best of my knowledge, are all negative, and the discrepancy between visual and video remains a mystery.” He looked down his nose. “Item: you were filmed by the security camera at Barry’s Liquor half an hour prior to the raid. The tape shows you in a transaction with the clerk involving liquor, magazines, and what looks like most of the drawer. The owner calls Santa Monica police saying he’s been robbed by the clerk, who claims no memory of you or the incident.” Abram shrugged. “Ms. Purly’s apartment was quickly cordoned off for further analysis, leaving only a narrow corridor connecting rooms, so that she could continue living there as compensation for her assistance in this investigation. She reportedly made a beeline for her very black bedroom immediately upon Carre’s departure, and there remains barricaded, quiet as a mouse. My personal impression is that Marilyn Jayne Purly is an incorrigibly disturbed woman.” “Abram,” Vilenov said with a throwaway glance, “her distress is only beginning.” 12

Abram Freak “How so?” The prisoner stood up, sat right back down. He shook his head in frustration. “Just get me out of here, okay? And take all the money you need. You and your good buddy the DA can split it down the middle for all I care.” Abram squared his shoulders. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” He took a deep breath and unclenched his fists. “Mr. Vilenov, I don’t have the power to arbitrarily orchestrate your release. And as for the DA being my friend, well, that doesn’t make him some kind of crony.” Vilenov rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Strikes me as sort of funny that a defense lawyer and a district attorney should be so buddy-buddy, that’s all.” Again he spat on the floor. “Your manners aren’t exactly winning me over, either.” Vilenov shrugged. Abram tapped his nails on the table. “Look, we weren’t always so close. Or maybe we were too close. You’re aware of my work as a prosecutor?” “But money talks, huh, Mr. ex-Prosecutor?” Abram glared. “With lucidity,” he said softly. Vilenov rose and began to pace, but halted after only a few steps. With his head down and his fists stuffed in his pockets, he addressed Abram as though the attorney were a child. “Now don’t you worry about your precious fee, Mr. Abram. That locker holds just a pinch. I’ve got cash stashed all over this city, and I can get more any time I feel like it. Lovely, lovely money. More than you can spend, more than you can count, more pretty green paper than you’ve ever even dreamed of caressing.” “Really! You’ve certainly got my undivided attention now, Mr. Vilenov. I’m intrigued.” “So you just get my ass out of here, now, and later on you and I’ll walk hand in hand into court, and you can flash that famous Lawrence Abram smile. We’re going to need it. I’m telling you, man, this is only the tip of the iceberg. You’re going to be hearing from a slew of . . . ex-girlfriends.” “And why, Mr. Vilenov, would all these women wait so long?” “Be-cause, Mr. Abram, an individual, in the flesh, can produce certain . . . effects . . . that can’t be generated by a simple two-dimensional representation.” Abram raised an eyebrow. “Are you hinting you’ve been threatening women, and that these women will only identify you in person? Meaning, in custody?” “No! You don’t understand; it’s way more complicated than that. They can only identify me when I’m not around them.” Vilenov cocked his head, affronted. “You know what, Abram? I’m not really sure I approve of your tone. ‘Threatening women,’ indeed. What’s that supposed to mean, dude? Like, I can’t get my way without resorting to intimidation or something?” He smiled vaguely. “Good-looking women are just fruit on my tree. They’re plums for the plucking, Abram, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m one hell of a plucker.” Abram was speechless, his expression uglier than he knew. His appreciation of propriety, in this one short half hour, had been violated in ways that should have filled a lifetime. In the thundering silence he whispered, with barely contained venom, “I’m sure Marilyn Purly, if she had a voice in the matter, would be first to agree.” Vilenov exploded. “Just get me out of here! All right? Get me out, get me out, get me out! You’re pissing me off, man! Use your connections, use your charm. Use my money. Just get on with it!” Abram raised a warning forefinger. “Use your money?” But halfway to Vilenov’s nose the gesture was preempted. His arm fell to his side, dead from the elbow down. Abram forced a few deep breaths, suddenly clammy in his armpits and crotch. When he spoke again his tone was borderline13

Abram Freak conciliatory. “What you don’t understand, Mr. Vilenov, is that my reputation was gained over many years of playing by the book. I earned my stripes through hard work, not through hard cash. And I’m no simple bail bondsman. As I’ve been trying to explain, my investigation included a lengthy dialogue with the District Attorney, who is, understandably, in no great hurry to see you back on the street.” “I know all about your big bad childhood pal Nelson Prentis,” Vilenov said sourly. “Dueling comrades, battling buddies. Right now I’m the wrong cat to lay that Butch and Sundance bullshit on; your relationship has been the movie of the week for too many years to count. So do me a favor, man. Don’t rewind the same old reel.” That really stung; you could call Abram every name in the book, but no one could demean his family or friends. Vilenov was playing with fire here. Although he was still able to comport himself in a manner generations above Vilenov’s level, the attorney’s calling-out retort came like the snap of a whip. “Apparently, pal, you’ve got one hell of a lot to learn about—” “Just get me out of here! Okay? Because you’re really starting to bug me, man. Get me out now, Abram! Not tomorrow. Not fifteen minutes from now. Now! Look, I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. I’m paying you, for Christ’s sake!” “Everything isn’t about money! People in this country can’t just buy their way out of legal problems, regardless of what you may have seen in the movies. The I.N.S. is going to want a crack at you, because from the look of things there’s absolutely nothing to show you’re in this country legally. Various departments of health are going to be interested in you, sir. Are you H.I.V. positive? Are you a vector? Mr. Vilenov, there are sexual predation claims of an egregious nature to investigate. What kind of system would just casually release such a suspect? Also, there’s a great deal of cash to be accounted for. I haven’t told a soul, mind you, but I’ll guarantee you the ball is already in motion. Detective work has a way of discovering bits and pieces, both peripherally and by extrapolation, about even the most discreet individual. A person in your position, Mr. Vilenov—if that truly is your name—has to go through channels, has to jump through hoops . . . and has to wait. I’m telling you right now, there’s just no way in hell you’re going to get out of here without first running a very tight legal gauntlet, no matter who’s representing you. Not even if you’ve got a pass from God Almighty.” Vilenov looked around the room and smiled cockily. “Look, I can walk out any time I want, so don’t patronize me. And quit trying to spook me with all your legal mumbo-jumbo. People do what I want—always have, always will. And they always remember me in a positive light, no matter what went down. That’s if I want them to remember me at all. I can move men, Mr. Abram, and I can make women. I can do any bitch I please; upright, on all fours, or spreadeagled, and I can make her perform just the way I like.” He let his head fall, and in that instant Abram thought he saw the man’s eyes blaze with a frustration beyond words. He waited. At last Vilenov mumbled, “It’s a gift.” A thought struck him and he looked back up. “You’re a bright boy, Abram. What do you know about pheromones?” “What’s that got to do with anything?” “It’s got everything to do with everything.” The attorney cocked his head and squinted at a tiny smudge on the ceiling. “Biochemistry,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Hormones that induce same-species reactions. Very subtle. Glandular emanations, traceable in sweat, urine, breath.” He waved a hand irritably. “Chemistry was not my strong suit.” “Too bad. You might have learned something.” Abram scowled. “Been spreading your musk around town, have you? Well . . . guess what: I 14

Abram Freak didn’t sleep all the way through classes. No microscopic secretion can produce a direct physical reaction. Your imagination’s running away with you.” “My imagination is firmly ensconced in reality, Abram. I’m not talking about secretions; that’s crowd stuff. I’m talking about a focalized force, an adaptive influence established in maybe one in a billion people.” “Keep dreaming.” “It’s no fantasy. All I need is eye contact, and this whole silly-ass species will carry out my blackest wishes without hesitation . . . even without my bidding. I can make anybody eat right out of my hand. And I can do it with or without your fancy reputation.” “You don’t say! Now I’m really intrigued!” Abram rapped on the wall. “But before you unleash your fabulous dark legions, just how do you propose to effect this awesome escape? Melt the walls? Break through bulletproof glass? Or is Scotty above us somewhere, all set to beam you up?” “No, funny man. Like I said, I can walk out.” “Of course you can. So the next logical question would have to be: what are you waiting for? And why do you need me?” “Because, Mr. Abram,” Vilenov said exasperatedly, “there are now full-face photographs in the DA’s possession, and forensic samples in Parker Center. I need to get my hands on those samples fast, before a real case can be built against me. And the last thing I need is my picture all over the evening news. So it behooves me to make a legal exit; I don’t want to skip out of here as the bogeyman. Now, you’re going to arrange my immediate release. And if my face gets on TV you’re going to stand behind me, and sue the goddamned media if you have to. Then you’re going to work to clear my name so that I may walk around a free man again.” “Mr. Vilenov . . . should I choose to represent you I will, at the minimum, guarantee you that in less than seventy-two hours you will be a ‘free man’ again. And, if you’re really all that camerashy—” “I don’t have seventy-two hours!” “Sir! Please! You cannot be held forever! You are incarcerated under hearsay. You are here solely because the investigation’s commanding officer authorized your arrest over the phone on the word of a surveillance specialist, who determined, via an electronic medium, that you were committing rape. And the man saddled with the job of resolving this quagmire already knows he hasn’t got a leg to stand on.” “Your buddy. Nelson Prentis.” “My counterpart. The District Attorney. Mr. Prentis is aware you’ve been placed behind bars without cause, and realizes your release is imminent. As I keep trying to explain, you are, right now, being held for a variety of ulterior reasons—a murky mess which can and will be cleared by patience and application.” He glanced at his watch. “Mr. Vilenov, the DA is the county’s top prosecutor, and I am, if I may be so bold, the county’s top defense attorney. In any case built against you the burden will be on the prosecution, not the defense. So relax. I’m going to work this out with Mr. Prentis, I promise you.” Vilenov sneered, nastily and pugnaciously. “You guys just leave me a few bucks for cab fare, all right?” His eyes glinted. For a moment Lawrence Abram saw red. When his mind had cleared he said, quietly, “I think this interview’s gone on just about long enough.” Vilenov nodded. “Me too.” He looked directly into Abram’s eyes and the attorney almost fainted. “So this is what’s going to happen, Abram. You’re going to accept my generous cash offer, and you’re going to attain my immediate release. You will represent me in this matter so that I am 15

Abram Freak quickly cleared of any and all charges, and so that my name and face are not open to public censure. I will be able to move about freely. You are going to begin preparing my case, pronto. And that means all your other clients can just go to hell. You’ll get your facts, and you’ll do your interviews, and you’ll make my defense rock-solid. You’ll get on the tube and let everybody know that these claims are all bullshit, man, pure bullshit. You’re going to profess my innocence. Right? You are about to devote every ounce of your time, talent, and energy to making me look good. If your pal the DA gets on my back, you’re gonna jump right in his face. I’m your buddy now!” Vilenov rolled the tension from his neck while Abram fried. “So you’ll be smart. But you’ll play dumb if you have to. You won’t have enough good things to say about me, Larry. Additionally, I am authorizing you to pull from that locker whatever funds you deem necessary. Okay? Necessary is the operative word here. My money is for my defense—not for your leisure. So you just keep your fat sticky lawyerly hands clean! Don’t test me on this, man; don’t even think about it. You’ve been warned. Should the locker’s working capital become exhausted I will direct you to another site. But understand this: you are working for me. After this is all over you won’t have to like me, or care if I live or die. But for right now you and I are, as you so succinctly put it, ‘on the same side.’ Got it?” With those final two syllables Abram felt his back slammed against the cold brick wall. His hands found the table’s edge and gradually pulled him forward. He swayed before the prisoner, sweat rolling down his face. Vilenov studied him dispassionately for a while. Finally he drooped his head between his knees and spat. “Now go on, legal boy. Pull some strings. Call your chummy-ass pal and get me the hell out of here.” While Vilenov’s head was lowered Abram slammed shut his eyes and turned his back on the man. “Pluck you!” he snarled, and before the wave of primitive fury could drag him under cried, “Guard!” The door instantly swung inward. Vilenov was seized and led cursing from the room. Abram steadied himself against the stainless steel table, waiting for the stampede of savage emotions to subside. He would not reopen his eyes. Clenching his teeth, he slapped his palms against the wall, felt his way to the pay phone, and began fishing through his pockets for change.

The swaggering deputy made a point of banging the gate as he entered the cell house, all set to show the loudmouthed prisoner just who was who. In this particularly virile profession, this particularly short, skinny, and pigeon-breasted deputy boldly bore, in addition to his unimposing physical stature, the compound curse of a freckly face, buck teeth, jug ears, and overall cherubic expression. His compensatory scowl and blustering manner only worked against him, so he scowled a little deeper, stomped a little harder. “Hey you, now just you chill out in there! Now, I mean it. You got me? You just stop all that darned hollering, buddy, or you’re gonna wind up with something to really holler about!” Vilenov glared through the bars, and the deputy mellowed at once. Three other prisoners in the cell house—two bald, heavy-set, highly tattooed Latino gang members and a burly, bearded bar fighter—sat quietly on a stainless steel bench against the wall. “Why am I still in here?” Vilenov demanded. “Where’s my attorney? Where’s Lawrence Abram?” “I’m . . . not sure, sir.” 16

Abram Freak “Well . . . go find out!” The deputy rang out the gate and reappeared in ten minutes. Vilenov was pacing the cell house, in and out of the wide-open individual cells. The moment the gate was open he stopped pacing and gored the deputy with his eyes. “Sir, you’ve,” the little deputy stammered, “sir, you’ve been ordered held indefinitely, sir. Sir, there’s no sign of Mr. Abram, sir.” He stood slouched at an angle, perspiring heavily and sniffling. Once Vilenov had renewed his pacing the deputy slunk back out, gently shutting the gate behind him. After a while Vilenov turned to meet his three cellmates’ eyes. As if cued, they slid down the bench, pressed tightly together. Vilenov sat on the vacated space, rested his chin on his locked hands, and began to think.

17

Chapter Three Prentis Abram was all-in by the time he made it home Sunday night. The family had spent the weekend in a very pricey Big Bear lakeside cabin: Abram, a drunken bundle of post-interview nerves, had recklessly outbid a group of contractors over the Internet. The isolation and gorgeous view did little to placate him; all over that weekend he was plagued by inexplicable feelings of persecution, by bouts of anger, by creeping malaise. But once in the womb of family, he hadn’t touched a drop. Traffic on the long drive back had moved at a crawl, the 405 coming out of the Valley being socked in, predictably, clear to Sunset. Compounding Abram’s misery were his wife’s on-again, offagain headaches, Archie the golden Lab’s delayed reaction to a tentative roadkill snack, and the kids’ insistence on playing ad nauseam a newly released cutesy pop CD. So his first move home was to head for the basement office, where he pulled a Tupperware thermos and chilled glass from the little Post-it-peppered refrigerator. In the thermos was pre-mixed Piña Colada, his self-prescribed sedative and sole mood enhancer. He automatically rewound his answering machine; Abram got a lot of calls even on weekends and holidays. The first message was a request from Nelson Prentis for a call back. Abram fast forwarded. The requests became increasingly urgent. When he felt somewhat relaxed he set down his glass and dialed the DA’s home phone. The anxious voice broke in halfway through the first ring. “Larry?” “I got your messages, Nelson. All of ’em.” “Where in Christ have you been? Our man’s escaped from the del Rey substation.” Abram sighed explosively. For a moment his skull was socked in by cement. He pushed himself forward in his chair and very steadily drained his glass. Though hairs were standing on the 18

Prentis Freak back of his neck, his voice was nonchalant. “Well, well. I’ll be damned. How did he do it?” Every aspect of his attention was now focused solely on his right eardrum. “That’s what I want to know, that’s what everybody wants to know. Damn you, Larry, that’s what I’ve been calling all weekend for!” Prentis matched his friend’s sigh. “Out with it! What happened during your little in-house interview?” Abram tried to let go. But how to describe that extraordinary meeting and still come off as a rational observer . . . and just why in hell should it be anybody else’s business, anyway? He was aware of a real resentment, of a spark of rage, even—but Prentis was his best friend; they’d always shared information. Abram shivered as if a cup of ice water had just been poured down his back. Being evasive would only arouse suspicion. Tell the man what he wants to know, and nothing else. Tread lightly and spin well. Abram pressed his lips against the mouthpiece, details of the interview becoming increasingly fuzzy as he spoke. Gradually his voice took on the tenor of a monotone. And the farther he allowed his mind to drift, the drier that monotone grew. “Well . . . I spoke with him a while, tried to get some background. He’s a really decent guy, Nellie; good sense of humor, easy to talk to. We chatted a bit about the Angels and Dodgers, just to loosen up, but he kept going back to his feelings about the poor and homeless in Venice, and how he’d like to make a real difference, if only he could. He even recited some of his quasi-utopian poetry for me; nothing groundbreaking, but definitely heartfelt. There’s a real optimist in there, buddy. Anyhow, I’ve accepted his offer of a cash retainer, so as soon as he’s back in custody I’ll be representing him.” “About that cash—” Abram sat bolt-upright. “I haven’t spent it, haven’t banked it, haven’t touched it! Okay? And I’m not about to divulge its whereabouts. Mr. Vilenov told me he was feeling particularly harassed, and needed someone he could trust.” He wiped his brow with a sleeve. “Anyway, I can tell you it’s unmarked, and in all denominations.” “Now hold on a minute, Larry. When you called me on Friday you were all over the place. Remember? You kept yapping about how urgent it was to clear this guy, and we never did get around to the money’s origins. You wanted me to understand what a nice guy he was, and how very important it was that he be released immediately. Jesus. You begged me to talk to the Chief, then to go to the mayor. You even asked me to lean on the station. You worked in every argument you knew before appealing directly, and shamelessly, to the strength of our friendship. What a daft speech.” Abram could almost feel Prentis shaking his head with amusement. “You must’ve been drunk off your ass, buddy.” With the sudden relaxation in tension Abram’s entire body crashed, leaving him limp and spent in his chair. He tried to jog his memory. It was like poking a bruise. “I . . . I don’t remember a whole lot about that conversation, Nellie. Just you getting hot.” “Don’t call me like that at the office again, period. Enough said. So. Where did you go after you hung up?” “I had to get away, Nelson, and fast. Don’t ask me why. You know the family does Big Bear twice a year. I decided to make it three times this year.” “Okay, my friend. That gap is filled. Now for the sixty-four thousand dollar question—and same as always: totally off the record. I’ll concede to keeping the money’s whereabouts your little secret. Just tell me, Larry. Tell me. How does some guy off the street, with no social security card and no visible means of support, acquire the cash to hire one of the county’s top defense attorneys? Come on, already. Give.” Abram’s features twitched and his voice again waxed monotonic. His eyes slowly glazed while his mind dealt out words and images in real time. His flat, nearly unbroken speech was occasionally 19

Prentis Freak punctuated by increasingly skeptical “Mm-hmm!”s from his friend. “Said it was his father’s legacy. Apparently papa didn’t trust banks. The old man was a local salvager and handyman who humped like a dog day and night, saving all he could. He stashed this cash away for over twenty years, working himself right into the grave in the process. Told the boy its location on his deathbed. Ever since, Mr. Vilenov’s lived frugally in the South Bay, eking out his means by sleeping on the beach and accepting a meal every now and then at St. John’s. He works off and on, sweeping up and such, for small cash, but he’s never had bona fide, gainful employment. He also scavenges for cans and bottles around the Marina, making a few bucks a day. Let’s see now . . . what else? Well, he likes Jesus and small animals, sailboats and roller skates. Never married, no dependents. He was totally in the dark about the Purly incident, and blushed like a schoolgirl when I explained the charges in depth. “It seems Purly took pity on him one day, when she found him shivering in his old sleeping bag on the beach. She hired him, out of kindness, to do small jobs around her apartment, and let him use her shower once a week. She cooked his meals, sewed up his tattered old jeans. It gave her purpose, Nelson. Eventually a friendship grew around their common needs, though it never progressed beyond the platonic. He’s way too shy. All the same, he feels very protective toward her.” There was a long pause. Abram tapped on the mouthpiece, wondering if the line was dead. “Larry,” came the DA’s careful voice. “You and I are not talking about the same guy here.” “I interviewed him, Nelson. Not you.” “So you did. But the man I’m discussing is a fugitive, has been filmed receiving fellatio from a completely confused woman, and has, on looks alone, launched a reign of terror among the South Bay’s female population.” Abram whistled softly and pulled at his drink. Ron Rico rum, light. Very tropical, very soothing. “That’s some pretty tough stuff, Nelson. Sure he’s a fugitive. But the real issue here is station security, right? You yourself said you don’t have the slightest. If I’d been jailed without cause proper, and I was scared, and somebody left the gate open, well . . . I might walk too. I don’t know.” “He’s still a fugitive. And there were a total of six other prisoners detained at the time of his disappearance, none nearly as charming as you make your boy out to be. For some reason they’re all still in custody.” “And how do these gentlemen account for Mr. Vilenov’s absence?” “They can’t. They don’t have the foggiest.” Abram snorted. “So there you go. They don’t know, you don’t know, I don’t know. What do you want from me?” “A little insight, Larry. For instance, there’s the very graphic video evidence of a man suspected of being a serial rapist, caught on camera in the act of sodomizing a woman—” “Marilyn Purly is not a witness to anything! She’s a total space case. And the taped evidence we went over prior to my interview with Mr. Vilenov is inadmissible and wholly inconclusive, and you know it. Even were it admissible, how would we establish just whose ugly butt that was? How could we be certain those people on the tape are not actors, and the front room not a set?” “The tape is a live recording, not a dupe. You know that. And why wait until now to bring this up? What’s happening to you, man?” “Nelson, this whole thing is bogus! What proof can you offer that a pre-recorded tape wasn’t inserted and its signal exported to your surveillance equipment?” Abram’s smile was pugilistic. “Nelson, old buddy, old pal o’ mine, how in the world do you plan to elicit testimony from a site where all who were present can’t remember a thing?” “Ah, Jesus.” 20

Prentis Freak “Give me a break, Mr. Prosecutor. You don’t usually reach like this. Oh—and what was that other little thing? A panic in the city? Vilenov runs amok?” Abram could hear the DA’s fingertips drumming on his broad oak desk. “Let me guess, Larry. A couple of ’Coladas?” “Just the one,” Abram said, reaching for the thermos. “Make that two. It’s still the weekend.” He filled his glass. “But seriously, what were you saying about a scare?” “Haven’t you turned on the TV? Can’t you find a newspaper rack?” “Like I told you, I’ve been camping.” “Okay then. Let me fill you in. After Vilenov escaped, every man at that station was disemboweled, yet not one claimed to have a clue. They’ve all been relieved, and an interim crew set up in their place. Right off the bat that turned out to be a bad idea; the new man in charge didn’t handle the transition at all well. He allowed shit to slip through that the regulars at del Rey would never let get by. That station’s solid, and proud of it. And even as this new man’s busy tucking in butts, a bunch of innocuous little events are turning the mess into a disaster. “Seems this fellow tenant of Purly’s, a Frederick Mars, called Channel 5 on the day of Vilenov’s arrest. He felt your prospective client was getting a raw deal by being set up. Mars was the sole holdout in that tenants’ committee I told you about. An intern at Channel 5, one Miss Chica Hernandez, took Mars’s phone call and got her hands on the station’s copy of the committee’s petition. Smelling a story, she starts making phone calls.” “So what did Mars see that made him—” “Wait. It gets better. Turns out Chica’s boyfriend is a junior deputy temping at the Marina substation, and this deputy leaks that there’s a shakeup because of an escape. He only knows it was some spooky guy brought into custody that day, but Chica puts two and two together, and drives out to see her boyfriend on his break. Here the details get a bit fuzzy, but it’s certain that intrepid little Chica somehow got a look at Vilenov’s mug shot, popped a camera out of her purse during a distraction, and sashayed into 5’s studio with a full-face snapshot of Vilenov. The station ran the shot with a byline by Chica herself on the six o’clock, and by six-fifteen the station was so inundated with phone calls they had to bring in extra operators. “It turns out that Vilenov, Larry, is no stranger to a whole lot of people, nearly all of them women. By seven o’clock every TV station, every radio talk show, and every newspaper was fielding reports of past abuses. The L.A. media are absolutely infatuated with the man who’s come to be known as ‘The Houdini-rapist’.” Abram picked up his TV’s remote unit, switched on the set and hit the mute button. Immediately the ice-cold visage of Nicolas Vilenov slammed him back in his chair. It was like taking a spike in the forehead. He switched channels. This time a talking head had center stage, and the booking photo was in an upper right-hand corner inset. He tried another channel. Vilenov, full screen. He clicked again. Vilenov. Abram began surfing channels rapidly, and Vilenov’s face became a magic lantern image, animated by his leaping thumb. The screen’s erratic details were incorporated into a jerky blur; all that remained constant were Vilenov’s steady, piercing eyes. Abram hit the off button. Though the screen instantly went dark, two pale gray orbs lingered in the field. The orbs dimmed and passed. “Larry?” “I’m here, Nelson.” “By eight o’clock that evening Purly’s apartment complex is a rubberneck’s Mecca, and everybody who couldn’t make the party is at home glued to the tube; primed, reamed, and ready for the next player in their chain of fascination. Enter the dragon. 21

Prentis Freak “This particular reptile steps on stage as the buildings’ landlady—a great beast of a woman who insists all queries concerning ‘her property’ and ‘her people’ be directed solely to Her. Larry, she’s the security guard from Hell; partitioning the public, eyeballing everybody, demanding credentials. The media love her. She’s got this carnival-like, palm reader quality. A born storyteller. And when she gets on TV—this big fat woman with all the braids and the gestures and the eighteen pounds of junk jewelry—the camera just can’t get enough of her. She starts right off with tales of the macabre; you know the sort: porch bulbs flickering, demonic laughter, black cats arching and hissing, and anybody with ten minutes and a television is mesmerized. Next morning, Saturday, she sets up this big table with a black and gold zodiacal tablecloth, right in front of her apartment by the sidewalk. Suddenly you’d think you were at Woodstock. The nonstop weekend flow is a nightmare for law enforcement, but it’s this landlady’s fifteen minutes, and she knows that so long as she’s on her own property she’s free to make the most of it. She’s a canny one, Larry. Right after this whole big scene broke she was approached with options for T-shirts and mugs and the like, but she knew she had to keep face. So the old fraud claimed she was above making a quick buck, swearing her only object was to exorcize her buildings. Apparently she covertly employed a concessions manager, because that same afternoon her wares were popping up all over the place. And once reporters went after her puppet tenants she jumped right on them. In a jiffy she had them all under her umbrella, making sure they said exactly what she wanted; always passing the ball, always referring to her as ‘Ma’am’. She’s grooming these tenants for the media, Larry. They’re ordinary folks; retirees, college kids, welfare mothers—people who’ve never in their lives imagined so much excitement, and who are all so conditioned, and so camera-shy, they’ll say whatever she wants if it’ll get them out of the spotlight. And once they’ve stammered themselves dry, there’s this great, pregnant silence. The matriarch rises ominously from her extra-large folding steel throne, the sole focus of every lens. Then, speaking to the camera in measured tones, she tells all the rapt little housewives exactly what they want to hear: the Devil is stalking them; an invisible, irresistible, horny as all get-out satyr who’s going to mesmerize them—remove their Christian guilt complexes, if you will—by forcing them to orgasm while their indifferent hubbies are off pursuing silicone secretaries. A sense of infidelity, just like in fantasy, becomes okay if you’re not responsible. It’s all very primal: poor helpless woman raped by nasty monster. And digs it! You know what I’m talking about, buddy? The ‘victim’s’ sexual gratification justified. But where was maritally-celibate, totally inconsiderate husband when Evil Rapist was repeatedly doing oh-so innocent, frantically humping housewife? Who knows? Ask his bimbo secretary.” Abram had to break in. “Nelson, on most days I’d be more than happy to entertain a twisted philosophy based on a daily dose of assaultive scumbags and the women who love them, but—” “But . . . back to our story: Dissatisfied housewives are descending en masse on the landlady’s table, as giddy with the moment as she. Sex is in the air. Local ratings skyrocket. And believe me, it sure doesn’t hurt that this Marilyn Purly is a total knockout. Yet the only relevant issue is some atlarge pervert who’s about to be lionized by a retentive society—turned into a romantic figure hunted by a world so uptight with its own sexual repression it’s almost horny for a Judas goat.” “Remarry, Nelson, remarry! I must have told you a thousand times. You were never like this when you had an anchor.” “Larry, I’m putting it straight for you: there’s a real danger of this jerk being turned into a kind of modern, persecuted Don Juan. They’ll airbrush his booking photo—Oprah and her ilk will present him as the prey instead of the predator. And the ‘You go, girl; you vent against that evil Mr. Rapist’ mindset will quickly peter out. Why? Because the housewives aren’t really mad at this sick prick. They’re pissed at a very witting evil: the hubbies who somewhere along the line lost interest 22

Prentis Freak in them. They’ll transfer. Just you watch. In an almost surreal way they’ll get back at hubby and his hypothetical office bimbo by rooting for the rapist.” “Alleged rapist,” Abram sighed. “Now look, Nelson, I’ll concede Vilenov’s no pretty boy, and I’ll even admit the public’s reaction is understandable, but there’ll be a real backlash to all this dumping on some poor guy just because of his looks. You’re right on one count, but for the wrong reason. What we’ve genuinely got here is a martyr in the making. When he’s brought in, and the public gets a peek at the gentleman behind the image, he’s not gonna be the heavy.” He sipped thoughtfully, and found his drink oversweet. “And yes, there’ll be lawsuits.” “Okay, buddy. You can address your flocks whenever you’re ready. Right now, Vilenov’s a fugitive, and that’s all that matters. And when he’s apprehended, Larry, I know you’ll be right there on the tube with me, and you’ll speak eloquently on his behalf. And a big part of me prays you’re right—that the complaints of all these women are much ado about nothing. But if what I know in my heart is true, I’m gonna see this ugly SOB put away permanently. Excuse me, Larry, but was that chocolate milk and Newsweek your little angel picked up at Barry’s on his way to Purly’s? You go ahead and argue all you want about videotape and testimony to the contrary. But I’m gonna tell you something man-to-man here: your client stinks like shit warmed over. And if you really intend to represent him, you’d better make damned sure he saved all that cash he says his daddy left behind. He’ll need it. Every cell in my body tells me he’s going down, and for good.” “Okay, Nelson. Point made.” “So what’s your move?” “I’d like to interview Purly while her memories are fresh.” “They’ll still be collecting samples.” “And there’s that holdout tenant.” “Frederick Mars, no middle. Upstairs in the twin building. Number 11.” Abram took it down in his notepad. “You might also touch bases with Scarboro. But I’m warning you, right up front, to be extremely critical of anything you get from her.” “I’m always critical.” “I know you are, buddy. Thanks for the call-back. And let me know your read on that whole daffy setup.” Abram put down the receiver, killed what was left in the thermos, and switched on the TV. Vilenov’s face leaped right out at him. Abram instantly muted the sound and pushed himself out of his chair. Halfway to the refrigerator he stopped, disturbed by the way Vilenov’s projected eyes seemed to be following him across the room. He tiptoed to the wall plate and switched off the light. Now the darkened room was lit only by the pallid face of Nicolas Vilenov with its floating gray eyes. The eyes followed him back to his chair, watched him recline, held him where he sat. A sudden psychotic loathing remade Abram’s expression, cramped his fingers and toes and radiated throughout his body. For a moment he couldn’t breathe or swallow. He wanted to smash something, kill somebody. His hand, flailing on the table, came back holding the slim remote unit. He raised it slowly and aimed it at the set. The eyes tugged at him, swelling in their sockets. Abram hit the OFF button and the room plunged into utter darkness. “Bang,” he said.

23

Chapter Four Mars Despite the DA’s warning, Abram was blown away by the circus on Westminster Avenue. He had to park a mile and a half down; the curb spot, payable up front to a hard-as-nails homeowner, cost him twenty bucks and an earful. Luckily a rookie traffic cop, recognizing him from his splendid performance in the final Jackson molestation case, gleefully transported him like a green chauffer delivering his first movie icon. Ten a.m., and it was already cooking. Westminster was spilling over with blankets and tarps, with beach umbrellas and folding chairs. Catering trucks were pulled into the driveways of residences, in some places brazenly parked on sidewalks and lawns. The area’s immigrant vendors, having cannily traded their oranges and flowers for garlic wreaths and rattan crucifixes, could sporadically be seen dashing through traffic like figures in a bull run. Curbside amateur artists sold soulful portraits of Vilenov the Christ-figure, Vilenov the snarling animal, Vilenov the rock star. The gushing officer drove Abram as close to Scarboro’s apartment complex as the jostling crowd would allow. Abram then moved smiling and quipping through the slowly parting sea—past the reaching men and women shouting questions born of pure curiosity or outright fear, past the reporters and cameramen winging their booms and whirling their cams, past a fluid barricade of uniformed officers struggling to hold back the tide—all the way to the quiet drive between apartment buildings, where a single dour policeman stood within a broad rectangle of plastic yellow tape secured to rails and branches. POLICE LINE, the tape warned, DO NOT CROSS. The escorting officer begged shamelessly for an autograph, and the lawyer obliged. The rookie scampered off with his prize. Abram turned to the residing officer with charm and humanity still smeared across his face. One look at the man’s expression, and his smile collapsed. Abram automatically extended his attorney’s hand in greeting. The uniform scowled and shook his head. “You’re over the line, Mr. Abram.” He gestured at the lawyer’s hovering arm. “In more ways 24

Mars Freak than one.” Abram groaned. “Officer . . .” “No way, Mr. Abram. This scene is being treated as a possible homicide.” Abram’s sphincter clenched. “Homicide? Who . . .” “Ah-ah-ah,” said the uniform. “The star witness is kaput.” He studied Abram coldly. “A tenant in this building,” he jerked his head over his shoulder, “a Marilyn Purly, was discovered deceased in her apartment this morning after she was non-responsive to a number of phone calls. She slit both wrists with a new razor blade. She knew how to do it, too. Up the vein, not across it.” He demonstrated with an imaginary blade, watching Abram for signs of squeamishness. “She was found stone dead in her bedroom at seven hundred hours. The coroner says she did herself in around midnight. The black curtains in her bedroom were closed, the front room door was crudely wedged and blocked, and every light in the place was out except for the ring of bulbs on her vanity mirror. Oh, and one other thing. Before she goes for her wrists this hot young babe takes the razor and slashes her face into hamburger. The place looks like a slaughterhouse.” He sucked the crud from his front teeth and respectfully spat to the attorney’s side. “Now what do you make of that?” But Abram’s self-preservation instinct was screaming at him. Only a career built on poses allowed him to pull himself erect rather than shrink, and to reply in a voice that boomed with authority. He looked pointedly at the man’s badge. “Officer Warren, your conduct couldn’t be less professional. Who’s your superior at this scene?” The cop tossed his head at a sergeant just exiting Purly’s unit. Drop cloths could be seen in front of the apartment and inside the doorway. “Around the tape!” Warren retorted, and watched minutely as the attorney navigated the narrow corridor defined by the building’s staircase and taut police tape. The sergeant ambled over after making a note on his pad. “Good morning, sergeant,” Abram offered congenially, his personal unease automatically moving to the back burner in the presence of authority. He wasn’t remotely interested in reporting the surly cop; once circumvented, the man was history. “Good morning, Mr. Abram. I’m sorry, but this perimeter is sealed for now.” “Gotcha. I’m really sorry to hear about Ms. Purly.” “I appreciate that, Mr. Abram. But the perimeter is sealed for right now.” Abram bowed, half-turning toward the mob. “Did I, sergeant, commend you on your security?” “That, Mr. Abram, won’t be necessary. And, forgive me, did I mention that this perimeter is sealed for now?” Abram grinned and nodded. “Well, sir, I’d still like to interview a tenant or two, a Frederick Mars in particular.” The sergeant raised his eyes to the landing behind them. “That’ll be fine, sir, but let’s just make sure you stay clear of the police line.” He jerked his head at the churlish guard. “And please confine your interviews to tenants.” Abram smiled and walked to the second floor landing’s cement staircase. At the bottom of this staircase, squeezed between the building and trash dumpsters, a tiny laundry room poked out like a hemorrhaging tissue. Abram, facing the room’s sole window as he stepped around the rail, experienced a brief, disturbing hallucination: hanging in the room’s little window was an old navy blue beach towel. At some time a hose had dashed water across the glass, leaving it marked by a single spray of drops. To Lawrence Abram, just turning away from the sun, the immediate impression was a blood-spattered mirror. His hand slid up the iron rail as he casually climbed the steps, still 25

Mars Freak looking back. For a nanosecond he thought the towel had been yanked aside to reveal the face of an extremely large, angry middle-aged woman. But the room’s contents were hidden. There was no face. On the upstairs landing to his left were five apartments. A single unit at the landing’s end faced the staircase. Mr. Mars’s door, like two others, was open, but Abram paused to lean deeply on the rail, so that his body nearly described a right angle. In this, the pose of a casual observer, he gazed across the drive into the open door of Purly’s apartment. It was an absolutely perfect view. There was the couch, and one corner of its large framed backing mirror. And there, directly across the room, was the old maple television cabinet, a black videocassette recorder planted firmly on top. The view was such that he could see a good part of the kitchen and most of the single doorway leading to bathroom and bedroom. The bedroom’s black velvet curtains were down for analysis, sterile drop cloths carefully hung in their place. Occasionally an officer passed between rooms, into and out of Abram’s view. Feeling another presence, Abram turned and said pleasantly, “Mr. Mars?” A lanky shadow appeared in 11’s doorway. The sun lit a withered hand. “I’m Fred Mars.” Abram shook the hand, gently pulling the figure into full view. “Well, Mr. Mars,” he said, his mind processing the snapshot: black, seventy-something, frail, hint of Creole. Basically honest and forthcoming. “My name’s Lawrence Abram, and I’ve been retained to represent a certain Mr. Nicolas Vilenov, whose mismanaged arrest I pray is in no way related to today’s most uncomfortable police presence. I didn’t know Ms. Purly personally, but it breaks my heart to learn of her terrible passing. Were you a close friend of hers?” “Miss Purly had lots of admirers,” Mars said, “but she didn’t have any friends. Except one. And this is the man you say you’re representing. Perhaps he could help you more than me.” “Mr. Vilenov, alas, is presently unavailable. Um, you wouldn’t have, by any chance, seen him around over the weekend? He’s pretty easy to spot.” “No, sir, I most certainly would not have. And Miss Purly never once opened her door after that raid took place.” “About that arrest,” Abram mulled. His arm swept the building and drive. “As I understand it, you had a pretty good eagle’s eye-view of the event.” Fred Mars peered warily at the lawyer, then at the dawdling sergeant below. “Well . . . I . . .” Abram reached into his vest’s pocket. “Forgive me,” he said, and handed Mars a business card. Once he’d studied the card punctiliously, Mr. Mars placed it in his shirt’s pocket with exaggerated care. His eyes slid down a rail to his visitor’s black, highly polished calfskin shoes. “I’d invite you in, Mr. Abram, out of the heat, but I’m afraid I keep a very humble house.” Abram instinctively laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Mr. Mars, you’re embarrassing me. I’d be honored to be your guest, under any circumstances. Please realize you’re doing me a favor just by talking to me—much more so by entertaining me. And I’d be delighted to share in whatever amenities you habitually make your own.” After an awkward moment Fred Mars apologized, almost in a whisper: “All I’ve got is beer. But it’s cold; as cold as drinking beer can be. I pulled it from the freezer just this morning.” Abram’s eyes slid away and his mouth turned down. “What—” he managed. “What brand?” Fred Mars sank back. “Only Budweiser, I’m afraid.” “Thank God! Mr. Mars, I was afraid you were going to poison me with some of that sickly green imported stuff. But the King of American Beers! And icy cold, you say? I have a feeling this little interview isn’t going to be so rough after all.” He bowed toward the room. “Shall we?” Mars, terribly embarrassed, creakily returned the bow. “Shall we, indeed.” 26

Mars

Freak Abram got comfortable on a small upholstered chair while Mars busied himself in the kitchen. The attorney’s brain was a video camera: Pine coffee table. Yellowing magazines. Homey hunks of cheap furniture. A spotless ashtray. No more, no less than he was hoping for. “Cold glass?” Mars fumbled from the kitchen. “Ice?” “Not on a dare. It’s already way too hot for manners between men. Let’s get down, Mr. Mars, to brass tacks.” Fred Mars, smiling frailly, limped up with two ice-cold sixteen-ouncers. Abram saluted the room and gratefully downed a third, his eyes rolled back lovingly. Mr. Mars giggled and swallowed what he could, trying hard to look relaxed. Abram wiped his lips with a forefinger. “Mr. Mars, I have exactly two things to say. The first is: thank you so much for helping me hit the spot. And the second is: God bless America!” He tilted back the can and chugged slowly, until there was only backwash, all the while studying his host from the corner of his eye. Fred Mars was obviously unused to company. And craved it. He laughed softly while drinking, eyes closed and knees crossed awkwardly. Although Abram quickly killed his can fractionally, Mars managed to swallow over half as much by more frequently sneaking up on his own. Abram pinched his empty and raised an eyebrow. Mr. Mars made a show of being above recycling. He tittered, determinedly killed his own beer and pinched the can, wobbled to his feet. He tossed both empties at a kitchen wastebasket, missed with one, picked it up and tried again, missed again. A neighbor on the landing laughed at the street mob. Blushing, Mars hurriedly trashed the can and looked outside. Suddenly Abram felt California Good. It was just another make-believe day, perfectly hot and clear. A zephyr the moment it turned stuffy. Sunshine so clean an Angeleno could be myopic and still see wonders. Real sunshine. Beer weather. “Mr. Mars,” he said, “please feel free to call me Larry. And, if you’ll honor me with another beer, I’ll gladly repay you with an extra large pizza.” Fred Mars padded out with two more tall frosty Buds. “Thank you so very much, Larry, but you don’t owe me a thing. I’m just glad to be enjoying your company on this beautiful summer day. And you, Larry, may call me Fred.” He placed the cans on coasters and nodded politely. “I’m guessing you have something to ask me concerning . . . that day.” “Just a few simple questions, in strictest confidence, about your observations.” He was dawdling with his beer, waiting for Mars to move along with his own. The old man took painfully slow, delicate sips. But the attorney knew Mars’s age would work against him. Abram popped open his new can and took it easy. He already had a buzz on, and the gorgeous day almost demanded he drink deeply. His mouth was dry before the beer hit his stomach. And the brew was so cold. “By the way, Mr. Mars . . . Fred, what inspired you to call channel five?” “It’s my landlady, Miss Scarboro. Maybe you’ve run into her, Larry. If you haven’t, I’m sure you soon will.” He managed to down a quarter of his second can, as if just speaking her name left a bad taste in his mouth. “I know about her.” “Well, she’s a very pushy woman, Larry, a very pushy woman. She pushed everybody in these buildings into a tenants’ committee, then she pushed everybody into believing Miss Purly was being drugged and abused by some poor guy none of us had ever even met.” After catching his breath he took another healthy swig. Abram immediately followed suit. “She just flat out didn’t like this man, and told us he was an agent of Satan. She said she’d cast a spell to protect us, but that the only way to fight for poor Miss Purly was to band together, and use our combined energy to cast him out.” His 27

Mars Freak expression was hesitant, guilty. Abram spread his hands. “I’m following you, Fred. And I’m not saying you bought into it. I know you’ve got more sense than that.” “I do not like being pushed. And I do not respect this Miss Scarboro person.” Mr. Mars pulled at his beer. “Speak of the Devil!” “So this tenants’ committee,” Abram fished, “was the force of Goodness, rallied against the force of Darkness? And anyone not adamantly pro-committee was . . .” “Larry, I’ve been disgusted with Miss Scarboro from the get-go. She’s a witch, but not in the supernatural sense. She’s a witch wannabe. And she does dearly love to get people to answer to her— excuse me, Larry, to her . . . B.S.” “Go on, Fred.” “She hammered her ideas into our heads, and made subtle threats about possible evictions. It was all pure baloney. But as long as you fell in line the heat was off you, and she’d work on the next tenant. Mr. Abram, I don’t know what she had against this fellow, but there was some real bad blood between them. I used to watch her shouting bloody murder through the space between the door and jamb. Miss Purly would refuse to take down the chain, and Miss Scarboro would stand hunched in front of that door like a fighting bull, her head down with that big straw hat half-covering her face, almost as if she was shielding her eyes. But Miss Purly always ended up closing the door on her, and Miss Scarboro always ended up stomping back to her apartment to cuss out the walls. It would have been really funny if it wasn’t so intense. Then, once this gentleman was gone, Miss Scarboro would confront Miss Purly in a kinder mood, but Miss Purly would just zone out whenever Miss Scarboro mentioned him directly. Otherwise Miss Purly seemed okay; okay enough to catch the bus to do her shopping, anyway.” He raised an eyebrow. “Sir, I personally witnessed Miss Scarboro use her master key to go through that apartment a number of times when Miss Purly was gone.” “It’s her building,” said the attorney. “And then she’d come out, gather us all in her little back yard over lemonade and cookies, and tell us over and over that Miss Purly was being drugged and raped by this stranger in some kind of horrible dark ritual. She got all the tenants focused into an unblinking rage. Everybody but me. I’ll discuss anything with anybody, Mr. Abram, but nobody can push me. Pretty soon Miss Scarboro started on me with the silent treatment, then with the Evil Eye. And she passed around a petition, and got everybody but me to sign, stating that this guy was doping Miss Purly and having his way with her. She’d worked hard on the other tenants, until they believed her unconditionally. Nobody understood why I couldn’t deal with the ‘truth’.” “Sounds like she’d make a great prosecutor.” “So Miss Scarboro sent copies of this petition to the police and to the news stations; radio and television. The police contacted Miss Purly by phone, and apparently an expert investigator listening in was convinced Miss Purly was under the influence of some pathogenic substance. I know all this because I received a letter from a Commander Burroughs, wondering why I was the sole committee holdout, and asking me if maybe I’d be a witness if anything came down. I agreed, no problem, Mr. Abram, and I’m ready to be subpoenaed if that’s what it takes.” Mars now became involved in a delicate little tap dance. Abram understood; his own bladder was floating. Being host, Mars switched on the old black and white TV. “I’ll be right back,” he grimaced, “Larry,” and tiptoed into the bathroom. Abram watched a televangelist passionately lecturing on rape as the natural consequence of a God-weary society. He leaned forward and turned the fat plastic knob a notch, from 4 to 5. A commercial appeared, featuring a line drawing of a horrified woman crouching beneath hovering 28

Mars Freak eyes. Abram heard a voice urging Internet participation as a graphic leaped across the screen: catcharapist.com. He cranked the knob up to channel 7, but before the station came in he heard an eager recorded voice on 5 say, “Rape survivors! Next on—” In a heartbeat he’d forgotten his bladder. There was Nelson Prentis, at a podium surrounded by microphones. Behind the DA was a huge symbolic check for fifty thousand dollars. The letters WFW were emblazoned in the check’s upper right hand corner. Lawrence Abram grew excited every time his childhood friend appeared onscreen. He hunched forward with the can dangling between his fingers, mesmerized by those deadly-serious drooping eyes behind the black, severe spectacles, by the salt and pepper crew cut, by the wide and mirthless mouth, by that rich baritone that instantly filled a room. Who but Prentis’s ex-wife and few close friends knew of the warmth and humor behind the efficient public image . . . “are banded today,” Prentis was booming magnificently, “out of concern for the basic inviolability of our neighborhoods, for the security of our God-given sense of decency, and for the abiding safety of our sweet, priceless children. All our hearts are whelming over; as intelligent and sympathetic Angelenos we are deeply moved by the number of caring citizens who have come forward, with strong voice and with great generosity, to support the South Bay’s branch of Women For Women.” Prentis halfturned. “Today this check for fifty thousand dollars is being offered to any person or organization providing information leading to the apprehension of escapee Nicolas Vilenov!” Behind him, Mars said quietly, “Not showing a picture, I notice.” Abram hadn’t heard the flush. “Smart move. Enough is enough.” He shook Mars’s elbow and grinned up at him mistily. “I used to write for that man!” Mars smiled back as his guest rose and swaggered into the bathroom. When Abram returned he found the old man perched gingerly on the little padded chair, looking like he was about to be sucked into the big television’s screen. Channel 7 was now featuring the Westminster crowd in a live shot. As the videocam panned to a reporter in the mob’s midst, the studio camera pulled back to reveal a poker-faced talking head at his desk. Thus superimposed, the bluescreened broadcaster matter-of-factly announced the reporter’s name, location, and situation. The studio camera cut out, leaving the mobbed reporter to comment over a wide shot now zooming onto Marilyn Purly’s open door. That shot was cut, and once again the screen was all street mob. Fred Mars tiptoed outside and leaned half over the rail, obeying a childish impulse to be, even for an instant, on camera. Abram, listening to crowd members granted their fifteen seconds, was riveted. What amazed him was not so much the absurdity of the responses, but their complete sincerity. He told himself, over and over, This is the 21st century. These are healthy, educated people. What proof have we, a grown man wondered, that Nicolas Vilenov’s spirit didn’t somehow infiltrate the premises to murder Ms. Purly? A man in a white shirt and tie assured him that the place was solidly monitored; a greased eel couldn’t have slipped in. But, a soccer mom countered reasonably, how do we know Vilenov can’t make himself invisible, or sneak through by morphing into a cop? This woman wore an extra large T-shirt with a silk screen image on either side. On the front was a glaring, terribly dignified portrait of the Scarboro woman surrounded by smoking censers. On the back was that cold, ubiquitous booking photo, smack in the middle of a circle containing a diagonal bar that cut the face into halves. A pimply UCLA student solved the problem for both parties. Ghosts, he explained, and sometimes even modern zombies, are capable of movements beyond the senses. But then a hypertensive genius behind the reporter began jumping up and down, holding a placard bearing an enlarged photocopy of Marilyn Purly’s state I.D. “He’s the Devil!” she screamed. “The Devil!” There was a roar of approval. 29

Mars

Freak Abram and Mars listened as the roar tore up the drive like floodwater. The suddenly-erratic crowd image switched back to studio. 7’s apologetic broadcaster, shuffling a handful of papers, described a series of clips unfolding on the screen behind him. The first showed a covered body; being wheeled from Purly’s apartment, loaded into an ambulance. The landlady’s face faded in as the ambulance faded out. Abram’s eyes narrowed. 275 pounds, he thought, well over six feet. An absolutely formidable woman. Hostile witness. Will not answer an honest question honestly. He unconsciously canceled his plans for an afternoon interview. Scarboro was replaced by a wide-angle shot of a typical suburban street. Dozens of children were lined up in ranks well away from the curbs. A woman on each sidewalk, wielding a STOP sign and pursing a nickel-plated whistle, preceded the files. These women methodically halted at houses, performed right faces and marched up to front doors. Grateful mothers handed over cringing schoolchildren. The orange-vested monitors then marched back with their precious cargo in tow. Flanking sidewalk monitors, stamping in strict time, guided the children to places in the rear rank. With a choreographed blast of whistles and jerk of STOP signs, the parade moved up to the next set of houses. Imitating the voice of Mister Rogers, Fred Mars mumbled, “Can you say ‘change of venue’?” Abram said, “Come here a minute, Fred.” Mars followed him out onto the landing. “Let’s see where you were standing when those officers broke into Ms. Purly’s apartment.” Mars took a few steps to his right. “And how were you standing?” The old man casually leaned on the rail. “Excuse me, Fred.” Abram slid into Mars’s place while gently nudging him along. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Abram relaxed his knees, his forearms weighing on the rail. “Like this?” “Exactly like that.” Abram was now standing a few feet to the right of his earlier vantage point. He looked into Purly’s apartment. Couch and end tables were draped, but the huge backing mirror was still uncovered. And reflected in that mirror could be seen the innocently-perched videocassette recorder. Evidence tags were everywhere. “When that whole scene came down, Fred,” Abram said carefully, “what exactly did you see through Ms. Purly’s front room doorway?” “Larry . . . what I saw was the personal business of Miss Purly and her guest. I’m no voyeur. I only saw what I saw because it was downright unavoidable.” “But you saw . . .” “I saw,” Mars said with finality, “Miss Purly and her guest minding their own business. That’s all, sir.” “Watching television. Sipping iced tea.” “Minding their own business.” Abram smiled at Mars’s resolve. But suddenly he saw himself from the old man’s unlettered viewpoint—as an arrogant authority figure; someone who would, five minutes after pretending to bond with you, aloofly spin your story for the sake of his case. Right on the tail of this little insight came the feeling that this viewpoint actually wasn’t Mars’s own. It hit him: Mars in truth wasn’t the kindly observer he made himself out to be. Abram’s wry grin twisted into a bitter snarl. Mars was an eyewitness and a rat, a pig and a liar. No way could he be allowed to testify. It became urgently important that Abram know exactly what Mars had seen. He placed a hand on the man’s forearm, and heard a voice that was not really his, wheedling, “Oh, sir, I’m not prying, believe me I’m not. And I respect your right to not divulge a thing. But you’ve got to understand something here. I’m the one who’s going to be defending this poor guy. I’m all the hope he’s got.” 30

Mars

Freak Mars could have sworn he saw something burning in the attorney’s eyes. He looked away. “I observed those policemen breaking in on Miss Purly and her caller. But I didn’t see any tea. What I saw was a whole lot of skin.” Abram bristled. A moment later he was himself again. “And I watched the police jump on Miss Purly’s gentleman friend, and knock him around while he tried to get his pants on. I saw this one mean-looking policeman in plain clothes twist his arm behind his back and really rough him up while cussing in his ear—foul stuff, Mr. Abram, language I would never repeat. This went on while the policemen at the front door kept neighbors back, even as Miss Scarboro urged them on. An officer inside covered up poor Miss Purly, and had her spit in a plastic bag. He took her into the kitchen. The officer questioning Miss Purly came back out and said something to her visitor, then made a phone call while the man was forced to dress. Miss Purly’s boyfriend was handcuffed and led outside, shoved through everybody and stuffed in a police car. And they weren’t exactly gentle with him.” Abram grunted. An odd memory fragment came to him, crumbling even as he attempted to put his finger on it. Something in his subconscious warned him not to pursue the thought, but another part of his mind wasn’t about to let it pass. “Fred, during any of this did you directly exchange glances with Mr. Vilenov?” “No, Mr. Abram, I most certainly did not.” A change came over Mars’s voice, and Abram realized, without turning, that Mars was staring at him with great feeling. “By that time I’d seen more than I could stomach for a lifetime.” Abram nodded. Figuratively standing in Mars’s shoes, he visualized Vilenov at work. The urge to commit mayhem on the man seemed a perfectly rational and healthy reaction. “Now you know how I felt,” Mars mumbled. There was a pause. Abram said, “If you really felt that way, why did you hold out on that petition?” Mars took a deep breath. “Larry, I believe that what goes on behind closed doors is nobody’s business but the parties concerned, so long as there’s consent. If Miss Purly invites a man over, that’s her affair. Miss Scarboro had no business interfering, and the police shouldn’t have compromised their privacy. That said, I’m not bleeding for that dirty fellow they took in, regardless of how it may appear. The man’s rights are my concern, not the man himself.” There was a longer pause. At last Mars said, “So why are you really here, Larry?” Abram shrugged. “I’ve been retained. I have a reputation to uphold, and I’m going to win this case.” “With that client?” Comprehension dawned on Mars’s face. “You’re here to have me subpoenaed, aren’t you Larry?” “With that testimony?” Abram shook his head. “But I want you to understand that you will be subpoenaed, Fred, though not from my side of the fence. You represent what will be the first real piece of evidence in this whole mess, and that’s eyewitness testimony.” He chucked Mars on the bicep. “Pretty soon, my friend, your name is going to be a household word. That crowd out there is going to become infected by Marsmania. But don’t worry. Even for a decent man celebrity has its compensations.” Mars looked sickened by the thought. “So. Where do we go from here?” Abram drummed his fists on the rail. His mind was made up. “Fred, you bust us open a couple more cold ones and I’ll make a phone call. Let’s see if Domino’s can get a pizza with the works through that crowd out there.”

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Chapter Five Phelps The old man and his young guide seemed to bob as they tramped up the crumbling asphalt walk, an apparent motion created by the old man’s chronic limp working in conjunction with the boy’s frequent missteps in sinkholes. It was very dark on the Venice Canals. Although freaked-out mallards occasionally hopped singly into bushes on the right, or plunged in manic clusters into the canal to their left, the neighborhood fowl colonies for the most part glumly tolerated the silently rocking figures. The boy was black, the old man a Finn, but in the dark they were devoid of race and nationality. The boy tugged on the old man’s finger. The old man looked down, his brown old brow furrowed under his blue old watch cap. The boy, nodding urgently, indicated an unimpressive cottage swallowed in a jungle of yard. The old man’s eyes narrowed. No bars on the windows, no signs of real security. Only a sagging picket fence choking in weeds. On the rustic mailbox was hand-lettered the name E. ROSE. A painted American Beauty was positioned in the lower right-hand corner, like a signature. The old man pulled a scruffy old handkerchief from his scruffy old trench coat. Wrapped in the handkerchief was a few dollars in pennies and nickels, bound at the top by a dirty old bit of string. The old man solemnly placed it in the boy’s hand, closed the trembling little fingers over the bundle, and clasped the boy’s hand in both of his. He shut his eyes and nodded, slowly and with gravity, before releasing the boy’s hand. Rolling his eyes, the boy slunk off hugging his treasure to his chest, not daring to look back. Ivan Phelps wistfully watched the dark figure vanish over a bridge. After a while he turned and looked the property up and down. Without seeming to move, he melted into the high weeds and trees. The limp was gone. Phelps unlaced his boots and left them in the weeds with his socks. The old man walked barefoot on a path of inlaid bricks, taking long pauses between steps. When he reached the backyard 32

Phelps Freak he stopped dead. His eyes ran over the house, finally resting on the wide-open bathroom window. Phelps removed his trench coat and placed it carefully on the ground. He was now wearing only his dirty old long johns. From under his left arm he gently extracted a filthy torn pillowcase containing an ancient baseball bat, a cheap plastic flashlight, a rusty pair of handcuffs, and a ratty length of rope. The rope, protruding from the pillowcase’s open end, was wound tightly around the outside to prevent the contents from shifting. Phelps stepped very quietly to the window and peered into the bathroom. The house was absolutely dark. For a full minute he didn’t move or breathe. He was feeling the place. The old man raised the bundle above his head with the utmost slowness and, keeping it perfectly horizontal, carefully guided it through the window. He very gradually turned the bat clockwise, allowed it to dangle, then let the rope pass through his lax fist until the bundle just kissed the bathroom’s tiled floor. He looped the rope’s loose end about the window’s hinge. Ivan Phelps rested his forearms on the sill, testing its strength, and found it satisfactory. He filled his lungs. Throwing all his concentration into his arms and shoulders, he slowly ascended the outer wall like a great pallid lizard, using his toes for balance and coordination. It took a full five minutes for his waist to reach the sill, and by that time his face was purple and his head pounding. But Phelps’s respiration was absolutely steady. He didn’t make a sound. After only a few seconds’ rest, he let his upper body ooze over the sill and into the dark bathroom. Whereas Phelps had used his bare toes as tender feelers on the way up, he now used his fingertips as sensitive probes on the way down. Five more excruciating minutes, and he was examining the floor with his palms. Toe by toe, he walked his feet down the inner wall until his body lay curled in a limp pool. He did not get to his feet, but gripped each end of the bundle squarely and fully extended his arms. Gently pushing off with his toes, he crossed the floor like a snake. Five silent minutes later he was poised in the bathroom doorway. Holding the bat absolutely horizontal while balancing his entire weight on his sternum, Phelps rolled his bulging eyes left and right. His ribcage felt like it would collapse at any moment, but he would not let the probe dip a centimeter. There was too much at stake. And besides, the old man knew all about pain. Directly ahead was the living room. To the left, a short hallway and kitchen. Phelps was reading an accurate mental snapshot of the cottage’s interior, produced solely from his outside inspection. The only bedroom lay to his right. The snake made a very slow right turn and patiently slithered, all thighs and pectorals, to the open bedroom doorway. Phelps spent much longer here, letting his eyes adjust to the room. The shades were down; nothing other than the bulkiest objects were discernible. But he smelled prey. Phelps let his own breathing fall in with the naked woman snoring gently beside the obscure man on the bed. When their rhythms were one he became aggressive, ever so slowly ratcheting up the woman’s snores until their compound sawing took subconscious hold of the sleeping man. In just under half an hour all three were practically howling in perfect sync. Phelps began worming across the carpet, sweat falling off his face like bombs. Twenty minutes later he was on his knees beside the bed, still snarking away like crazy. He delicately unraveled the bundle. With his eyes closed, he laid out his tools one by one. Phelps now became a hunched statue; the pillowcase dangling from his left hand, the bat gripped in his right. The long plastic flashlight was clamped in his teeth, its lens directed at the black figure almost under his nose. Inch by inch, he raised his left hand until its index finger lay poised on the flashlight’s power switch. Phelps spent less than a second verifying the sleeping man’s identity. He switched the flashlight on and off, carefully removed it from his mouth, set it between his knees. Guided only by that brief look, he yanked the pillowcase over Vilenov’s head and brought the bat down with all his 33

Phelps Freak force. The woman sat up screaming bloody murder. Ignoring her, Phelps pulled the rope tight around Vilenov’s neck and savagely knotted it at the back. He flipped his limp prisoner over and slapped on the cuffs, all the while speaking patiently to the woman shrieking almost in his lap. “Ye’ll be hollerin a whole lot less, ma’am, an ye’ll be thankin me, ye will, soon as ye learn what I’m doin is fer yer own sake.” He hauled Vilenov onto the floor with a crash. “I do apologize, ma’am, I surely do. But this is one fish what won’t be gettin away.” Phelps knelt, grabbed Vilenov by a wrist and ankle and threw him over his shoulder. “Kindly jus set yerself back down to sleep now, ma’am. Yer worries are over.”

Phelps’s capture of The Houdini-rapist made him an instant celebrity. He used the reward to buy the inboard of his dreams, made a few more bucks in a whirlwind of awkward talk show appearances, and vanished from the harbor late one lovely summer evening. He was never heard from again. The public’s attention soon shifted from Helga Scarboro’s obscene struttings to the fascinating riddle of Nicolas Vilenov. But the eagerly anticipated smutty confession was not forthcoming: Phelps had walloped him so hard he could barely mumble. The first few days were a nightmare of tests and interviews, of clamoring reporters and six o’clock feedings. Nelson Prentis rose to the occasion with both humor and sobriety, providing the barking press liberal tosses of quality sound bites—all to the effect that Nicolas Vilenov, a physically-and mentally incapacitated prisoner, would remain a prisoner. Much was made of Vilenov’s cracked skull. Those believing his escape was achieved through some weird paranormal ability warned that Phelps’s blow might have only phased him. Opposing this view, a rational faction voiced profound sympathy for Vilenov as scapegoat and victim of the system. Members of the former camp were labeled “Hysterics” by the latter. The Hysterics, in turn, labeled their detractors “Enablers.” A running shouting match grew uglier by the day. Nicolas Vilenov was maintained in special confinement at Western State Hospital, where brain specialists confirmed what was apparent to all: temporal lobe damage had left him weak as a kitten. His manacles were removed. Everyone agreed that Vilenov, shattered and under continuous observation, would not be pulling off his now-famous vanishing act any time soon. There were basic and exclusive tests. Blood and urine, EKG, ECG, neuro-monitoring stressand-sleep. Vilenov was shocked and graphed, sampled and scoped, pricked, scraped, tapped and palpated. They picked his mind until he wanted to scream. It was all filmed and digitally saved, extensively analyzed and exhaustively reviewed. Results were always in the normal range. But the tests were kept coming, if only to mollify the public during those furious first days. On the third day, when many Hysterics were peaking, a wooden Nicolas Vilenov was wheeled outside for a news conference, a heavy bandage wound round his head. His mouth gaped, his chin grazed his chest in a permanent nod. And, most important, his eyes were glazed and distant, unable to focus on any proffered object. It was a pathetic appearance. But it turned the tide for Vilenov-watchers, and made Hysterics look like a bunch of pitiless bashers. The moment those soulless cameras lingered on that broken gaze, the public’s initially ambivalent outcry became a howling plea to spare man from man. Umbrageous Enablers took center 34

Phelps Freak stage, while Hysterics could only peep from the wings with half-baked charges of a stateorchestrated appearance by a Vilenov look-alike. The Enablers (a tag they hated at least as much as the Hysterics hated theirs) took to the streets exhorting individual civil rights, and overnight mustered an Internet mob that swarmed the medical center for a 24/7 candlelight vigil. Like all well-meaning liberals, Enablers clung to the ideal of a generic decent American whose Constitutional rights were even more important than the system that had bled profusely for those rights. It didn’t matter that Vilenov was a particularly nasty customer without national identity, accused of being an all-around predator and serial rapist. He was, to Enablers, the presumed-innocent victim of a society still in denial of its hoods and sheets. But Hysterics, buttressed by a surprisingly robust and vocal Moral Majority, utilized every opportunity to pose bravely with cowering wives and children, verbally smiting Enablers and Don’t Knows alike, until both siding with Vilenov and indifference were synonymous with Satan worship. This self-feeding passion was described by the governor, famously, as “that silly downstate wildfire,” and soon L.A.’s much-publicized excesses were being eagerly blamed for the entire Vilenov affair. The rest of the nation looked on, first with a corn-fed, purple-mountains curiosity, then with that Very East Coast derision known as California Envy. Disgust descended like God on the troubled South Bay. As rumors of Vilenov’s alleged trespasses surfaced, news stations jumped on the bandwagon, interviewing anybody with a grievance and a suntan. Nationally, eyewitnesses to Vilenov rapes and molestations popped up in places Vilenov had manifestly never heard of. A hunger sounded in the nation’s upright, well-manicured streets. Even in the Bible Belt, rape became sexy. Soap operas, talk shows, supermarket tabloids would dwell on nothing else. Nicolas Vilenov, or at least his twodimensional specter, simply would not go away. Although it’s the practice in L.A. county to file a case in the judicial district where the crime occurred (which in this instance was Santa Monica), the DA filed the case downtown, away from the carnival-like energy of the Venice Beach community. Vilenov was arraigned in absentia, far too ill to make an appearance. On the strength of semen data and crime scene signatures, Nicolas Vilenov was charged with multiple counts of rape and forced entry. His trial date was arranged to coincide with his doctors’ go-ahead, and his bail set in the ionosphere. In Abram’s and a trustee’s presence, a groggy Vilenov angrily waived his right to a jury trial. He cursed all of Abram’s personalized defense strategies, instructing him to instead impress the court with lurid details of the Vilenov philosophy. The attorney was ordered to not pursue change of venue, and to insist courtroom cameras be prohibited. Also, he demanded the removal of a specific psychiatrist, one Doctor Edward Reis, who he claimed was in the practice of ridiculing him, and harassing him with bizarre and unorthodox procedures, most notably conducting sessions in the dark. He then gave the lawyer the combination to a second storage locker, and told him to “get busy.” Within that locker, in large bills stuffed in a fat canvas bag, Abram found a considerable fortune. His previously narrow eyes grew wide in his head. He began visiting this shrine on a daily basis. Lawrence Abram hired assistants, conferred with specialists, and interviewed dozens of prospective witnesses—but everything he turned up only made him loathe his client more. The Purly sample matched semen taken from the homes of seventy-four hysterical women. There were scalp and pubic hairs, clothing fibers, fingerprints almost too numerous to catalogue. A dead man would have been aware of Vilenov’s guilt. And there were the inadmissible but very damning videotape, the claimant location photos, and that signed affidavit from the Purly crime scene. Ordinarily this affidavit, attesting to the validity of the sample obtained, retained, and deposited by Ms. Purly, would 35

Phelps Freak have been tantamount to eyewitness evidence, for it was signed by Purly, the scene’s senior officer, and the forensic man responsible for its transport to Parker Center. But Abram understood that lack of remembrance on the part of surviving signatories would render the document worthless; it could not be recognized under oath. Just so: every speck of physical evidence that could not be corroborated by testimony served only to prejudice the prosecution. And all these DNA-matched semen samples, now cropping up around the county, were next to useless so long as complicity between Vilenov and his “girlfriends” could not be ruled out. Irreducible testimony is concrete. Partial memories, misgivings, a sense of violation, mean nothing. Furthermore, tons of complaints came from women claiming violations years prior to the arrest. Why were these women silent so long? Were they really, as Prentis suggested, a flock of menopausal gadabouts crying wolf only because they were so desperate for attention? Lawrence Abram hired the best polygraphists in the state. It was easy as pie, using a lie detector, to dismantle the most complex statements with simple questions. Abram knew these women were dealing with feelings, rather than genuine recollection. And the audaciousness of some of their claims only served to undermine the believability of others. Abram grew nervous and remote as Vilenov’s physical condition improved, complaining of stomach aches and lancing pains. He actually seemed to shrink in stature when near his client. The knob on Vilenov’s temple was now only a slightly discolored lump, yet he was plagued by crunching headaches, blackouts, and lapses in memory. The entire ward was affected by malaise during Vilenov’s stay, and by deep depression following his occasional grand mals. Vilenov’s hold on medical personnel was weak, but it was enough to change a few minds and bend opinions in his favor. He told Abram that his doctors were quite satisfied with his condition, and that a clean bill of health was already being prepared for submission to the court. Vilenov smiled wanly. The doctors, he said, were proud of him. When Abram tried to coach him for what would turn out to be the shortest criminal trial in L.A.’s history, Vilenov told him not to worry. The point was to get the trial over ASAP. All Abram needed to do was lend his presence and his legal acumen. Vilenov would do the rest. But Abram, still the strong partner in their relationship due to his client’s injury, explained repeatedly, and occasionally with attitude, that the system was not a forum for egotistical sermons— that he, Vilenov, was not a very popular guy right now, and that there were a whole lot of things to worry about besides the trial. Such as the ongoing frenzy right outside, where a pair of Hysterics had recently kicked to death a lone Enabler and posed triumphantly while being taken into custody. Their shouted on-camera desire to share a cell with Nicolas Vilenov had created two awkward new heroes on one side and an unbidden martyr on the other. When Vilenov was finally brought to trial in an L.A. courtroom, he arrived in a secure van followed by an endless parade of police cars, news vehicles, and groupie-like spectators. Enablers felt the exclusion of cameras, lack of venue change, sky-high bail, and non-jury trial demonstrated just how much control the state exerted over their precious symbol of persecution. That this setup was Vilenov’s own wish, publicly supported by his famous attorney, meant less than nothing to the line of Enablers now running alongside the slow caravan, for in the context of their ideology it only revealed how incapable he was of taking part in his defense. They shouted rhyming slogans about the squelching of freedoms, based mostly on the fact that the media were (wisely) denied in-house interviews due to his “injuries and incoherence.” This first line of Enablers fumed as they ran. Alongside and behind trotted a motley mob, waving American flags of all sizes. Among these flags could be seen placards citing Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, with an occasional Lincoln silhouette thrown in. On the mob’s fringe were the megaphone toters, wearing Vilenov T-shirts and exhorting passersby to “stand for the man.” Most arresting of the Enablers’ gimmickry was a magnificent fifty foot-wide American flag, passed along 36

Phelps Freak like an Olympic Torch by a broken line of wheezing high school faculty volunteers. On the convoy’s other side Hysterics ran hooting, shaking their fists and shouting obscenities. Every other member carried a hot-selling placard featuring Vilenov’s mug shot, the image cleverly made up with horns, fangs, and mangy goatee. Just behind were the chanting waitresses and swooning schoolmarms, the Ivan Phelps wannabes, and a miscellany of schoolboys, ruffians, and pickpockets. Then came a row of placards citing the Apostles, bobbing above a wide current of banding-and-disbanding groups. Finally, making up the fringe, were the so-called “Milk Carton Mothers,” a subdued group bearing placards featuring enlarged photos of missing children and pets, famous murderers and runaway daughters. On the fringe of the fringe were the nuts and the noisemakers, the petty dope dealers and the darting soda vendors. Through this miserable sea the police van and its entourage moved like the children of Israel. As the vehicles neared the courthouse a phalanx of riot police commenced a flanking maneuver. The train crept between parallel lines of manpower until the van reached the courthouse’s very steps. The cargo door slid open, and a heavily-shackled Nicolas Vilenov was helped out by two men in suits. Vilenov, wearing a blind man’s shades outfitted with crown-and chin straps, dropped his head in pain. After a moment of absolute silence a roar went up from the crowd. Vilenov doubled over. There were many elements constituting that mass ejaculation, but, depending on which direction you were leaning, it could have been described as either soulless ecstasy or mindless outrage. The two men hustled Vilenov up steps flanked by cops in riot gear. On both sides of the staircase reporters popped up like jacks in the box. Inside the building a mousy little man appeared and dramatically thrust outward the tall glass doors. The two officers pushed Vilenov up and through while the flanking cops closed behind him, forming a tight living wall. The mousy man ran his eyes back and forth over the passion and pain. After a minute he sneered and pulled the tall doors shut with a slam.

37

Chapter Six Hatch Sandwiched between marshals, Vilenov was squeezed through the doors, bullied past the metal detector, and hauled down a long hallway stuffed to the gills with officers of the court, with private and municipal security, with countless newspersons thrusting cameras and microphones every which way. A narrow corridor bisected the crowd. Vilenov’s progress was peristaltic, his body bruised up and down by the very officers assigned to protect him. Heads of the curious popped in and out of the corridor as he approached, popped in and out as he passed. He walked with a limp and a wince, the injured temple protected by his raised shoulder. One of six assigned bailiffs held open the courtroom’s doors. Three men in suits backed off spectators. Vilenov was stuffed into a brightly lit arena no less congested than the hallway. There were no camera stations up front; his bleak scaffold contained only the judge’s bench and the witness stand, the attorneys’ tables, a pair of high easels with blank boards, a folding table bearing computer and monitors, and an openly curious stenographer. A bailiff taped up two pre-measured cardboard squares, blocking those eager faces pressing the glass. He stood with his back against the doors, his hands clasped behind him. Lawrence Abram helped escort his client through the gate, but when he took his elbow Vilenov immediately yanked it away. “Touch me again and I’ll bite your nose off.” “This is the point,” Abram whispered, “where we drop all that.” Only the black shades made it possible to view Vilenov directly. “If you want to be treated like a grown man you’ll have to behave like one.” “Forgive me, counsel, but now is not a real good time to exercise your famous rhetorical bullshit.” “Then fire me! You’re entitled to be your own defense. Free me and let me go back to the real world. Let me out of this nightmare.” “Not a chance, motherfucker. Not after all the cash you’ve glommed from me. You’re gonna start earning it, right now!” This little outburst was torture to his temple. Vilenov lowered and 38

Hatch Freak wagged his head. In a minute he said quietly, “I’ll have my say down the line, don’t you worry, but it’ll be after you’ve done your job. If you get me out of this jam I might be willing to let bygones be bygones. But if you don’t . . . God help you.” He slumped into a folding chair. The prosecution’s table seated two men and a woman, their minds apparently elsewhere. Icy lead prosecutor Baker was flanked by Manwell and Simms, both dead-serious deputy district attorneys. But right now all were rocking in their chairs and joking, infected by the hubbub. Vilenov jangled his chains and the rocking ceased. Three cold faces turned as one. “Abram!” Sweat was seeping from Vilenov’s sideburns. “I want these shades off!” “You’ll have to wait. I’ll need to address his honor.” “Then address him well.” He leaned back his hammering head. The pain was slow in passing, and when at last he heard a bailiff order everyone to rise he was too far gone to comply. Abram looked down. “I suggest you not irritate the court, Mr. Vilenov. Insolence never plays well.” Vilenov carefully rolled his head and stared out of one eye. He had to admit that Abram cut an impressive figure. The man’s expression was at once serious, amicable, studious, and game. Immaculately tailored and groomed, scrubbed almost pink. “The court, Mr. Abram,” Vilenov said weakly, “will just have to deal with it.” Orin Hatch, glancing coolly at the defense table, moved briskly to the bench, scooping scattered notes into a corner pile as he went. Vilenov sat upright, growling like a prodded animal. He quickly sized the passing man, the overhead fluorescents painting long swiveling white embers on his black glasses: early sixties, bespectacled, ruddy. Way overweight, wearing his jet robes like a muumuu. Thin white hair, military cut. Okay, dickhead, thought Vilenov. Come on. Talk to me. Hatch seated himself with genuine command and deliberation, looking over the spectators as if they were children in an auditorium. “Be seated,” said the bench bailiff. Hatch tapped a few keys on his laptop. “In the matter of Nicolas Vilenov,” he said, looking at the screen, “this proceeding will move forthrightly and with dignity. The bench will not tolerate outbursts from the audience.” He peered over his spectacles. “This is the only warning you will receive. I frankly do not appreciate circuses, and deeply respect the solemnity of a courtroom. Any courtroom. So please observe this admonition. Sit quietly and respectfully.” Vilenov rattled his chains. The judge’s head jerked a notch, as though he’d just dealt with a crick. His voice, deadly-quiet, still penetrated the room’s every hollow. “Anyone frustrating this proceeding will be ordered removed.” Abram rose immediately. “Your honor, my client has expressed an urgent desire to be relieved of his very dark sunglasses, so that he may observe with clarity the state’s evidence. He is completely restricted in his movements by what I can only describe as a superabundance of physical restraints. I see no reason he should also be visually impaired.” “He can’t see what’s going on around him?” “These are the same dark glasses the blind employ, your honor. They are not designed for observation.” Hatch gestured impatiently with his fingers. A bailiff unsnapped the harness, peeled off Vilenov’s shades, and handed them up. Hatch lifted the lenses and peered through. When he tilted the device for comparison’s sake he found himself looking directly into the pale gray pools of Vilenov’s eyes. Hatch couldn’t shake the stare. For a long time he appeared to be deliberating. Finally he said, 39

Hatch Freak “The court finds no reason for the defendant to be thus encumbered.” He handed the dark glasses back to the bailiff. Simms rose with an objection, but a hard look from the prisoner sat him right back down. Vilenov then turned slowly in his chair, his eyes drawing every face. The spectators’ expressions quickly became slack, their eyes dull. Following the sweep of his gaze, their heads began to wobble like the heads of floating corpses. When Vilenov turned back, his chin was on his chest and his temple was throbbing. He squeezed shut his eyes and let himself drift, subconsciously aware of a long, monotonous procession of court proceedings, of technical jargon flying about amidst sputtering keystrokes and tramping feet. He must have dozed. When he raised his head again, Vincent Beasely was being escorted from the stand. Something far profounder than straightforward hatred contorted Beasely’s expression as he was led by. His eyes were bugged and raving, his lips writhing, the muscles of his jaw working overtime. His face came at Vilenov like a snake. Vilenov, so startled he didn’t have a chance to lock eyes, could only snap back his head. Knowing and sharing Beasely’s abhorrence, the escorting officer nevertheless restrained him with a quick bending-back of the thumb. It was done with great professionalism. Clenching his teeth all the way, Beasely was thrust up the aisle and out the broad double doors. “Your honor,” Abram offered in the disturbance’s wake, “officer Beasely’s testimony concerning the raid at Ms. Purly’s residence contrasts dramatically with the memories of his fellow crime scene officers. Without going so far as to color his sworn statement perjurious, I will say that it mirrors only the testimony of the state’s surveillance specialists positioned in the apartment above. It seems pretty obvious that Beasely’s present recollection is inspired by a viewing of this bizarre tape at some time subsequent to my client’s arrest. As this tape is fundamentally inadmissible, I would move that Beasely’s testimony also be ruled inadmissible.” Vilenov exchanged glances with the judge. Hatch squirmed a bit, squinched his head into his shoulders, and said testily, “So ruled.” From then on Vilenov’s impressions were increasingly fleeting and disjointed. He would sink into the brief bliss of abyss, only to be jolted by a phrase or name of particular significance. A few minutes of droning testimony, followed by a dream of cool, uncrowded places. Time lost all meaning for Vilenov. The parade of witnesses became a gently pulsing blur. Examination and crossexamination were oscillating murmurs. Judge Hatch’s voice, gradually bringing it all to a focus, just as gradually let it all trail away. To Vilenov’s tender senses, a verbal respiration permeated the room: voices swirled around him, sucked at him, bored through his eardrums, collided in his brain. He passed out. When he reopened his eyes his cheeks were wet with tears. The scene had changed: Abram and Manwell were posed confrontationally between the easels and monitors. One easel featured a blown-up photo of a legal affidavit bearing type and three signatures, the bottommost signature sprawled awkwardly across the page’s lower half. The other easel supported an enlarged photo of the surveillance equipment used in monitoring Purly’s apartment. Both monitors were active. One showed a graph with spiking lines, the other a broad field of brightly colored spectrographic readings. The air was heavy as water. Manwell, her face drawn, stood clamping the folding table’s edge with quivering hands. Abram, appearing focused and relaxed, had just turned to speak directly to the audience. The words made no sense to logy Vilenov: “. . . his polygraphed inability to corroborate the affidavit’s signing is so glaring I would move that the affidavit itself be removed as evidence.” He vaguely heard Hatch speak the name ‘Carre’ twice, then heard Abram respond emphatically, “Again, your honor, Carre’s and Beloe’s polygraph examinations manifestly prevent their swearing 40

Hatch Freak under oath. They do not recall providing signatures.” Something made Vilenov focus all his will on the prosecution’s table. The judge looked at Baker, who dully shook his head. “The evidence,” Hatch said, “is so stricken.” A brief pang passed quietly. Vilenov managed a smile. All he had to do was stare and concentrate, then just kick back and watch the puppets dance. Abram was performing splendidly; his painted eyes and hinged jaw going through the motions without a hitch, his cufflinks and rings winking arrestingly. Although the prosecution was dead in the water and barely able to converse, Baker pushed himself to his feet. “Your honor, the state would like to call Dr. Bertrand Griffith to the stand. Dr. Griffith is a professor of biology at the University of Southern California. He is also a serologist in the occasional employ of LAPD, working out of Parker Center, and an expert in DNA evidence.” Hatch, catching himself drifting, jerked up his head and typed in Griffith’s name. Vilenov watched intently as frail old Dr. Griffith, flustered by all the hallway activity, was ushered down the aisle and sworn in. Hatch highlighted the man’s bio, responding to Griffith’s spoken credentials with a succession of weary nods. “Dr. Griffith,” Baker began, looking down at his notes, “would you please tell the court the results of your DNA comparison tests on those semen samples taken from the residences of Marilyn Purly, Elizabeth Rose, and . . .” he completed the list of eleven names. “Can these samples be established as having a common source?” Griffith creaked forward. His voice, even amplified, was as distant as the wind. “All aforesaid samples are undoubtedly from the same source.” “And, Doctor, isn’t it true that the semen sample procured at the Purly residence was in fact a mixture of this common source semen with saliva demonstrated to be that of Marilyn Purly herself? Speak up, please.” Vilenov’s eyes narrowed. He looked hard at his attorney. Abram jumped up, shaking his head like a dog out of water. “Your honor, the testimony of this witness can only lead us all up a blind alley. The affidavit for that sample has been stricken. By extension the sample itself has no evidentiary value in this proceeding.” “Mr. Abram.” Hatch paused as Vilenov’s eyes pulled at him. With an effort he looked away, found himself, and continued. “A certain sample was tagged and transported to Parker Center, where it was analyzed in conjunction with samples data from the sites of eleven other complainants. The technicians at Parker, as you are aware, are highly competent and thorough in their investigations. The equipment is state of the art.” He rolled his laptop’s mouse and tapped a few keys, calling up the Parker documents. “The court has access to all necessary data for these samples. Now, despite this remarkable gap in the memories of certain individuals at the actual arrest scene, it is quite possible to follow the trail of transporting signatures in reverse, from the lab back to the Purly residence, and to conclude that the sample in question did indeed originate there, without having to incorporate the stricken affidavit. The sample tag was not only signed, it was dated and clocked. Even the odometer readings have been tabulated, and illustrate that a train of transport leading to Purly’s would be consistent within a tenth of a mile. It doesn’t require a Holmesian leap to deduce that the stated sample is germane to both Ms. Purly and to the scene. Signatures or no. The sample will remain in evidence. Mr. Baker?” “Thank you, your honor. Dr. Griffith, did the sample in question consist of common source semen mixed with saliva from the late Ms. Purly?” Vilenov rattled his chains. 41

Hatch

Freak Griffith went absolutely pale. Hatch had to twice order him to sip water and clear his throat before the man was able to whisper timidly, “It did.” “And, Doctor, with all this confusion concerning signatures, conflicting statements, and unreliable eyewitness testimony, how are you able to ascertain that the crime scene saliva is actually Marilyn Purly’s?” Vilenov thrashed in his seat, sparks leaping in his pale gray irises. Griffith looked like a man having a heart attack. “Purly,” he gasped into the microphone, “provided detectives a saliva sample prior to the raid on her apartment.” “So you’re telling the court that the mixture was obtained with foresight; that Purly herself was prepared to acquire an exhibit for the state in this manner?” “Yes!” Directly on that blurted word, the table holding computer and monitors collapsed with a double crash that jolted everyone in the room. One monitor rolled halfway across the floor to the gate bailiff’s shoes. Dead silence. Two seconds later the audience erupted with shouts and uncertain laughter. Hatch immediately slammed down his gavel. While the bailiffs and stenographer set the table back up, he ordered a special officer brought in, then summoned both counsel to the bench. The new officer walked directly across the room and stood behind Vilenov. He rested his hands close together on the chair’s back, his fingers just grazing Vilenov’s shoulder blades. A man of immeasurable ego, Vilenov had deluded himself, from the moment of his arrest to the very conclusion of Griffith’s testimony, that Purly had in fact been set up, that she was his loyal girlfriend to the bloody end. But the doctor’s sworn word was unassailable evidence of her betrayal; it was the final kick to a beaten man’s pride. He closed his knees and arms, embracing himself pathetically. Vilenov shut his eyes so hard tears squeezed between the lids. Half a minute later he sagged. The whisper in his hair snapped his eyes right back open. “Good morning, sir. And how are you feeling on this lovely day? No, don’t turn around. I’ve just been assigned to look after you—to make sure, for example, that nobody accidentally puts his hands around your throat and squeezes and squeezes until those ugly eyes of yours pop clean out of your head.” Vilenov sat perfectly upright. “So it’s important,” the voice went on, “for you to be just as nice as you can possibly be. It’s important because you’re a very unpopular boy. As a matter of fact, you’re so unpopular there isn’t a man in law enforcement who wouldn’t gladly give his eyes for the opportunity to rip your heart out.” The voice sucked air with a serpentine hiss. “Do you know what a dead pool is, fuckface? A dead pool is a kind of game where friends bet to see which celebrity dies first, and the players get points depending on how old the dead celebrity is, calculating backward from a hundred. Well, we’ve set up our own little pool. The difference is there’s only one celebrity, and the bet is how long you last from the time I lead your doomed ass out that door.” Vilenov’s eyes urgently sought the bench, but Hatch was totally caught up with Abram and Baker. “What I need to know up front,” the judge was saying, “is just how dependent on that computer you two are. I’ve got no qualms about the system’s viability—computers may crash, but they seldom burn. However, it’s arguably a crippled situation. By the time a new system is brought in and verified as up-and-running we can all be well along if we focus on computer-extraneous material.” Baker said, “Under the circumstances, I think I’ve completed my examination of this witness. 42

Hatch Freak The prosecution’s future need for technical support of testimony will exist only when the defense brings into play any technical questions concerning testimony.” “Fair enough,” Abram said wryly, “and truly a mouthful.” Tarantulas tugged at the hairs on his nape. Suddenly Abram was sweating profusely. “I’m not prepared to . . .” he stammered, “cross! I’d like . . . please—a quick word with my client.” Hatch nodded, an eyebrow arching. He and Baker watched curiously as Abram walked over to Vilenov, pausing halfway to glare at the restraining officer. The man, stolidly returning the look, stepped very stiffly to the gate and stood with legs wide and hands clasped behind his back, staring at the far wall. Hatch fiddled with his computer while Abram and Vilenov sank into a whispering huddle. Abram tore himself away and stepped back to the bench. “Your honor, my client has voiced a real concern for his safety regarding the officer you’ve assigned. I would ask the court that this man be removed. Mr. Vilenov is more than adequately restrained, and poses no threat to the court or himself.” “Mr. Abram,” Hatch said levelly, “the officer is necessitated due to your client’s continued hostility to this proceeding. Since I’m certain you’ve had ample opportunity to instruct him on courtroom etiquette, I can only assume his behavior is beyond your control. I’m not going to allow him to manipulate. No more rattling of chains, no more conspicuous fidgeting. No more slumping or leering, no more moaning and groaning. As to the imposition of officer Welle, a thirty-year veteran and trusted personal friend; he is here solely to maintain order. Certainly his manner may seem gruff. He has a job to do; he’s not here to spread a little sunshine. Furthermore, his very presence assures your client’s safety, rather than compromises it.” He drummed his fingertips impatiently. “I don’t want to go into contempt here. Does counsel require extra time to refresh Mr. Vilenov on proper courtroom comportment?” “No, your honor.” “Then we’ll proceed.” Abram returned to his seat. The officer stepped back behind Vilenov’s chair. “Dr. Griffith, you may step down. Thank you for your contribution. Mr. Baker?” “Your honor, I would like to call to the stand as state’s witness Dr. Edward Karl Reis.” At the name Vilenov rose like a sidewinder. A pair of very strong hands put him straight back down. Abram pressed his palm on Vilenov’s forearm. With his mouth right up against his client’s ear, he hissed, “Like it or not, you’re going to have to control yourself! Maybe you didn’t notice, but I just got chewed out thanks to your misbehavior. I’ve told you a thousand times that the worst thing you can do is get on the judge’s bad side. He’s a human being like anyone else.” “That’s the one. That’s the son of a bitch who tormented me in every session.” Abram shrugged angrily. Vilenov’s attitude in full view of the court brought out a snarl of resentment. “Who? Reis? I don’t give a damn if he’s the Devil in drag. And guess what, pal: you’re not exactly Mr. Warm-and-Fuzzy yourself. So just shut up already, and pretend you weren’t born in a storm drain. Okay? Is that too abstruse for you? You’re really screwing me here, and that only redounds to your disfavor. Besides, this isn’t a contest. The man’s here to testify.” Vilenov’s mouth fell open. His eyes bulged in their sockets. “It is too a contest! And you will tell the judge you want his testimony barred! Now! The prick’s a liar.” Abram jerked his face away. “I can’t do that! I’m not running this show. Besides, I’d not only be out of order, I’d be out of my mind. So would you please just wait for him to complete his testimony? We’ll have our chance.” “Get up, you thieving puppet,” Vilenov whispered nastily. “Up, backstabber! Get . . . up!” 43

Hatch

Freak

Abram peered at the bench. Hatch was looking daggers. “What did we just discuss?” He thrust forward a hand, the thumb and forefinger spread an inch. “Counsel, you are this close.” Staring coldly at Abram, Baker continued, “Your honor, Reis is a psychiatrist and criminal psychologist. He has interviewed the defendant extensively, while simultaneously overseeing a team of specialists incorporating findings into a series of physical and psychical tests in the alpha spectrum alongside psi evalua—” “Thank you, Mr. Baker.” Hatch was clearly frustrated by the proceedings. “I have Dr. Reis’s credits right here. He is admitted to the stand.” The bailiff opened the courtroom doors and stepped outside. Half a minute later he reappeared with a severe-looking man in a light gray suit. Reis walked with an odd limp suggesting prosthesis: his progress was slow, and his right foot seemed to tremble an instant before meeting the floor. He looked like a Nazi death camp administrator; an officious workaholic who could write you off pleasantly or spare you with indifference. That said, he was a grimly handsome man, with a salt-andpepper crew cut and iron jaw. Vilenov stared venomously as the doctor limped down the aisle. Reis ignored him completely, steadfastly staring straight ahead. He climbed into the stand with great dignity, and with great dignity was sworn in. “Dr. Reis,” Hatch said equably, “you are chief investigator over a team of specialists specifically involved in an inquiry into the defendant’s mental processes?” “This,” Reis lisped, “is a statement of fact.” Hatch looked from Abram to Baker with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. He turned back to Reis. “Rather than become immersed in a lengthy examination right now, Doctor, I’d like you to present to this court an overview of your sessions with the defendant, and a summary of your conclusions.” Reis nodded curtly. He moved back from the microphone and cleared his throat, clasped his hands on his lap. Leaning forward, he spoke to the room with the measured monotone of a man talking down a suicide. “First of all, I want to testify that this was not a compliant subject. He resented and despised me from the outset; extracting information from Mr. Vilenov was like squeezing blood from the proverbial turnip. However, by patiently and persistently addressing his demons, which are by the way all familial, I was eventually able to attain a fairly clear picture of a most extraordinary personality.” “Go on, Doctor.” Reis appeared to brighten. “Well, Mr. Vilenov’s story is one of remarkable dysfunction, and though it is rife with Old World superstition, and contains a tiresome defense of patently supernatural events, its consistency and brooding sincerity provide, in my professional opinion, the necessary clue to his bizarre temperament and behavior. His is a capital example of what I like to call premise spin: by genuinely believing in the hocus-pocus that makes up his interpretation of reality, he enables all the impossible events and ludicrous interpretations that support that interpretation to become perfectly credible.” A harsh report of chains. Before anyone could prevent it, Vilenov was halfway to his feet. “Enough with the ‘hocus-pocus,’ man! What did I tell you?” Hatch sat straight up, slamming down his palms. “Officer! You will restrain the defendant!” The hands were like pile drivers. That menacing voice behind him said, “Don’t speak until his honor says you can.” Then, in a snarling whisper, “Now shut your fucking face!” Hatch was about to ream Abram when he fell into Vilenov’s furious gray eyes. A great sigh 44

Hatch Freak broke from his lungs like a death rattle. Exercising tremendous control, he said, “You may proceed, Doctor.” Looking everywhere but at Vilenov, Reis wriggled his shoulders and took his deepest breath. “Well, the subject appears to have been overwhelmingly influenced by his father, a gothic figure performing in a traveling circus in post-war Eastern Romania. The subject’s senile mother was the better half of his act, and the two made a lucrative living, and eventually a considerable fortune, by buffaloing the superstitious peasantry with magic acts, ectoplasmic inducements, séances, and the like. The woman pretended to move random objects telekinetically—no doubt with the assistance of her trained sons and daughter—while her husband, a man disturbing both in looks and demeanor, made a black, unforgettable show of hypnosis. It was very stark and primitive, and all the more effective for its crudity. Just imagine these two purely theatrical characters exploiting the ancient superstitions of a well-primed audience, lost in some Godforsaken field under a cold white moon. Anyway, as I understand it, the defendant’s mother was a sensational magician, but his father was so convincing he could milk whole crowds of their valuables through suggestion alone. That is to say, he could master his subjects’ psyches using only his presence, as though it were a weapon. Fascinating stuff. But he was too egomaniacal for his own—” “No!” Vilenov lunged to his feet and was immediately seized in a bear hug from behind. Observers gasped in waves as security personnel and bailiffs hurried over. Vilenov stood tall. “No, goddamn you! There wasn’t any magic. This is all bullshit!” He was locked in by six strong hands. “Your honor,” he called out, struggling while trying to hold the judge’s eyes, “this witness is manipulating the facts! I’ve been jerked round and round by this guy. He doesn’t listen!” Vilenov abruptly pressed his pounding temple into his shoulder. “You’re all bullshit!” On the penultimate syllable Reis’s hands shot to his chest and his upper body lurched forward. His skull connected with a thunk on the stand’s massive oak rail. The entire audience rose with shouts of rage, fear, and bloodlust. Hatch hammered his gavel repeatedly. “Officers! You will bring this court to order!” Vilenov was slammed down on his chair. The uniforms quickly intimidated the audience, and in less than a minute the room was contained. Hatch left to check on a hazy, rapidly blinking Reis. He pulled back an eyelid and studied the doctor’s color, checked his pulse. He excused Reis, and was just resuming the bench, staring angrily at the defense, when Vilenov overcame his pain and threw his whole soul into the judge’s eyes. Hatch seemed to sink into his robes. He motioned back the restraining officer. Vilenov stood and kicked over his chair, then used his cuffed hands to heave the table on its side, producing a flurry of loose papers. The room stopped on a dime. “Permission,” Vilenov hissed in the echoes, “to approach the bench.” “Step forward.” He could barely walk in his shackles. A few feet from the bench he lowered his temple to his shoulder and whispered, as much to himself as to Hatch, “Man, I’m about as sick of this crap as I can be.” Vilenov took a minute to control his breathing. “I’ve had my skull cracked open by some illiterate old fool, been betrayed by my baby, diddled by doctors, and screwed by my attorney. Otherwise, Your Wonderfulness, I’d have to say I’ve been treated pretty darned well.” He shook his chains at the doors covering Reis‘s exit. “But what bugs me more than anything is having that coat hanger define my existence!” Vilenov rolled his neck. “He’s history now.” He smiled bitterly. “My life’s been a trip, man, a stone trip. And it’s time to lay it down. So you tell everybody to pay real close attention here, and to not make any noise. I’ve got to get this out while the moment’s ripe.” Hatch inclined his head to the left. Vilenov climbed into the witness box, his restraints causing 45

Hatch Freak him to move like an old man. The assigned officer stepped right into the box behind him, positioning himself against the wall at arm’s-length. Every time Vilenov tried to meet the officer’s eyes the man deliberately turned away. Vilenov shrugged. When he was seated comfortably his gaze swept the room. Spectators reacted with a shuffling of shoes and nervous clearing of throats. The judge leaned forward and froze, using body language to squelch even these minor, normally forgivable noises. Half a minute later he turned back to Vilenov. “All right, sir. You’ve got your chance.” Vilenov ignored him. Hatch a-hemmed. “I’m . . . listening.” Suddenly he felt the onset of a tremendous yawn. He raised a hand, feigning casualness. Once the hand was covering the bottom half of his face he closed his eyes and let the yawn rip.

46

Chapter Seven Vilenov “The state’s inspired criminal psychologist,” Vilenov said icily, “is casually rewriting my personal history; picking and choosing points that work for him, spinning the facts so my life sounds like a joke. It isn’t a joke. I’m going to tell you all exactly what happened, and I won’t fabricate a thing. And then, just in case you think you’ve got me up against the wall here, I’m gonna redefine for you the phrase ‘captive audience’.” His eyes were now the center of gravity for over a hundred slack faces. Vilenov began his story in a monotone, as though speaking into a machine, giving attention to descriptive detail over feeling. Gradually the color returned to his cheeks. His speech grew more buoyant when he relived certain events, but quickly bottomed out from associated headaches. Vilenov compensated with selfcontrol, always aiming for the mean. Except for an occasional wince during a particularly troubling memory, his expression remained even and his voice cold, though at times his desire to paint an accurate picture lent his account an ascendant, almost poetic quality. There were moments of struggle with graphic imagery, and instances of calm wholly inappropriate to the violent pulse of his story. But overall, the tenor of Vilenov’s narrative most closely resembled a confession, yet one without guilt or shame. His manacled hands now and then pulled at the thick oak rail before him, and, though his head intermittently rocked with pain, his eyes never lost their sway. “What that moron told you about my European roots is accurate, but all the stuff about ‘acts,’ and ‘buffaloing,’ was just a bunch of crap he made up to impress you. He wasn’t there; I was.” He took a deep breath. “Yes, my parents were performers in a Romanian circus; yes, I emigrated illegally; yes, I’ve spent my entire adult life haunting the mean streets of Surf City, U.S.A. My mother died in Lodz; Father went up in smoke right here in Venice. Grandmother, Dimitri—the whole family’s in the ground. 47

Vilenov Freak “Well, let’s see now . . . the old man was a cold son of a bitch, known in the business as . . . how do I anglicize it . . . we didn’t have a word for mesmerist—let’s just call him ‘the Great Mikhail,’ and leave it at that. A human magnet, able to attract a crowd anywhere. But not by trying to, mind you, just by being nearby. Mikhail was the show’s feature attraction when he met my mother, Marta, in a village outside Brasov. He was so impressed with her bang-up telekinesis act that he married her on the spot, and induced the owner to hire her on. From then on he was her personal manager and barker. “If ever there was a union made in Hell—to hear Grandmother tell it, things got ugly right off the bat with those two. Any place the coaches stopped there’d be trouble. Customers took to brawling under the moon, women broke out in catfights and lewd displays. The emotion passed, back and forth, between my parents and the crowd, gaining in steam as the performances wore on. Mother grew able to topple distant objects with great violence. Father became the epicenter of the whole countryside’s rage. People hated them. They feared them. But they kept coming back. And all the while Mikhail’s hold was increasing dramatically. Especially his hold on women. “You see, my old man had this absolutely ferocious sexual appetite; he must have spent half his life dodging angry husbands and fathers. His method was crude, but effective: he’d simply approach women out of the blue, bump right up on them, and envelop them in what good ol’ Doctor Reis rightly termed ‘his presence.’ Father went on like this, brazenly, even after he’d married Marta. She gave him two sons, Dimitri and Constantine, and a daughter, Elena. When things got too close he influenced the show’s owner to outfit him with a larger, finer living coach, and for a number of years they all traveled like royalty, relatively speaking. “In time Mikhail grew so influential he didn’t need to perform. All he had to do was hold a customer in his sway and the guy would gladly turn over the deed to his farm. A great deal of riches rolled in over the years; gold and silver, precious stones and jewelry—all stashed beneath the floorboards of that splendid coach. By then Father and Mother could easily have made it on their own, but they elected to stay with the troupe. Circus crowds were still the best bet. “Fame was honey to Father’s ego. Success made him brasher and brasher; soon he was taking the peasant girls in plain sight. Who knows how many poor bastards that monster produced. The man was insatiable. “Anyway, I was born sometime in the mid-sixties. Father and Mother were both in their fifties, and still going strong. Dimitri had taken a wife; a fourteen year-old farm girl named Kirin. Mikhail was regularly violating his own daughter Elena, so she and Constantine flew the coop, deciding they’d rather live with the wolves than with the devil. That left Father, Mother, Dimitri, and Kirin; a family quickly rearranged upon my birth, for Mother, tough and fertile as she was, couldn’t handle the strain of childbirth at her age. Her death was a crushing blow to gentle Dimitri, but it wasn’t any skin off Father. Before she was even in the ground he was working on Kirin. “Dimitri freaked. One black night, with wine in his belly, he caught them in the act and took a saber to the old man. The next morning Dimitri was found in an open field; his guts cut out by that same saber, and by his own hand. “Locals were spooked by the rumors. And now, with his dark name blackened even further, the Great Mikhail’s business was falling off correspondingly. He grew increasingly distant and restless, finally setting off upon the Carpathians in that magnificent coach, with only me and Kirin, to seek fresh meat. I still have vivid memories of clopping along in the darkness, bundled up between that silent oak of a man and his shell-shocked plaything. Before I was nine years old I was a total mess. “It was in the vicinity of Cluj-Napoca that Father, having just influenced a group of American tourists out of their luggage and cash, had an experience that radically changed his life, and indirectly 48

Vilenov Freak led to all you lovely, law-abiding ladies and gentlemen, sitting with me so patiently in this wonderful room. But it will seem such a trivial event. “What Father found at the bottom of a pinched suitcase was a single postcard, posted from Venice Beach, right here in sunny Southern California. I distinctly recall my first-and-only glimpse, and remember understanding, subliminally, that no human being other than he was ever to view it again. “The postcard’s face was a glossy, full-color photograph of six bronzed, nearly nude beach bunnies frolicking in the surf with a bright red Frisbee. This card just blew my father’s mind. For weeks he was severely depressed and withdrawn; couldn’t speak, couldn’t eat, couldn’t screw. The peasant girls became slime to him, and Kirin just another homely pig. He never spoke of it, but I felt his resolve as he hurried our horses west. Mikhail was a man on a mission. “He sold the horses and coach in Hungary, and we took a train for Portugal. Father didn’t trust currency, so he made us drag satchels stuffed with gold wherever we went. He didn’t need it; he could take what he wanted. But he wasn’t letting go of his hoard. The Great Mikhail answered only to the Grim Reaper. Also, he was dead-on in his assessment of humanity. The flash of gold moved men far quicker than the application of his will. “In Lisbon we boarded an enormous steamer. For two weeks Father was a walking time bomb; seasick one day, unbearably restless the next. The endless ocean was a terrible blow to his ego. He lost all sexual appetite, and, strange now that I think about it, it was the only time I’ve seen women repelled by him. When he got cabin fever he’d storm on deck, scattering passengers and coalescing the crew. Everybody would watch in dead silence while he stood at the bow; his tall, wind-blown shape standing out against the horizon like a gnarly prow. Finally he’d stomp back down to our cabin and lose himself in that damned postcard. “Soon as we disembarked in New York the tiger was out of his cage. Reinvigorated by all the hookers and strip clubs, Father sold pounds of gold and jewelry for quick American cash, but his manners and appearance were just too profane. In Albuquerque the law came down on us. We were run out of town on a rail, so to speak; Father bundled us onto a train and we began our long, eyepopping journey across this beautiful country. “He’d learned from his New York experiences. When we reached Los Angeles he managed to control his urges, though the sight of bikinis, the smell of suntan oil, and the sudden feel of a bright baking sun just tore him up. He bought a gothic, two-storied house in Old Venice, halfway down Wave Crest between Speedway and Pacific. Not two blocks from the beach, only half a mile from the Canals. He was drawn to this sagging old place, I suppose, because it reminded him of the rambling structures back home. “He really fell in love with that old Ocean Front Walk in Venice; you could tell the carnivallike atmosphere brought back his showman’s memories. Father, with his huge graying beard and flowing black robes, blended right in. Street artists had a field day with him, and pretty soon his likeness was popping up everywhere; on silk-screened T-shirts, on posters, on canvases. Kids mimicked his long gliding gait, little schoolgirls ran screaming with their hands tucked between their legs. Father himself grew less and less anxious, though he’d never allow his picture taken, or engage in any conversation beyond grunts and monosyllables. It wasn’t just that his grasp of English was so limited. He could have learned, in time. But he was too busy for distractions. He was looking, always looking. “Mikhail began bringing home some of the loveliest, least-clad bunnies he could find, and introducing them into his stable. Initially there was this big confused outrage in our neighborhood, but when it came right down to it nobody really wanted a piece of him; a look from Father was like 49

Vilenov Freak ice on your heart. This strange, brooding tension hung over Wave Crest. Neighbors went about their lives without humor or interest, letting their houses fall apart and their yards go to hell. Wave Crest is actually a walk, not a street, maybe ten feet wide. There are lots of trees. Those trees were allowed to grow together overhead, cutting out the sun. Inside this dreary tunnel, if you had the balls to peep through your blinds, you just might see my father silently gliding along with a clinging, shivering bunny. And then you’d turn away and forget what you saw, and the bogeyman and his bunny would disappear into the bowels of the huge dilapidated two-story. “It was a suffocating atmosphere for an eleven year-old boy, a grim sex freeway. At any time there may have been eight or nine women living in our house, and Father, true to form, made no secret of his activities. I couldn’t pass a day without seeing him going at it like a dog. “But it was during this period that he began to show a real paternal interest in me. Never spoke, never gestured; just made his points with looks of approval or disapproval. He commanded Grandmother to educate me, in our native tongue, on the manifold glories of his black career and filthy conquests. Soon he grew sick of her plodding, and, I think, sick of his own ignorance. He began coming home not only with bunnies, but with school teachers. These women were engaged in my education from the ground up, and they were totally devoted to my progress. The English language was drilled into my brain. I was kept prisoner in a book-lined room, schooled relentlessly by one after the other. I had literally hundreds of ‘mothers’ over those few years, hand-picked to educate me by leaps and bounds in the sciences, in literature, in philosophy. Once a ‘mother’s’ potential was exhausted, she was disposed of and never seen again, replaced by a new ‘mother’ able to school me at a higher level. I was force-fed a quality, rounded education, entirely against my will. But you, who’ve never experienced this man’s will, don’t know how effective his looks could be. His eyes impaled you, absorbed you, commanded you. And so I learned. “One powerful lesson I took from this succession of ‘mothers’ didn’t come by way of books. When I hit puberty a change came in my studies. My ‘mothers’ rapidly became more physical, then seriously groping, then urgently sexual. At first I was bewildered by the unblinking passion of their advances, and thought only of hiding. But the constant cramming—the books, the commands, the encouragement—had taught me to think. Father’s influence, especially over women, became my whole focus. I got into some heavy studies at night, locked in that drafty room with a flashlight and a thousand books. I brooded over biochemical catalysts and adaptive functions, thought long and hard about the forces directing propagation, and ended up with an insider’s view of certain related phenomena which aren’t normally cross-referenced, simply because they seem so obviously unrelated. I walked the line between science and the occult; reading extensively on the natural and the supernatural, and cataloguing rumors of the paranormal—rumors considered basic facts in the Old World for centuries. I discovered things, man; things you candy Christians will never know. Clairvoyance, mind reading, communication with animals . . . these aren’t magic powers! Freaks, I was fast catching on, are glandular superhighways. “And I learned of peoples and cultures throughout history, noting the normal range of behavior and appetite. I’d had an epiphany, one of many: my studies on androgenic processes, and especially on pheromones, came at a point in my development when I was beginning to realize my father had to be the horniest man to ever live. You see, it’s all about procreation. That’s what the so-called ‘meaning of life’ is. It struck me, even then, that the ability to stimulate the opposite sex is one of the stronger forces in animal nature, and that those individuals possessing this procreative virtue in the greatest degree will produce more offspring, and so further their strain. I’m not stupid, man. I know it’s all just a great big stampede of hormones. The crux of reproduction is quantity, not quality. Evolution isn’t ‘survival of the fittest,’ for Christ’s sake. In the long run, linearly, it’s survival of the 50

Vilenov Freak most prolific. They are the cream of the crop. I got this idea of a natural channel; like a sieve, if you can picture it, that singles out highly specialized individuals, bringing the most audacious creations to the fore, to a finer, less ‘polluted’ state. This notion might seem a little strange in this fine, upstanding courthouse—that the best specimen is the least democratic, that in raw nature lack of restraint is a tremendous asset. “Trends are disseminated, okay? The herd passes them along in their offspring. Over many generations, they define the herd’s general behavior, general direction, general appetite. But in a single line, also after many generations, this same process can produce traits. Follow me here: a pack leader is not a pack leader because, out of all members in the pack, this leader just happens to be the specimen best suited for the position. A pack leader is an individual genetically groomed for the job, through innumerable generations of very specialized pack leaders. But the strain must be kept as pure as possible, through the ‘in-breeding,’ if you will, of exemplary specimens. Listen, you clueless Gumbies: in our own time a president, a general, or a CEO, is not a specimen ‘best suited for the job!’ In that super-achiever’s blood courses the rage, the lust, and the indomitable spirit of super-achievers long wed to the dust. The greatest genealogist on this planet might not be able to detect the lineal connection, but it’s there. And all these super-specimens may croak early because of their excesses, and not leave a trace. “Except in their seed. “And I recognized Father as the bearer of an antediluvian torch; perhaps the sole representative of some primitive stock that didn’t mutate for the good of the herd, or die out as a useless anomaly, but actually evolved—if I dare use the word—in virility, in herd-sway, generation by generation, along a very specialized, and very effective line. It made me curse all my studies, made me sweat in my dreams, because the next freak in line was Yours Truly! It totally scared the shit out of me. You see, despite a healthy desire to love and be loved, I loathed that man from the bottom of my heart. No way did I want to become him. “Like a physical blow, I saw my parents’ union as a perfectly inevitable coincidence. They were part of a collateral line. Both were highly specialized individuals. Both embodied primitive traits melded and focused to the nth degree. And I was their product. Man, it was in my frigging genes! I tried telling myself that I’d been thinking too hard, that I’d got hold of what must seem, to all you glass-eyed dummies, an absolutely silly idea. But this silly idea was made more and more believable by the increasingly wild advances of my ‘mothers.’ “I was my father’s son, no doubt about it. Mikhail’s women were paying ever closer attention, fondling me, tearing at me, while his jealousy simmered. Even Grandmother showed signs of affection that were not strictly ‘family.’ “You see, when I was younger, and especially during this string of ‘mothers,’ it had been convenient for clarity’s sake that Mikhail instill in Kirin a penchant for calling herself ‘grandmother,’ and myself ‘grandson.’ These became our pet names for each other, and, in time, our general understanding. In the end nothing could have convinced me otherwise, for Kirin sure looked the part. She was only twenty-eight, but Father’s incessant sexual assaults made her appear sixty. “And her advances became less and less subtle with each passing day, until one summer morning I woke up flat on my back, straddled by this naked, burned-out hag. She was out of her mind with lust. Before I even knew what was doing, the door burst open to reveal Father’s hunched silhouette, trimmed in rose by the first rays of dawn. “Mikhail bashed her over and over with a twisted old poker from the front room hearth. He struck her like a man laying into a snake, then chased her screaming and spurting around the room until she collapsed against the wall, half-buried in tumbled books. He turned on me slowly, raising 51

Vilenov Freak the bloody poker high, but I instinctively threw a hand over my eyes, grabbed my pants, and blindly dashed from the room. “I remember running along the beach . . . hiding in the handball courts at Muscle Beach . . . running crying through yards . . . trying to ditch him at the Canals. But it seemed I couldn’t turn without seeing him; all black robes and salt-and-pepper beard, gliding somberly in the morning fog while tapping that poker like a blind man. At times he would freeze in my direction, and I’d cringe as he stood there, feeling the area. But he was never able to locate me, and I became convinced he was only hip to my whereabouts when I was on the move. So I stayed put and outwaited him, pushing myself deeper into the embankment under a pretty little painted bridge, holding my breath while ducks and tiny crabs cruised and clambered beside me. “After a while Mikhail touched the poker to the ground, picking up vibrations. He moved left and right with infinite slowness, sensing all around. Slowly, slowly he turned to face the bridge, staring very hard. The poker rose almost imperceptibly, until it pointed directly between my eyes. “But his concentration was broken by a jogger, puffing across a street-to-canal walkway between two old houses. When my father turned back he was rattled. He cursed, raised the poker high overhead, and shook it in silent rage. Instantly a small tethered rowboat writhed on the water, and a front room window erupted into a thousand shards. “He began moving back toward home, the neighborhood dogs howling insanely at his approach, and whining like kittens once he’d passed. I continued watching him glide along, pausing every hundred yards or so to inspect the area, until at last he passed out of sight. “That whole morning I walked the beach north, always keeping to the waterline. I was out of my mind with fear, because I knew Father would kill me when he found me. I knew it. You who’ve never been under his influence will never understand what I’m rapping about here. You’re chilled; chilled to the marrow. That man’s shadow weighed a ton. So I walked with my feet in the surf; I’d already resolved to throw myself under the waves and drown the instant I felt him near. I walked all the way to Malibu before I finally fell on the sand and cried like a baby. I spent the whole day there, hiding from the sun, thinking about my situation. And I realized my life was over. I’d never be able to sleep. I’d always be afraid I’d wake and find him looming over me, his eyes burning like coals. Not until late afternoon did I begin the long walk home. “When I came within a mile of our house it was twilight. I found myself loitering around the open back door of a mom-and-pop hardware store, going through these little panic attacks. Then, without even thinking about it, I stepped inside and picked up a gallon can of kerosene. The huge shadow of the owner fell on me, and I remember wilting, and our eyes meeting. “Now a really strange thing happened. This guy gently disengaged the can and placed it back on the shelf, took my little hand and led me a ways down the aisle. He picked out four cans of Coleman lantern fuel and set them by my feet, walked to the front counter and returned with an oversized brown paper bag, placed the fuel in the bag, and the bag in my arms. I then followed him around the store, stopping beside him whenever he paused to pick something off a shelf and deposit it in the bag. He dropped in a box of strike-anywhere matches and a carton of those long wooden fireplace matches, added a sparker for barbecues, a long-nosed butane lighter, Sterno cans, a propane canister, and a handful of emergency candles. When he reached for the charcoal I realized there was no logic to his actions, just a robotic compulsion that caused him to grab anything under the category of combustibles. “I stood there in the aisle, blinking wonderingly at him. After a minute he seemed to feel my hesitation, led me back out the rear entrance and gently closed the door. “For a while I leaned against a trash bin with the stuffed bag in my arms, then slowly made my 52

Vilenov Freak way home. I patiently squeezed through a break in the alley fence and crouched in the backyard bushes, as motionless as a lawn jockey. The lights were on, upstairs and down, and I knew Father was having his way with his stable. I didn’t move. At ten o’clock the lights went off and the house settled in for the night. I willed myself to stone; refusing to yawn, refusing even to blink. “Around midnight the back screen door opened silently, and my father’s high black silhouette glided out onto the dilapidated rear porch, seemingly without moving a muscle. He gripped the sagging rail and waited. He must have stood there motionlessly for an hour or more, embroidered by bougainvillea and night blooming jasmine, utilizing God knows what senses. Finally his head began turning with extreme slowness. He was feeling the yard. As the plane of his gaze approached mine I took a chance and closed my eyes as gently as possible, lest the brushing of my lashes seize his attention. “I’m not sure how long I crouched there. I remember cautiously opening my eyes to find the back porch vacated, but not until three a.m. did I find the courage to unbend my legs. Now, I knew Father was a very heavy sleeper. Even so, I spent another fifteen minutes creeping up to his bedroom window. “Like most windows in Venice on hot summer nights, ours were wide open. I very carefully poured Coleman fuel all along the sill so that it trickled down the inner and outer walls. Then I moved around the house, soaking the sills and drenching the curtains. After splashing Coleman on the doors and porches, I crept around a second time, lighting curtains, sills and porches with those long fireplace matches. I torched the house. “I didn’t give a damn about the old man’s innocent harem. All I know is I ran. I ran as if the Devil were after me, and didn’t stop until I heard distant sirens. A bright rage of flame was leaping over Wave Crest. “I slept under Santa Monica Pier that night. When I woke, hungry and scared, I was amazed to find beachgoers offering me more food and money than I could handle, and without a word on my part. I’d come of age! Wherever I went, people bent to me. At first it wasn’t all that radical, but it developed. And once I was comfortable with it I slept in the plushest hotels, and ate gourmet meals until I was sick of ’em. “Yet there were drawbacks. A moment of anger or fear, and weird crap would happen. If I got pissed at any little thing there’d be a physical consequence somewhere nearby. Maybe a clock would fall off a wall, maybe a chair would tip over. Or maybe some prying son of a bitch would suffer sudden stabbing pains. I began experimenting. Soon I was producing violent temporary changes in my immediate environment; I was literally walking around in a sphere of influence. When I first got into it, even when really concentrating, I could only slightly affect very small objects within a few yards. But I remember right now, as clearly as I remember breakfast, this intense little boy standing on the beach before sunrise . . . scattering gulls by desire alone . . . setting small fires in trash heaps, just by willing it so. And I see him growing into manhood, and I see him walking through the world taking anything he wanted, and I see him making life just a tad more miserable for all you recurrent assholes. “And assholes . . . assholes—when I was fifteen, or maybe only fourteen—I began exploiting the tender, the succulent, the easy buffet of Woman. Are you listening? I did your wife, Mister Everyman, and I’ll do your mother, too. I’ll do your daughter, I’ll do your niece, I’ll do your goddamned fucking bitch dog if I feel like it! Just like I did everybody I ever wanted, whether they wanted it or not. You trust me on this: my life has been one long plunge into pussy. And you know what? I didn’t care if they were married, or pregnant, or on the rag. Or whether they were on their way to grade school or the senior center. As long as they were packaged. You know what I mean? 53

Vilenov Freak Every man knows what I mean. As long as they had the right stuff. In the right places. “I’ve had thousands of women, man . . . tens of thousands. I spent my teens, my twenties, my thirties . . . doing whatever I wanted! Doing what every man wants. When I was broke I just walked into any store and had the clerk hand me some cash. When I got hungry or sleepy it was a simple matter of ordering. And when I got horny, man, when I saw a hefty pair jiggling and wiggling down the strand, I didn’t have to almost pass out with desire like you losers. I’d have that bikini off in no time, and be right back in paradise! Are you paying attention, assholes? Is any of this getting through to you? I can make any of your bitches do whatever I want, just as I can make any of you do whatever I want. Just as I can make you see and remember what I want you to see and remember. “You all think this is some kind of real-time drama going on here, don’t you? You think your homespun righteousness is just gonna come crashing down like a virtuous wall, and destroy me for indulging in the very activity you’ve spent half your lives fantasizing about. You think I’ll be punished for what I’ve done with my blind luck. Just like you believe your ship’s coming in, just like you believe your God’s so bored He’d give a crap about a pissant like you, just like you believe your half-assed Constitution proves all the freak products of existence gravitate into some lukewarm puddle where nobody gets any more than anybody else. But it doesn’t work like that. Life is a cruel crapshoot that favors the outrageous. And what’s really going to happen is this: “I’m gonna walk out of here in triumph, the vindicated victim of your funky white witch hunt. I’ll be a free man again! Because your honor-my ass is about to rule I’ve been hounded by the cops, unjustly incarcerated, and caged like a wild animal for the sake of public opinion. Not only that, he’s gonna apologize for all the trouble this state, and you people, have caused me, and he’s gonna mean it! Plus, he’ll make damn sure I get out of this pesthole without being screwed by that mob of geeks out there. And my self-serving counsel, before he tries to get out of Dodge with the shitload of cash he’s ripped from me, will take it doggy-style from my new buddy Orin here, in full view of this court. Then the DA, once I look him in the eyes, will get on his knees, kiss my hairy white ass, and bow out of office permanently. And the rest of you meatballs? Book deals, movie contracts, speaking engagements? Is that what you’re all thinking? Well, you’d better dream while you can. Because as soon as I train one of your goons to get these chains off me, I’m gonna march right back in, and I’m gonna tear you all to pieces; slowly, exquisitely, as creatively as I can. “Don’t mistake me here. You’re under my influence. The judgment of this court will be in my favor, and each and every one of you will sing my praises. And even as you’re singing I’ll be prodding you and probing you and carving you up like the turkeys you are. And you’ll like it. Because I’ll tell you to like it. You’re all sucking whores and frauds.” Vilenov smacked his palm twice on the oak rail, imitating a gavel-rapping judge. “I rest my case. Your Majesty, you may proceed.” And the huge yawn passed, allowing Hatch to just as nonchalantly remove his hand. “Apparently Mr. Vilenov,” he sighed, “is unwilling to communicate after all.” He took off his glasses, massaged the bridge of his nose with forefinger and thumb. When he looked back up his expression was deadly. “This court finds no alternative to ordering the immediate release of defendant Nicolas Vilenov. The District Attorney’s office has been overzealous in this matter, and has allowed due process to take a back seat to public opinion. The defendant was unjustly incarcerated. From the outset the state’s case has relied on physical evidence that cannot be corroborated by eyewitness testimony, and circumstantial evidence that is dubious at best. Mr. Vilenov, his name sullied, was carted through the streets of L.A. like a caged wild animal. It is the prayer of this court that his release will in some measure be vindication for the victim of a modern witch hunt. For the State of California in general, and for the people of Los Angeles County in particular, I apologize 54

Vilenov Freak from the bottom of my heart. Mr. Vilenov, your entry into this usually august chamber was an ignominious event, and a real danger to your physical and spiritual well-being. For your safety you will be escorted from the building through an alternate entrance.” He tapped his gavel twice. “This is now a civil matter. You are a free man again.” “Get up,” said the officer behind Vilenov. “Get up, very quietly, and march your ass to the door.” Vilenov rose unsteadily, his chains clanking about him. The officer, spooning right up, grabbed him by the nape and a bicep. “I thought I said ‘quietly’!” “Can do,” Vilenov grunted. “Sir. But let’s waltz out of here like a couple of winners, shall we? We can discuss our differences in the corridor.” He tried to look back as he was shoved from the room, but could only make out the badge and nametag. “Welcome to Manners 101, officer . . . Welle, is it? Well, Welle, pay real close attention here. Professor Vilenov’s in the house.” “Now,” said Hatch, staring coldly at Abram, “I think it’s time we cleared up a little smoke. Generally speaking, a defendant in my court is acquitted on the strength of the evidence and his counsel’s arguments. Rarely have I seen a client less ably served. Mr. Abram, in your many years as an extremely successful defense attorney you have, to my knowledge, never compromised your integrity. But you sure seem to have gone out of your way today. As I mentioned earlier, I view the courtroom as a solemn and virtuous place. It is not a forum for well-heeled sophists. When Mr. Vilenov took the stand, desperate to interject a clear voice yet unable to utter a word, I couldn’t help but feel he was tongue-tied because of the confusion you’d sown.” “Your honor,” Abram managed, “I am no less confused. I’ve spent endless hours preparing Mr. Vilenov to speak in his own be—” “Counsel, you’ll hold your tongue!” Abram dropped his head as though facing a firing squad. Hatch went on with mounting fury, pounding his gavel like an overseer beating time in a slave galley. “In case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Abram, you are being admonished here. You have embarrassed this court and made a mockery of the Bar!” He caught his breath and dropped the gavel. His face was quite red. “Now go on. Get out of my courtroom before I forget who and where I am. Be advised that you will not humiliate the legal profession before me again.” He pushed himself to his feet, and without another word stormed from the room. In dead silence the bailiff mumbled, “Everybody rise.” Lawrence Abram snapped shut his briefcase, the reports resonating like the double-slam of a paramedic’s van. He marched through the doors and out the building, his briefcase in front of his head, his face down. To the army of reporters he had only one comment, which was “No comment.” For a crazy minute he was flailing; drowning in a sea of pleading humanity. But there was a sound beacon: he heard the dot dash dot dot, dot dash of a car’s horn, Morse for LA, Larry Abram. He worked in the sound’s direction until he found Dottie waiting, the door open and the Lexus humming. Abram jumped in and slammed the door. He sank low in the seat, burying his head in court papers as the car slowly pressed back the crowd.

That bright white light was going to burn right through his eyelids if he didn’t turn his head. Vilenov moved only a millimeter and his temple screamed with pain. He froze, closing his eyes even tighter. He could survive the light. But at that moment he’d have rather died than repeat the agony. 55

Vilenov Freak There was a stirring near his feet. Low voices. A narrow head eclipsed the light. “Good morning, asshole,” the head said pleasantly. The light, a high-watt bulb centered in an inverted stainless steel bowl, was swung aside to reveal the sneering face of Vincent Beasely. Vilenov’s eyes desperately sought reference. He was flat on his back, strapped to a table in an oblong storeroom for medical equipment. Along the wall to his left, a stainless steel counter held tagged syringes, gauze wraps, and scalpels folded in sterilized towels. The room reeked of antiseptics. A man wearing a white smock was leaning against the closed door, his hairy arms folded across his chest. Heavy black eyeglasses perched halfway down his nose as he peered at the waking confrontation. Beasely was stepping back and forth behind Vilenov’s head with all the fire of a Rottweiler taunted by a trespasser. “That was a really pretty speech you gave in the courtroom, pigface. I know, because I was standing in the transfer corridor with my ear against the door the whole time. And when you were brought out I gave you such a whack on the temple, man—man, I hit you so hard you’re not gonna be able to screw anybody for a long, long time. I did it right, too. Just before the trial the gallant Doctor Reis showed me exactly where to strike the temple, and exactly how hard, using only a trusty nightstick. A little too hard and I could have killed you. But that would’ve spoiled all the fun. Besides, you’re already a dead man. But not walking.” Beasely reached to his left and rocked a gurney back and forth. “You’re a dead man rolling.” He leaned forward, his garlicky breath suffocating. “Now it’s time to give you the lowdown on some radical news I just know you’re gonna find real interesting. Dig: you were never slated to go roamin’ again, horn-dog! Never! You’re back in the criminal ward of Western State Hospital, where you were rushed by ambulance immediately following your unfortunate accident in the corridor. We’ll get those steps fixed yet. “I don’t know if you realize just how fascinating you are to a whole lot of people, punk; some who want to see you dead right away, some who aren’t in such a hurry. There’s a big team of specialists on this ward who aren’t at all satisfied with your pre-trial results, and these guys have put their heads together. They’ve decided to do a little experimenting. On the side, if you know what I mean.” He winked. “And guess what? These guys don’t like you either!” At the bottom of his vision, Vilenov saw the police surgeon slowly shake his head. The signal was unnecessary; he wasn’t so messed up he’d believe in an underground conspiracy of mad doctors. The only genuine lunatic was right in his face. “Look, you’re not gonna be offed first, okay? That’s way too good for the likes of you. And it’s way too traumatic an event for the organs. Gas, juice, rope, or injection—any of these procedures could end up damaging whatever freak biological factor makes you tick, and above all else the medical community is passionately interested in slowly, thoroughly checking you out, piece by piece. They don’t want any overwhelming shock to the system, see? And no jolt to the brain.” He rubbed his palms together. “So what’s gonna happen is this. You’re gonna be kept alive artificially, and your heart, if we can find one, is gonna be very carefully extracted for study. But before that the surgeons are gonna slice you open like a ripe cantaloupe, man, and carefully, methodically remove your organs one by one for analysis while the equipment keeps you alive. This can be done! Oh yeah; make no mistake about it. Pumps, respirators, dialysis, transfusions—a virtually organless man can be kept alive, and conscious, and suffering, for the longest time, depending on the quality of the facilities and specialists. And we’ll have only the best: we’re gonna keep you going forever, freak! We’re gonna violate you just like you violated all those poor, helpless, beautiful young women. Only you’re gonna be alert while it happens. Kidneys, stomach, pancreas, lungs—all cut out of the mute, horrified monster and transferred to Hotel Formaldehyde.” He shivered with delicious anticipation. “But first 56

Vilenov Freak they’re gonna cut off your balls, creep. I’ve got a front row seat for that one. Reason is they think androgens may be responsible. I heard your rap about pheromones and what-not, muskrat, and you may be right. The brainiacs’ll find out, sooner or later. Pituitary is a big draw here too, along with the hypothalamus, but they can’t dig into your gray matter until your body’s dead and your filthy soul’s been consigned to whatever level of Hell the lowest form of prick is shoveled into. And when you get there, shitpile, say ‘hi’ to Adolf, Charlie, and Kenny B. for me. You’ll be in illustrious company.” The surgeon took a step forward and placed a pacifying hand on Beasely’s shoulder. Beasely shook it off. “And I’m gonna be a real bad boy, dickhead; the worst I can be. I’m gonna make sure I go to Hell, just so’s I can come looking for you!” The surgeon moved behind Beasely, clamped his hands on the man’s biceps. “All right, Vince, he’s got the picture.” But Beasely went on, straining against the hold until his face and Vilenov’s were inches apart. The veins on Beasely’s forehead stood out like snakes. Vilenov’s raging gray eyes bulged in their sockets. “I’ll cut you to pieces!” Beasely screamed, dragging the police surgeon right down on top of them. “I’ll bend you over a sink and screw your lights out with a baseball bat! I’ll bash you into the grave! I’ll bash you into eternity!” Beasely completely ignored the surgeon straddling his back, even though the man was yelling straight into his ear: “I said that’s enough, Vinnie, that’s enough!” Vilenov’s eyes broke from his tormentor’s and locked with the straining surgeon’s. The man, heroically fighting Vilenov’s influence, nevertheless drew his clasped arms up Beasely’s chest until he had him by the throat. There was a moment when everything seemed to freeze. Beasely’s eyes rolled back in his skull and he squealed like a hare in a gray wolf’s fangs. Suddenly the police surgeon lunged off the locked bodies and leaped to the polished counter against the wall. He spun around with a fistful of scalpels, jumped on Beasely and began plunging the blades into the shrieking man’s back. Even when the mob of security and medical personnel came stomping in, the police surgeon continued to hack and slice. They tore him off the pressed bodies and wrestled him out into the hall. Two security men and a nurse, badly cut, had to be rushed to the emergency room. And even after Beasely’s all but eviscerated body was covered, and the purple, writhing prisoner had been wheeled out of the trashed and bespattered room, it still took two interns, a third security officer, and the near-hysterical admissions nurse to restrain the blood-soaked, jerking right arm of the spewing police surgeon.

57

Chapter Eight The Fugitive Sweet Harbor restaurant is a castaway’s mansion snuggled in a lush grove of palms. Customers entering off the driftwood-bordered parking lot cross a wide, rope-railed wood bridge swallowed up in a fern-and-bamboo tunnel. This bridge, cleverly constructed to give the impression of a dilapidated structure on the verge of collapse, spans an artificial pond stocked with goldfish the size of roof rats. The establishment’s rear is built entirely of glass, offering diners cloudless skies, breathtaking sunsets, and an unobstructed view of yachts rocking side by side in Marina del Rey’s Basin F. On the broad sundeck you’ll find faded canvas umbrellas for daytime, tall gas heaters for that occasional nippy California night, leaning tiki torches and strung globe candles, glass-topped wicker tables, leather-padded chairs, and one very paranoid tourist working hard on his third Piña Colada. Abram’s disguise, while comical, was effective: a loud Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, dark knee-high dress socks and brown wingtips. Heavy shades under a silk-banded Homburg featuring pins of an American flag, a smiley face, and a terribly abashed Betty Boop. All he needed was a camera slung round his neck to complete the picture of a Wisconsin geek searching for Disneyland. To the staff of Sweet Harbor, the defense attorney’s isolation was perfectly understandable— his mood was so down his very presence had swept the deck. And to Nelson Prentis, standing inside watching his friend through the glass, Abram’s depression was as clear as the powder blue sky. The man was a loser. The discrepancies in court-recorded and actual time, Judge Hatch’s inexplicable fiery admonition, and the vague admissions of mysterious headaches and general confusion reported by the audience, were all delightful breaks for the four o’clock news. Abram was hit hardest, certainly, but he was seasoned enough to handle it with grace and good humor. Hatch, sincerely unable to account for his behavior, apologized personally and publicly in a much-discussed news conference, re-broadcast nationally every hour, and locally every quarter hour. A thorough investigation of each 58

The Fugitive Freak man and woman in that courtroom was already under way. To the rest of the country the post-trial telecast was a scrumptiously over-produced vision of La-la land as Bedlam—all opinions of a state long-considered flaky, spoiled, and downright incompetent were reaffirmed in spades. But in L.A. itself the Vilenov circus only gained steam; in certain circles the man was already painlessly morphing from monster to cult hero. And Abram, seen over most of his career as a symbol of flash and arrogance, was suddenly a champion of the little guy. There were calls from breathless women on his answering machine, proposals for top-paying interviews in his email. Prompt service at the market and dry cleaners, thumbs-ups from strangers on the street. At first merely amused, he quickly grew exhilarated by all the attention. But the news of Beasely’s murder was an instant crash and burn. Though there wasn’t a single professional or lay theory that could adequately account for the surgeon’s sudden psychotic behavior, Abram had a theory of his own: his ex-client had been telling the truth in their first interview, and was able to get back at his enemies indirectly, through some means not scientifically explainable. Abram cancelled all appointments and turned off his answering machine, embraced his family and had a long conversation with his rabbi. That night at nine, Nicolas Vilenov’s second escape hit the South Bay like a tsunami. Abram began drinking recklessly and smashed his answering machine, became argumentative with his family and rabbi, and locked himself in his basement office. His rambling phone calls tapered to incoherence. Eventually he passed out. Some time after one a.m., Lawrence Abram lurched to his senses and went for his wife’s throat. Barbara threw the kids in the car and vanished. Nelson Prentis, monitoring the red-eye Houdini-rapist Task Force, took her hysterical call half an hour later. Prentis had yet to catch a moment’s sleep. This would all make for a tense encounter anywhere else, and between almost any other two people. But both men had spent countless hours here, and Prentis’s affection for Abram went way deeper than simple friendship. He could forgive Abram anything. Under these heaters and umbrellas, the men had developed an immutable professional understanding: their career paths, by definition adversarial, ended at the office. Here cases were discussed with honesty, with compassion, and with balls. And confidence is sacred between friends. Prentis crossed the deck arm-in-arm with his favorite waitress, cranking up the volume on his small talk to herald his coming. But Abram, staring miserably into his empty glass, was so far gone he didn’t realize he had company until their shadows leaped on his folded arms. “Easy, buddy! Take it easy. Nelson Prentis, remember? Childhood, adulthood; stuff like that.” Abram wiped his palms on his Bermudas. “Sorry, Nellie. I guess I was kind of zoned out there.” “So I noticed.” The pretty blonde waitress beamed like the sun breaking through clouds. Prentis ordered another Piña Colada for Abram, and for himself a tall glass of Ancient Age with Schweppes Bitter Lemon over ice, crowned by a slice of lime, chipped honey, and a short handful of maraschinos. His fingernails tapped the glass tabletop in an accelerating crescendo, an old law school habit. It was his personal drum roll. “I’ve got news, Larry; the good, the bad, and the ugly. First, the good. I’ve been on and off the phone with Babs all morning. She’s with the kids at her mom’s place. Everybody’s fine.” Abram sagged. “So you know.” “All about it. Look, I could see you were taking the news hard when you left all those messages, but what made you take it out on Babs?” 59

The Fugitive Freak Abram could only shake his head. He looked away. Prentis waited. Finally Abram shook his head again. The waitress brought their drinks. Prentis signed for the tab, folded the receipt and placed it in his shirt’s pocket. Abram took a quick swallow, the sun dancing on his shades. “So how did he walk? Damn it, Nelson, you assured me his cell was tight!” “So I did, and so it was. After he was released from emergency with nothing worse than a nasty bruise on his temple, Vilenov was given a series of tranquilizers and placed in a special cell designed to hold even the most dangerous prisoners.” He looked at Abram very directly. “For his own protection, of course.” “He was put in a rubber room?” “Pretty much. But without the jacket. Vilenov was about as mellow as a man can be under the circumstances. At 7:10 the video has him facing the door, and shows the guard looking at him through the peephole.” Again with the drum roll. “Larry, this goes a lot deeper than we thought. It can’t be substantiated, of course, but Vilenov appears to have somehow influenced the guard with a simple glance through a peephole three inches wide and two inches thick.” He added dryly, “All of Vilenov’s guards, by the way, were screened and verified to have never before come into contact with the prisoner. If our man, through some unknowable process, is able to produce a weird hold on people, we want to make sure the ones around him are untainted, so to speak.” Prentis lifted his glasses symbolically and gave Abram a deep, meaningful wink. “Just to keep the queasy at ease. Anyways, cell cameras show the guard opening the door and letting Vilenov out. Corridor cameras follow them casually making their way. At each gate an officer buzzes the lock and ushers them through. This goes on all the way to Property, with a growing cast of uniforms escorting Vilenov like royalty. “The guards go back to their stations, and Vilenov begins badgering the Property officer like an eager shopper. After rooting through the entire room, the officer finally comes up with a complete zoot suit, if you can believe it, crazy brim and all. Vilenov puts the suit on and does a little soft-shoe for the camera, then pulls the hat low over his face and sashays out of there. Exit the Houdini-rapist. The suit was found hanging half out of a garbage bin two hours later. But no sign of Vilenov. Police hit the area immediately and with intensity. Dozens of people report seeing a logy guy tripping down the sidewalk in a zoot suit, snapping his fingers and singing, ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca.’ In the last sighting he was dancing outside a sporting goods store while staring in the window. The store’s manager was hauled out of bed by police and questioned. No recollection of Vilenov. The manager was then dragged back to his store for inventory. It seems likely Vilenov changed his disguise with articles from the store. This got to be really tacky. Every employee had to be rousted during the wee hours to account for articles present and missing. A salesgirl and a cashier got antsy and refused to cooperate; it’s pretty obvious they’d been ripping from the store. Oh, it’ll all get sorted out, but by that time Vilenov will certainly have altered his whole appearance.” Prentis chomped a cherry and took a long swallow of his drink. “One of the first things to come out of this is that the floor safe was robbed of several thousand dollars. The manager was the only one present with access to the safe’s combination. So then of course he gets defensive. The store’s owner, who handles another outlet in Phoenix, is contacted. Accusations start flying all over the place. Police at the store treat the whole thing like a domestic situation, while detectives struggle over inventory. Precious time is lost. Vilenov could have hopped a bus to Long Beach, and from there a cab to San Diego. By now he could be happily bopping señoras in sunny Mazatlan.” Abram groaned. 60

The Fugitive Freak After a minute the DA said, “Larry, there are elements to this case that go way beyond the unusual.” “That’s pretty astute, Nelson,” Abram grated. “I salute your acumen.” He downed half his drink in a swallow. Prentis nodded, said, “Now for the bad news,” and turned to stare at a fenced-off space below, where a massive crow was scattering sparrows in a widespread carpet of croissant crumbs. “First off,” he said, swirling a hand languidly, “let’s look at Marilyn Purly’s apartment complex, where Mr. Fred Mars, that holdout tenant on the petition Scarboro circulated, for some inexplicable reason decides to take a header off the landing outside his door at one-fifteen this morning. Cracks his skull wide open on the drive and dies instantly. Nobody sees a thing, of course, and nobody has a clue. Now let’s look at an ugly event, apparently unrelated and of far greater interest, that takes place miles away but only minutes later.” Prentis slowly swiveled his gaze until he was looking directly into the black lenses masking Abram’s eyes. “Doctor Edward Karl Reis was found dead by his own hand at one twenty-five this morning. Both legally and literally.” A shudder rolled across the table and up Prentis’s reclining arm. “And Larry, he sure didn’t go gently into that good night. According to the coroner’s initial report, Reis attempted to strangle himself, using both hands, leaving two very deep handprints with matching bruises on the thumbs and fingers. This was not a rational attempt at suicide, my friend. It was done in wild rage by a man completely out of his mind. I’ve never heard of such a case, except for one self-aborted attempt maybe five years ago, by some nut on angel dust. The good doctor, by the way, had nothing more toxic in his system than the remains of a double cappuccino. Obviously this kind of suicide can’t be done. The worst you can do is make yourself black out, which is what the coroner figures happened. “The next indication is that he came to his senses and tried to garrote himself with one of his ties, then with a lamp cord. These were very intense acts, Larry, resulting in a shambles for twenty square feet. They didn’t work either, for the same reason. Corresponding abrasions on the knuckles and face demonstrate that the man actually tried to punch himself to death with his own fists. But finally he got down on his hands and knees and butted his head against the front door jamb until he knocked himself into a coma. He died of a brain hemorrhage on the way to the hospital. A herd of neighbors responded to the ruckus with almost simultaneous 911 calls. Not a soul can verify a visitor to the doctor’s home; no one saw anything other than the usual skateboarders and news vans and some guy riding by in his exercise sweats. The house has been cordoned and the local Neighborhood Watch interviewed. The whole street’s freaked out. So far the investigation shows not a scrap, not a hint, not a ghost of an intruder.” “Look, Nelson, lock me in a bank vault, okay? Surround me with Secret Service agents and attack dogs. Put me somewhere he can’t find me. Think of something!” He tore at his drink. “Help me out, Nellie!” Prentis swirled the ice in his glass. “Oh, if I were you I wouldn’t get started on the funeral arrangements just yet. All the stops are being pulled on this case. The manhunt’s already under way, with the Police Chief’s and Mayor’s support, and a boatload of promises from the governor. Vilenov will be so busy running he won’t have a moment to rest, much less dwell on past slights.” He shifted in his seat. “But for all that, how do you suppose he’d get his hands on you, anyway? All you have to do is keep moving. Don’t hang out where he expects to find you.” “He didn’t get his hands on Reis, or on Beasely—or on Frederick Mars or Marilyn Purly for that matter.” Prentis looked at him sharply. “Now wait a minute, buddy. What you’re suggesting is paranormal activity, and that’s a lot of silly crap to take seriously in the 21st century. Maybe you’d 61

The Fugitive Freak better taper off on the happy water. It sure ain’t making you happy.” He lost himself in an elongated drum roll. The drumming ceased abruptly. “Look, I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be concerned, but you’ve got no call to go over the deep end, intellectually speaking.” “There are four gruesome deaths, Nelson, and this asshole had a score to settle, valid or otherwise, with each individual. I know. He told me things you wouldn’t believe.” “And you would? Jesus. Listen, man, there are two suicides, a fall, and a tragic, very messy homicide, and in each case Vilenov was either restrained or manifestly nowhere near the premises.” He rolled his shoulders. “I hate to say it, but if anybody’s got alibis, it’s him. Now, c’mon, Larry, I don’t like him either. He gives me the willies, and I’d sleep a whole lot easier knowing he was history. But he’s no demon, and he’s no lunatic. Don’t give him that much credit. He’s just another filthy pervert, but one with a knack for getting out of jams.” Prentis took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes, ran a hand through his stiff graying hair. “Your attitude is totally symptomatic of what this whole manhunt’s about. Technically, the guy’s done nothing worse than escape from confinement twice. His first walk was officially cleared by the L.A. verdict. The second time he was in protective confinement, and only because of a panicky call to the mayor. But nobody really gives a damn about any of that anymore. The public’s freaked out, my boss is pissed, and there’s not going to be a third time! So just relax, already. We’ve got a two-part plan. Part One is to put the lid on what could become a countywide panic by convincing the public we’re right on him. Part Two is to snag the son of a bitch. And when we get him we’re gonna lock him in a dark room before we work out a way to deport him. There are a lot of places in the Middle East I wouldn’t mind seeing this guy dumped. Let them worry about him for a while.” He smiled coldly. “This is going to come out fine. There won’t be any more of his stunts. And no more shoddy police work.” “And then what?” “And then you and the rest of the girls can fan yourselves and put away your tea leaves and Ouija boards. You can reopen your windows and get on with your lives. And you personally, my friend, can ease off the firewater and return to your practice like a proud, civilized man.” Abram again shook his head. Prentis copied the movement with a practiced sarcasm that quickly deteriorated to genuine sympathy. He self-consciously cupped Abram’s hand in his own. “Listen, Larry, why don’t you and the family head on up to Big Bear? Make it four trips this year. There’s every reason to believe he’ll be coming back here; to Venice or to the Marina.” Abram drew his hand away, and Prentis’s demeanor instantly became businesslike. “You know as well as I that this area, on a late summer weekend, will be absolutely unmanageable. So the manhunt’ll emphasize subtlety. Rather than a concrete police presence, there’ll be a huge force of undercover spotters. The Venice circus this very morning acquired eighty-seven new members; everything from retirees, to security, to coast and fire. I’ve never seen such a surge of volunteerism.” He eyeballed the sedate marina. “Look around you, Larry. As pleasant as pleasant can be. Men all over the county are sending families to distant relatives, or locking ’em indoors. Women are dressing down and wearing veils. But not in the Venice-Marina area; not in the one place everyone expects him to show. Here guys are sporting those stupid glasses with the decals of Vilenov’s eyes on the lenses, and women are wearing the seethrough DO ME, NICKY! blouses. This kind of crap is selling like crazy right out on the strand. Vilenov is pure camp. And he’ll be here, trying to fit right back in. I can feel it in my bones. But we’re ready, Larry. Every house he’s familiar with is back under surveillance, and all plain-clothes officers are ordered to stun on sight. Volunteers have received a crash course in the use of pepper spray, with directions to spray first and ask questions later.” “I can see it now,” Abram moaned. “Courtrooms full of weirdos in Vilenov glasses who’ve 62

The Fugitive Freak been pepper-sprayed by meter maids disguised as fortune tellers and massage therapists.” Prentis frowned wryly. “Was that the sound of you licking your lips, old buddy? Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of time to deal with sunshine lawsuits later. Nothing’s gonna come down in court. Besides, from every indication you’ve given me, you’re not particularly interested in sticking around for the Vilenov feeding frenzy.” Abram shook his head gloomily. He squirmed a bit in his chair, tilted his head side to side. He seemed to be having trouble swallowing. Suddenly his tongue was protruding and his dark glasses hanging half off his face. Abram tore at his collar and snapped back his head. The next thing Prentis knew he was standing behind his friend with his hands clasped below the breastbone, halfway into the Heimlich maneuver. Abram shook him off. Prentis waved away a few customers crossing the deck and returned to his seat. Abram coughed wretchedly, picked up his hat and shoved his shades on tight. “I’m cool.” “That does it. I want you to lay off drinking for a while, man. You’re a bundle of nerves, and the alcohol isn’t helping a bit. You’re just too high-strung.” “It wasn’t the rum. I felt like I was on the gallows for a minute there.” Abram’s nails scratched across the glass tabletop. “Nelson, I’m begging you, as a personal friend and as a caring human being: find a way to get me and mine back together and out of town!” “Slow down!” But Abram plowed right ahead. “Big Bear sounds like just the ticket. Later, after this is all over and Vilenov’s history, I’ll come back and you can have a good long laugh at my gullibility. I won’t complain.” He faced the Marina substation, almost a mile away. “Nelson, I know something you don’t. Ever since the first time I interviewed the guy, in that sheriff’s station over there, something really heavy’s been going on in the back of my head. I can’t explain it in plain terms— you’d only call it nerves and rum-reason. So I won’t bother trying. I’ll just tell you I fully empathize with everybody who’s come into contact with that maniac.” He lifted his shades to expose the sincerity in his eyes. “He’s here, man! You talk about feeling it in your bones! My Vilenov radar is screaming at me, Nellie!” “Fine. Then he’s as good as in the bag.” Abram killed his drink. His next words amounted to an ultimatum. “Get me and my family out of town for a while. That’s all. So help me, Nelson, I’ll never ask you for another thing so long as I live.” Prentis pushed himself to his feet. “Okay, let’s go. We’ll grab a cab and you can stay at my place for now. I’ve really got to get back to the office. As soon as I can make time I’ll get on the horn to Babs. You know she’ll listen to me. I’ll reconnect you two. Then I’m going to sleep the sleep of the dead. But you’ve got to promise me something. Promise me you’ll apologize to her, from the heart, for being such a jerk. You’re a luckier man than you’ll ever realize.” “I know it!” Abram moaned. “God knows I know it!” He licked his lips, pulled the Homburg’s brim lower over his shades. “One thing first. Just order us another round.” The DA took his arm. “I’ve got to get back, Larry.” “Then we’ll get ’em to go.” “Come on.” Prentis placed a Hamilton under his empty glass. He prodded his friend along with an occasional shove at the small of the back, smiling at customers and staff all the way.

63

Chapter Nine The Flight Finding the home address of Dr. Edward Karl Reis was a piece of cake. Anyone walking into that courtroom walked out a celebrity, and so became a member of the video-bite carousel. After reviewing the same old clip of a harassed-looking Reis being escorted to his Ladera Heights home, Vilenov located his address in the phone book and made for the area. He was well disguised. On entering the sporting goods outlet he’d immediately influenced the manager. That was at nine p.m. At ten o’clock he exited walking a top-flight European mountain bike, with over six thousand dollars stuffed in his fancy extra large backpack. Also in the backpack were a change of clothes, five pounds of trail mix, and the largest, deadliest hunting knife the manager could find. Vilenov was wearing an oversized green rayon parka, baggy gray exercise pants, and heavy leather hiking boots. The outfit altogether altered his appearance; he was no longer the grooving sidewalk peacock, nor the instantly recognizable gnarly fugitive. The parka billowed as he moved, its furfringed hood hiding all but his nose and chin. The sweatpants and boots made him a clunky, shapeless silhouette in a hectic world of blinding headlights and lancing neon. It may have seemed a strange outfit for a lovely September evening, but this was Los Angeles, where the unordinary was ordinary. Vilenov switched on the headlight of his brand new 21-speed mountain bike and pushed off down the sidewalk. Ladera Heights is an upscale community on the outskirts of Inglewood, only a few miles from the ocean and not completely unfamiliar to a man who’d spent most of his life in Venice Beach. It was a long ride from Downtown L.A., but Vilenov wasn’t in a hurry. Though news of his escape blared from every car radio, he purposefully avoided shadows, emboldened by the tension. He grinned maniacally at pedestrians, ran red lights, darted through traffic—and all this non-paranoiac behavior made him look that much less suspicious. Beginning to enjoy the ride, he casually tapped the huge hunting knife on the handlebars while fantasizing the meticulous skinning of Reis. The blade was a good one; it would surely retain the bite to complete, by tomorrow at the latest, the 64

The Flight Freak drawn-out disemboweling of a certain duplicitous, rip-off defense attorney. It was coming up on midnight when he rolled down La Brea into Inglewood. Streets were dark and quiet, the sky aching with stars. Vilenov, cockier by the mile, purchased a six-pack of Heinekens at a corner convenience store, chugged four bottles in the parking lot, and smashed the remainder on the asphalt. Aggressively drunk, he jammed the bike to Centinela while still riding the initial rush. In less than ten minutes he was zigzagging through Ladera Heights. Vilenov peed like a race horse behind a van, found the street he wanted, and pushed his bike uphill. Soon he was teetering on the lip of the curb opposite Reis’s house. He dropped his bike and backpack on the sidewalk, pulled the knife from under his parka, and marched straight across the street. But the instant his foot met the property’s walk he was illuminated by porch floods flanking a wall-mounted security camera. A variety of alarms were activated on Reis’s gold Mercedes, cueing an enormous mastiff in the doctor’s backyard. The whole neighborhood came alive with howling sentinels. Lights burned in the houses to either side. Drapes were drawn aside. “Jee-sus!” Vilenov tiptoed back to his bike as the facing houses lit up like Christmas trees. By the time he’d shrugged on his backpack and straddled his machine the street was a blinding, wailing madhouse. Vilenov coasted down the sidewalk crazily, veering on and off of lawns, into and out of the street. The front door of each passed house blew open to eject a sputtering homeowner, as though triggered by the friction of his spinning wheels. A pair of private security vehicles whipped around the corner. Half a minute later sirens were approaching fast on Centinela. Vilenov kept right on riding, wobbling away from everything in his path, and by the time he pulled into the Mini Mart on La Cienega he was rattled, paranoid, and pissed. He took a nervous leak behind the trash bin, stormed inside and bought two quart bottles of Colt .45 malt liquor. Vilenov crammed one in his backpack, tore the cap off the other, and coasted down La Cienega toward the freeway. He had to walk the bike where the boulevard arched uphill. Having paused halfway to chug the quart in thirds, Vilenov accurately hurled the drained bottle at a parked car’s windshield. Upon reaching the tracks just north of Florence, he remounted, veered left through traffic, and pitched headfirst over the curb into pebbles and scrub. Vilenov came up spitting blood, out of his mind with rage and alcohol. The 405 overpass at Florence includes a wide swath of crushed rock to accommodate tracks and ties. This left Vilenov plenty of room to stagger about unmolested until he reached the steel and cement rail overlooking the lanes some thirty feet below. He caught the rail at his waist and clung there, doubled over, staring deliriously at tons of hurtling metal. He wanted to heave but didn’t dare, wanted to haul himself back up but couldn’t move a muscle. The dazzling succession of sweeping headlights threw his mind into a magic lantern parade of memorized exploits. Lovers and enemies flickered and passed; each one a galling memory and slap to his pride. A whipped, stupefied gargoyle, Vilenov hung there snarling and slavering, paralyzed. And the freeway became a familiar driveway, and the rail at his waist became the rail on the upper landing opposite the apartment of that double-crossing bitch of a girlfriend. He was leaning on this rail tensely, staring at some frail old black man standing right beside him. The man was watching him hard. Moreover, he knew that this old man had something on him, and had to be mollified. But now Vilenov, visualizing himself paranoically kissing up to that devious prying rat, became absolutely livid with rage. In his imagination he hurled the filthy old snoop over the rail onto his cracking black busybody skull, then almost fainted from the resulting pain in his own head. His backpack had him; his center of gravity was between his shoulder blades . . . was at the back of his neck, was at his crown . . . he was about to be mangled and mashed into psycho jam, dragged flopping-all-fours through the rocketing 65

The Flight Freak madness below. He had to recover . . . had to push back . . . he had to right himself, or he’d be smeared, from here to San Pedro, by ten thousand rushing wheels. An old nightmare, common to dreamers, returned to claim him. He was on his stomach on a tall building’s roof, his fingers numbly clenching the edge while the building gradually tilted. Nerveless and helpless, unable to feel his thighs or toes, he could only slip with the building until he was launched toward the yawning vortex below. Yet even as he was falling Vilenov was able to shove himself back from the abyss and onto the cotton-soft bed of jumbled rocks behind him. He rocked and rolled to his feet, grabbed his bicycle and ran weaving back to La Cienega. Halfway across the street his foot was tangled in spokes. He sprawled face-first on top of his bicycle, kicking and flailing his arms in the midst of braking and honking vehicles. Clinging to the handlebars, Vilenov found his feet and continued stumbling across traffic, flipping off drivers as he went. Back on the west side of La Cienega, he rammed his bike between the tracks, shoved it over the ties for a quarter mile, and collapsed in the dirt near Florence and Manchester. He struggled to his knees. On the incline between the tracks and bordering bushes he tore off the puppet master of his backpack, crushed it in a bear hug and punched its lights out until his fists rang on glass. Vilenov pulled out the remaining quart of Colt and attempted to chug it, but the brew blew out his nostrils. Fighting for breath and hyperventilating, he forced the contents down, smashed the bottle on a rail, and brought the glass neck back in a handful of blood. Nicolas Vilenov pivoted on his knees until he was facing the bushes. Embracing his stomach, he lowered his head almost to the ground, arched his spine, and puked his guts out. A minute later he clawed back up the incline with the disembodied face of Edward Reis hovering before him like a bone-white balloon, mocking his lunges, jerking away in little spurts that perfectly matched his lurching progress. Vilenov, swinging wildly, followed it onto the tracks, bashing his knuckles on the rails until his hands chanced upon a depleted fire extinguisher entangled in a yard of packing twine. Now the face of Reis appeared to float up out of the cylinder and stand on its surface like a sneering decal. Vilenov took the extinguisher in a stranglehold and squeezed till his hands could take no more, then tightly wrapped the trailing twine. He garroted the cylinder before bashing his bloody fists repeatedly against its smooth steel side. The extinguisher rolled down the embankment with Vilenov furiously scrambling behind, straight into the bordering line of thorny, exhaust-dusted bushes. He swung and kicked wildly, tore at the parka’s snagged hood, butted the branches with his face and skull. Backpedaling in a crouch, he pitched onto the ties and immediately went into seizure. Gradually the spasms diminished. Vilenov lay absolutely still, spreadeagled on the tracks and staring at the cold moon through pinched and streaming eyes; a catastrophe just waiting to happen.

That crazy bull elephant kept right on coming in slow motion, trumpeting over its own rhythmic background of gasps and grunts. Vilenov melted into the landscape, trying to breathe with the wind, trying to wave with the tall grass, doing everything he could to become one with the savanna. But the bull’s beady black eyes were fixed on him. Its body enlarged tenfold with each bound, the phallic old trunk moving pendulously, swinging wider and higher as it neared. Vilenov couldn’t run, couldn’t rise, couldn’t even react; his limbs were stuck in muck, and every part of his body was numb. Two more bounds and the monster made its final lunge. During that leap it seemed to float like a dirigible, eclipsing the desert panorama, the sun, the very sky—landing at last with one 66

The Flight Freak long blaring, all-obliterating stomp. Vilenov screamed down the embankment as the train hammered by, stopping his ears against the angry drawn-out howl of its horn. Not until the caboose was a tiny receding box did he gingerly pick himself free of the filthy bushes and blown litter. Both bike and backpack were covered with dirt and crawling with ants. They were badly tangled in the dense growth separating Florence Boulevard and the tracks. It was just after dawn. He spent some time nursing his injured hand and tongue, then shrugged on his backpack and, looking for all the world like a penniless tramp, pushed his bike alongside the tracks to Manchester, his parka and sweatpants in tatters, his face all scratches and scabs. Vilenov coasted to the Burger King on Bellanca, stood his bike in the rack, and waited in line with his hooded head down. After furtively fishing a five from his backpack, he ordered breakfast and coffee in the hoarsest of whispers. Hanging around waiting with the rest of the customers drove him crazy, so he nonchalantly stepped outside and bought a Times with the change from his five. There he was, all over the front page, immortalized in that notorious booking photo. Beside his banner image were three small photographs aligned vertically. Vilenov snarled. Hatch. Prentis. Abram. He slunk back inside, carried his paper and tray to the remotest table. Vilenov held the newspaper propped in front of his face with one hand while he picked at his food with the other. Lots of confused tough-talk had preceded the morning edition, resulting in an uneven battle plan designed to leave the masses with the impression that things were perfectly under control. But right before that the state must have gone mad. After an intensely uncomfortable wee hours confab with the mayor, the governor had agreed to place troops of the National Guard on standby. L.A.’s Chief of Police, during a bizarre three a.m. news conference in a packed West L.A. cathedral, had followed with the announcement of a countywide manhunt. Citizens were warned to avoid strangers. Vilenov was described as desperate, dangerous, and all but apprehended. Long before sunrise, day care centers, playgrounds, and elementary schools were hiring armed security guards. Vilenov frowned. Why did these people insist on treating him as a pedophile? He read on. Overnight, Hollywood had become the source for Vilenov sightings. Barely twelve hours on the street, and he was already responsible for the rapes of nineteen runaways and over thirty prostitutes. Police in the beach communities of Venice and Santa Monica detained one hundred and ninety-three destitute men during that early morning scramble. Naturally, the area’s homeless advocates were instantly up in arms; blocking streets and courthouses in anticipation of the morning rush. But not all veteran residents of Venice-Santa Monica were upset with the new ultra-heavy police presence; decent people all around thrilled as crack whores, border hoppers, shopping cart squatters, street preachers, and all manner of UFO abductees abandoned the area en masse. A quote from Reis made Vilenov bristle: “This man, still haunted by pubescent fantasies, will flee to the one place he believes will have him; he will run home. But it would be unwise to view this as merely an instinctive attempt to evade his pursuers. Mr. Vilenov needs to be pursued. He needs the rush.” Vilenov squeezed his fists under the table, and just like that a huge wall mirror across the room burst into a hundred pieces, the shards ringing on tabletops and floor. Every face in the place watched mesmerized as he dumped his tray in a trash container and stormed from the building. 67

The Flight Freak His cool new bicycle was long gone. Vilenov closed his eyes and lowered his head. It took a hefty session of controlled deep breathing, but he managed to compose himself. He shrugged his backpack tighter and tramped west on Manchester, grudgingly admitting Reis was right: even an animal knows enough to turn home. White light crackled in his skull. And Vilenov was sitting in a slump on a cement bench, staring at nothing. His entire face was masked in sweat; he could feel it seeping out of his matted hair under the parka’s hood. With an effort he closed his gaping mouth and brought his eyes back into focus. When a city bus pulled up five minutes later he boarded self-consciously and inserted a dollar in the slot. Not a face turned as he passed, but every eye watched him walk unsteadily down the aisle and squeeze beside a pregnant Latina. The bus was packed. Vilenov, peeping groggily from beneath his parka’s drawn hood, saw a split field of barely averted faces. He put his hands in the parka’s pockets and lowered his head as though snoozing. After a couple miles of this the dull ache in his temple grew to a screaming pain. Vilenov’s jaws clamped shut, his head rocked back, his eyes rolled up. He looked like a man being electrocuted. The faces lining the aisle slowly turned in unison. Their eyes coldly watched him sitting bolt-upright, his Adam’s apple thrust out, his white fingers tearing into his knees. Except for the muffled sounds of traffic and the engine’s steady hum, the world inside the bus was dead-quiet. Finally a long rasping breath escaped between Vilenov’s teeth. His chin dropped to his chest. Pink flecks shifted rapidly at the corners of his mouth while the light fluttered in and out of his dull gray eyes. His hands relaxed and the faces just as slowly turned away. With tears covering his cheeks, Vilenov struggled to his feet, slammed against a seat, and staggered down the aisle between the quickly turning pairs of knees. He grabbed the vertical pole by the front steps and the weight of his backpack almost propelled him onto his rear. The driver wordlessly pulled to the curb at Lincoln Boulevard. The doors hissed open and Vilenov pitched out, straight through the open front doorway of the corner liquor store. He watched from behind the store’s display window as the bus passed the next bench without pausing. Vilenov bought a bag of beef jerky, a half pint of vodka, and a 16-ounce can of Old English malt liquor for a chaser. The in-store television showed the mayor addressing a news conference; assuring the good citizens of L.A. that, although time was running out for Nicolas Vilenov, he was still considered extremely dangerous. The mayor introduced a Colonel Peebles, liaison officer for police and National Guard. Peebles warned civilians to prepare for the sight of military vehicles on their generally quiet streets. The clerk, a round Nicaraguan with a Raiders cap and caterpillar moustache, slapped his palm on the counter. “Look like they just about get that guy, eh, amigo?” Vilenov lowered his head. “What you think about that spooky stuff? Eh? You think he bite woman? You think he do little children?” The clerk, uncertain of Vilenov’s race, seemed to be making a game of trying to get a peek at his face. “¿Niños?” he said. “I dunno,” Vilenov grunted. “Nowadays I can believe just about anything.” “You right!” The clerk slapped the counter again. “People today got no Jesus!” “I’m hip to that,” Vilenov whispered. “Thanks, dude.” “You drink him down, man. Kill cold in no time. And when you done you come back for more.” “Viva la whatever,” Vilenov rasped. As soon as he hit the sidewalk he threw away the beef jerky and split the cap on the vodka. The first swallow obliterated his sense of persecution, the second did wonders for his headache. It was a long walk down Lincoln to Venice. Halfway there Vilenov’s half-pint was history, the malt liquor merely backwash. He decided to take a chance at the Marina Market on Mindanao Way, 68

The Flight Freak prudently buying a fifth this time to save himself the risk of another trip. The whole place was uptight. The liquor clerk didn’t say a word, but took Vilenov’s money and slapped down the change. Vilenov stepped outside and gazed over the Marina. Before him was the market’s parking lot, then the thin asphalt curve of Admiralty Way. Across Admiralty stretched a bike path and, beyond, a low fence surrounding the harbor’s launch ramps, where hundreds of sails poked up like bleached stalagmites. Vilenov zigzagged between the parked cars to Admiralty and dashed across the road at the first break in traffic. The pretty little bike path was, as always, a liquid parade of tobogganing bicyclists, pimp-walking roller skaters, and obscenely spandexed hausfrau in ponytails and sports bras. He sat heavily on a wood bench in a cloud of gulls, regretting not having picked up a loaf to toss, slice by precious slice. It was already warm, but he remained bundled in the parka. Vilenov broke the cap on the vodka, took a long swallow. Fiji Way, to his left, ran west to Fisherman’s Village, a collection of gift shops looking over South Channel. In the cul-de-sac of Fiji was the Marina del Rey Sheriff’s substation, his first stop after the Purly raid. To his right was Mindanao, a short road terminating in the small artificial peninsula of Chace Park. Vilenov took another swallow. For no reason at all Abram’s face came to him, drifting into his mind more like an afterthought than a memory. Vilenov’s free hand clenched once, twice. The squeezing motion felt good, as if that selfserving pig was close enough to squeal. He tilted back the bottle, and the alcohol was like acid on his lips and tongue. He had to squint to see. The area was so picturesque it was hard to imagine such a thing as a manhunt. The air was very sweet and clear. When he woke it was late afternoon. He was on his side with his knees drawn up and his hands tucked between his thighs; just another Venice derelict on the wrong side of the tracks. His backpack was gone. Vilenov rolled off his bench and staggered to the Marina’s information center, a quaint little nautical cottage at the corner of Mindanao and Admiralty. Mercifully, the restroom door was unlocked. He splashed water on his face and hair, paid his respects to the urinal, and turned around completely unprepared for the bloody ragged creature in the mirror. Vilenov tore off the parka and screamed until the pain in his head made him cling desperately to the sink. A minute later he yanked open the door and went stumbling north along the bike path with venom in his eyes. Bicyclists, fighting their machines, rode well around him, joggers stopped to look back with strange expressions. On all sides, strollers turned angrily or fearfully, lovers’ hands unlocked and clenched into fists. Tiny pockets of rubbernecks grew, uncertain of their emotions. Vilenov stomped across the street to that long swath of shaved grass opposite Sweet Harbor known as Admiralty Park. Here the bike path, crossing Admiralty Way at an abrupt signal, continues along in a two-lane bisection of this swath, curving gently between exercise stations and dog walks. Vilenov stormed past sunbathers, sightseers, and assorted loitering chatterbrains, past dippers and danglers and dealers, tromping along furiously until a high trio of helicopters caught his attention. He watched very narrowly for a minute, trying to find a pattern. When he looked back down black-andwhites were all over the place. He instinctively joined the crowd, and as he worked his way into the thickest part of the packed park things quickly went from sociable to surreal. All around were opposing tables of Hysterics and Enablers, enlisting the audience of gaping crackheads and vagabonds while Jesus freaks worked hard to convert insolent Vilenov freaks. Riot-helmeted bicycle cops in short pants and white polo shirts gingerly coasted throughout the little park, back and forth across Admiralty, up and down the neighboring street. All sense of sobriety, of basic sanity, and of social etiquette, had absolutely gone to Hell. He smiled and relaxed. He was nearing Venice. There was a hard squeal of tires. Vilenov raised himself on his toes to see a sheriff’s car neatly cutting off the park’s entrance. He lowered his face and pushed his way back to the bike path. 69

The Flight Freak Waiting at the park’s far end, a pair of those roving sentinels stood straddling their bikes’ frames, admitting exit and egress like nightclub bouncers. Vilenov’s only course was obvious. He tied his shirt around his neck, stuck a stupid look on his face, and began to jog, smothering his features as he chugged between the coldly watching pillars. Following the bike path down, he came puffing upon Washington Boulevard and almost sagged with relief. He was home. The ocean was less than a mile to his left, and just north of the Admiralty-Washington intersection were the Venice Canals. And everywhere were black-and-whites; their noses poking out of subterranean garages, their roof lights standing out amidst parked cars. Helicopters, aggressively monitoring the Venice Beach crowd, were swarming over the strand like flies over a dog’s mess. Vilenov nonchalantly fell in with a small herd jogging in place at the corner. When the light changed he panted along to the far curb, but as the others turned and flapped gasping to the beach he made a hard right and jiggled up to Laguna Liquor on the corner of Washington and Abbot Kinney. He jogged straight into the store and fixed the clerk with his cold gray eyes. The man dutifully bagged all the register’s twenties with a pint of sloe gin while Vilenov ran in place, studying the shelves. A few seconds later the clerk turned. With the nervous delicacy of a man handling eggs, he stacked on the counter: a pair of fancy iridescent inline roller skates, an AC/DC baseball cap with built-in radio and headphones, bright blue wraparound sunglasses, and a red and white bandana. Vilenov nodded, scooped up the stack, and jogged back outside. Still hopping foot to foot, he stuffed the bills in his underwear, tied the bandana round his forehead, found a hard-rock station, and slapped the cap on backward. He sat on the curb to catch his breath, yanked off his boots, tied the laces together, looped the boots around his neck. Vilenov then laced on the skates and awkwardly pushed himself upright. He placed the gaudy shades over his eyes and studied his reflection in a plate glass window. Not bad. A few tattoos and nose rings, a pair of leopard skin bikini shorts, and he’d be Venice-all-over. He guzzled two thirds of the pint, reeled a ways on his new skates, and smashed the remainder on the sidewalk. Sloe gin is tough on the plumbing. Vilenov clumsily skated Washington east, pushing off parked cars to maintain his balance. By the time he’d reached Lincoln Boulevard the sun was fuzzying the horizon. Lincoln was filthy with cops, up and down; plain-clothes loitering at the bus stops, bicycle patrollers on every corner. Emboldened by alcohol, Vilenov skated awkwardly across the intersection, falling twice. A bicycle cop helped him up and warned him to be careful: he was in a heavily monitored, officially-sanctioned search area. Vilenov, rubbing a skinned knee, thanked him effusively. He certainly didn’t want to run into any nasty criminals. Directly overhead, a helicopter dipped, rose, and veered south. Vilenov skated on for a block before rolling straight into a vacant wrought iron bench. He tore off the skates and cap and dropped them in a trash can, laced on his boots and tottered into the new mall’s supermarket. There he bought a 750 milliliter bottle of Hiram Walker’s excellent apricot brandy. Vilenov cussed out a pair of stupid dawdling old ladies, scattered a train of stupid useless shopping carts, and went staggering through the parking lot gulping sweet fire. In the deepening blue Nicolas Vilenov began to feel wonderful; lightheaded, strong, independent. It wasn’t just the brandy. It was a combination of freedom, gorgeous weather, and all those recent encounters that had worked in his favor. He was feeling very full of himself. The state’s most recognizable man was able to boldly blunder behind enemy lines and come out smelling like a rose. An LAPD cruiser passed slowly, even as he was insolently raising the brandy to his lips. Vilenov defiantly tore off his shades and flung them aside. C’mon, man, he thought, bust me! The car moved along, and Vilenov’s little burst of passion passed as quickly as it had come. He took another 70

The Flight Freak swallow and went weaving between the parked cars, having never felt so unfettered, so unhurried, so indifferent to the big picture. It was like being in some goofy Broadway musical, where the innocent young hero wanders about on the wings of love, unaware of staring passersby. But he wasn’t in love—few men in the world were as far removed from that priceless state as Nicolas Vilenov. So maybe this crazy feeling was just trying to tell him he was ready. Maybe his new love was right here, in this very parking lot, and maybe their eyes would simply lock. Just like in some goofy Broadway musical. He gulped the brandy and licked his lips. She wouldn’t have to be gorgeous, of course. She’d just have to be nice, and vulnerable, and stacked to the rafters. He smiled at the women walking by. No, not her. And no, not her. Or her. But then he saw heaven from behind, bending over to scooch shopping bags on the back seat of a dark green Accord. Oh yes. Shoulder-length brown hair and pretty little kitty face. Beige leggings and tight fuzzy sweater. All the good, all the important parts screaming against the material. Just begging for it. As she swung shut the door he sauntered over and looked her straight in her pretty brown eyes, gave her his widest smile, and let his gaze run up and down her ripe-to-bursting body. Still riding his Broadway fantasy, Vilenov bowed deeply and said with all the gallantry he could muster, “Hi! My name’s Nicolas. But you can just call me Nicky. That’s what all my bitches call me. We’ll be going for a drive now, and then I think we might have a bite and take in a little TV before bed. Don’t worry. I’m absolutely sure you’re going to like me.” He stepped around to the passenger side and waited for her to unlock his door, a dreamy tune in his head. As she backed out the car he took another long swallow. “I’d be glad to share some of this with you, m’dear, but the cops in this town are really down on drinking and driving. Every day I thank the good Lord they’re out there, sniffing and testing, citing and towing, keeping the public safe and sound.” He carefully chugged a quarter of the remaining brandy, taking it down with little fish-like partings of the lips. His tongue was on fire. “What’s your name?” “Cindy. Cindy Mathe—” “Cindy’s just fine. Cindy, you and I are lovers. And tonight, baby, we’re gonna hammer down the wind.” “Where . . . where are we going?” Her voice sounded tiny and robotic, like a round-hipped, skinny-waisted, big-busted talking doll for sweet little girls with long blonde braids. Perfect. “Oh . . . I don’t know,” he said breezily. “Why don’t we just head west. I’ve always been partial to the beach.”

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Chapter Ten The Influence The Dunerider Hotel on Ocean Avenue features a breathtaking panorama of Venice Beach and the Pacific, a view made all the more enchanting by a killer sunset in a cloudless sky. Set in a wide wrought iron archway inlaid with polished turquoise, a cursive neon vacancy sign offers CABLE and SATELLITE and FRESH SEAFOOD DINING. It’s no flophouse. When head of security saw the familiar-looking man approach the main desk escorting a lovely, distant young woman, a thousand bells went off in his naturally suspicious mind. But when the newcomer caught him in those pale gray eyes he was immediately inspired to shut down all security cameras and erase their tapes. He vanished through a small back door hidden by potted dwarf palms. The desk clerk’s eyes were on his ledger. Vilenov leaned tipsily against the desk and smiled warmly. “Your finest room, my man, with all the goodies.” The clerk’s eyes, slithering across the desk, went foggy at the contents of the straining fuzzy sweater. His voice caught in his throat. “Your wife?” “You bet.” He looked enviously into the face of the hotel’s newest customer. That envy was instantly removed from his expression, as though he’d been slapped. Every aspect of his tone and manner became respectfully businesslike. “Will you be staying long, sir?” “Just the night.” “Fine. I’ll need to see some identification, please.” Vilenov grunted and thrust the brandy bottle under the man’s nose so that his eyes were fixed 72

The Influence Freak on the label. The clerk dutifully scribbled in his ledger, saying, “Thank you, Mr. Walker.” He reached below the counter to extract a single key on a ring. “I’m giving you number 4, our best available room. It’s downstairs, and has a rear balcony with a stunning ocean view. In the room you will find a menu, a widescreen TV with cable and satellite, and a brochure describing all our amenities and how you may access them with a simple phone call. If there’s anything you need, or if you find anything unsatisfactory in any way, please just ring the desk and ask for the manager. Now, will you be paying in cash or by credit card?” “Whatever,” Vilenov said. “Excellent. If you’ll just sign the register, then.” Vilenov, leaning heavily on the desk, signed clumsily:

He pinched the bottle’s neck with one hand and plucked the key from the clerk’s fingers with the other, killed the brandy and tossed the empty bottle on the ledger. “You can start your room service with another one of these. And bring some ice, and some fresh underthings for the lady. And after that stay the hell away from my door.”

It was late afternoon when he surfaced from a nightmare of rampaging pigs in jackboots. Never had he felt so sick. His head pounded as he rose, softened when he paused. Fighting to keep from vomiting, Vilenov forced himself to a sitting position little by little. He slid off the toppled, stained mattress, landing directly on his tailbone. The room was a disaster. Liquor bottles, full and empty, lay scattered on the plush pile carpet. One curtain was half-torn from its rod. A wedge of sunlight tore at his eyes while he sat in a slump, nursing fractured memories of waking at dawn, of getting drunk again, of repeatedly assaulting the woman beside him with varying results. That was the rub of alcohol. Fires you up but lets you down. He staggered into the bathroom, pitched back out and fumbled into his clothes, took two steps and collapsed on his knees. Cindy was supine; her face turned away, her fine brown hair spilt all around the pillow in a soft feathered fan. She couldn’t have looked lovelier posing. Her breasts made the sheet a taut slope from nipples to thighs. He took a peek and shuddered. It was enough to make a man’s man cry. She was a keeper, no question about it. Vilenov had to walk on his knees to fix the curtain; if he’d tried to stand he would have passed right out. Halfway to the window he became aware of authoritative-sounding voices in the parking lot. He tentatively stuck his head into the wedge of light. What he saw sobered him instantly. Five black-and-whites had control of the hotel’s drive. Four others were barricading the street. Two units down, officers were moving door to door with guns drawn. At least three more were creeping through the parking lot, crouching and rising, peeking inside vehicles. Vilenov couldn’t check himself: he slammed his fist into the wall. Immediately one of the officers moving door to door went rigid, whirled, and threw a haymaker into the teeth of his partner. Within seconds there was a policeman’s brawl in the parking lot. The first cop, swarmed by his buddies, went for his gun. Vilenov heard a shot. Then another. 73

The Influence Freak Tenants and staff ran screaming from the lobby while hunching pedestrians scattered behind anything stationary. In the confusion he stumbled into his boots, slipped outside, and ran zigzagging between cars. He hesitated, his temple pounding as hard as his heart. To his right, a picturesque cement staircase descended in sections street to street, terminating in a brief splash of cobblestones at Ocean Front Walk three flights below. Chain link separates this staircase from the Dunerider and adjacent property, but Vilenov couldn’t afford to run clear up to the street and around, so he jumped on a car and vaulted the fence. No athlete, he tore his arm and trousers going over, then half ran, half rolled down the stairs to the promenade. Ocean Front Walk, on a beautiful late summer’s day, is an outrageous freak show all wound up with no place to go. Thousands of rowdy partygoers file along in rough ranks on a sidewalk two miles long and ten feet wide, occasionally obstructed by vendors, street musicians, and milling gangbangers. Vilenov was carried by the crowd; jostled by roller-skating blacks in Speedos, by glaring Latino furheads grudgingly comparing tattoos, by creepy white longhairs slinking across the walk to dig in ranks of fifty-five gallon trash drums. Sifting through all this were the camera-toting tourists, the beady-eyed skinheads, the glistening, overblown bodybuilders. Two helicopters appeared above the Dunerider. Another—sleek, black, and futuristic—tore south along the waterline at full tilt. Following with his eyes, Vilenov made out a number of distant police ATVs speeding his way over the sand. Closer by, lifeguards were clearing the beach of sunbathers. Vilenov pushed through the bodies, keeping low. Catching a break, he looked north to find Santa Monica Pier’s paved boardwalk crawling with police cars. He was about to change direction when he heard the whoop of a siren behind him being triggered and released. The crowd ahead, whirling to see, instantly became an impenetrable human wall. Above their bobbing heads appeared the eggshell helmet of a mounted policeman. The wall exploded the moment Vilenov panicked. A spike-haired youth beside him grabbed a man twice his size and went for his eyes. A pretty brown girl fell to her knees, screaming and tearing at her cheeks with her long purple nails. A table covered with specimens of Henna tattoos collapsed as if its legs had been kicked out. A homeless man knocked over the trash can he’d been dredging, then pursued the rolling can through the bewildered crowd, kicking and cursing all the way. Now Vilenov, rammed from behind, turned to see the mêlée expanding like ripples in a pond. He staggered onto one of the little grass oases between the walk and adjacent serpentine bike path. The oasis was peppered by bicyclists dazed from collisions. Vilenov snatched the derailleur of a spandexed bicyclist sitting holding his gushing broken nose. The handlebars, wrenched left in the spill, wouldn’t respond to his immediate attempts at adjustment, so he rode wobbling along the path towards the waterline, occasionally looking back. The Ocean Front crowd, spilling onto the bike path and beach itself, was immediately corralled by dozens of plain-clothes officers leaping from behind kiosks and storefront countertops. Suddenly men with megaphones were everywhere. Vilenov saw ATVs making for the spot he’d just left, even as an unmarked car, its siren briefly howling every few seconds, lurched around frantic pedestrians. Before it had stopped completely a number of men jumped out and threw themselves into the shoving bodies, abandoning the car in the sand. Two sprinted into one of the many collapsible leased stores selling sunglasses and pop posters, chasing a man wearing a red bandana and baseball cap. Another helicopter appeared, this time very low over Ocean Front. The crowd went right into stampede mode. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the short pier tunnel. Emerging cyclists, reacting to his anxiety, threw out their arms and pitched headfirst onto the asphalt path. Vilenov dropped his wheels. Clinging to the darkness, he crept like a spider to the bright world on the other side. 74

The Influence Freak He poked out his head. Despite the very heavy police presence behind him, the beach on this side was still crowded, cut off from the sounds of panic. Then sun worshippers were jumping up and plodding excitedly through the sand to Ocean Front. A knot of running pedestrians erupted into view. Seconds later a trio of police cars came pushing south from Ocean Front’s far end, quickly overtaken by ATVs that leaped the road and tore across the sand. The slower sunbathers, looking around uncertainly, hollered questions, grabbed belongings, and scooped up errant toddlers. Vilenov arched his shoulders and lowered his head. Melting out of the pier’s shadow, he walked nonchalantly round a pillar and straight into a faceful of pepper spray. He hit the ground with his hands clamped over his face; his eyes, sinuses, and throat on fire. Cayenne seared his lungs in brief, superheated bursts, remedied only by desperate little gulps of fresh ocean air. He thrashed about like a drowning man before pushing himself to his knees, his hot red face hanging beneath a high-pitched pumping noise. Vilenov wiped his streaming eyes and smacked his palms over his ears before that piercing, persistent screech could drill a hole right through the soft spot in his temple. Planted squarely in front of him, the offending blur swam into focus. A squat, middle-aged woman in windbreaker and jogging sweats stood hunched with her fists on her hips, blowing frantically on a fat nickel-plated whistle. By alternately rubbing his eyes and rapidly blinking, Vilenov was able to make out the oval Santa Monica Provisional Deputy patch on the woman’s black baseball cap, and the all-pervading anti-Vilenov image sewn into her windbreaker’s breast. “Gah!” he snarled, and she took off like a shot across the sand, still blowing her whistle maniacally. Not a soul paid her the least mind; every person on the beach was mesmerized by the human flash flood screaming down Ocean Front. Slapping his face and howling curses, Vilenov staggered to a drinking fountain, rinsed his mouth and spat, soaked his head, repeatedly splashed water in his eyes. His expression was startlingly feral as he bounded up the short flight of sand-toboardwalk cement steps. Almost every officer on the pier was caught up in the Ocean Front commotion; Vilenov watched them leaning over the promenade rail, running through the hangar-like arcade, circumnavigating the carousel—but one nervous patrolman was parked facing the water, maybe a hundred feet from the cement staircase. This officer’s head popped out his window like a jack in the box, popped back inside. The cop stepped on the gas and made straight for him, their stares wed all the way. Suddenly the driver’s eyes seemed to sizzle in his face. Gunning the engine, he planted his head squarely into his shoulders. The car accelerated past Vilenov to the very end of the pier, burst through the rail and made a picture-perfect swan dive into the sea. The police overlooking the promenade whirled when they heard the cruiser’s racing engine, then stood mesmerized as the car smashed into the wooden guardrail and appeared to hang suspended above the sea. Before it had vanished they were sprinting for the spot, the roar of their voices rolling up the boardwalk like a retreating wave. Vilenov took the steps back down three at a time. He stumbled through the sand to the Sidewalk Plaza, where pedestrians and customers greeted him with a rushing, shrieking free-for-all. He was battered and bitten, elbowed and kneed. Vilenov kicked and punched his way free while flags and sun umbrellas burst into flames around him. He scrambled crabwise up the embankment beneath the avenue-to-pier bridge. Running under this bridge are the lanes connecting Pacific Coast Highway with the 10 freeway, and the onramp and offramp connecting PCH with Palisades Park, a famous clifftop swath with a breathtaking South Bay view. The two highway lanes lead into a short tunnel penetrating a low fat hillock at the cliff’s foot, and emerge as diverging lanes which are, practically speaking, the 75

The Influence Freak westbound 10’s terminus. Vilenov dashed across the ramps and paused on the dividing island to consider his three possible routes: he could dart in full sight across the highway to the base of the cliff, he could clamber up the tree-lined embankment over the tunnel until he reached the park, or he could sprint the few hundred yards through the tunnel out of view from above. Vilenov peered into the tunnel. That way was suicide. And a quick glance up revealed police cars moving off the bridge onto Pacific Avenue. No less than nine helicopters—police, news, and National Guard—were hovering about, a few positioned extremely high overhead. Hard to his left, a herd of black-andwhites were roaring up PCH. Without a moment to waste, he ran across the highway and began awkwardly making his way up the cliff’s face, embracing one clump of brush before leaping to the next. There was a sudden ruckus from joggers and seniors leaning on the rail above, and some very aggressive barking from a police K9 unit. Down on the highway, a dozen CHP cars halted in ranks of three. On the beach beyond, eight south-running black and white ATVs met an equal number driving north. The vehicles parked in an odd arrangement that placed drivers facing in all directions, leaving a maze of tire tracks in the sand. Hard on his tail, a number of policemen were now kicking down homeless camps amid the stunted trees over the tunnel. A black helicopter came barreling north, halted above the ATVs, and swung to face Vilenov like a toy on a wire. There was a fluttering roar over Palisades Park. The cliff seemed to tremble. Vilenov looked up and to his left. Appearing to just clear the rail, a Los Angeles police helicopter loomed enormously. It very slowly turned to face the brush, its rotors creating flurries of leaves. An electronically magnified voice hit the cliff’s face like a fist. “Anyone in the brush is ordered to pull his shirt over his head and crawl on hands and knees to the highway. Once there you are further ordered to lay face down and to not turn your head. If you do so you will be fired upon.” In a minute a couple of transients came slithering onto the highway on their stomachs, shirts over their heads. Half a dozen CHP officers approached in crescent formation, their guns trained on the pair. A man in white shirt and tie stepped through as soon as the two had been pinned by their necks and backs. This officer kicked the derelicts repeatedly, then grabbed a man by the hair and slowly turned his head while holding a massive handgun to the temple. He repeated the process with the second man. After a tense minute he looked up and shook his head emphatically. The helicopter edged north, still facing the cliff, the cockpit’s shotgun officer carefully studying the brush through binoculars. Vilenov drew into a tight, trembling ball. It was like having a tornado sneak up on you. Suddenly wind was lashing his face and hair. The tornado steadied at twelve o’clock. “You in the brush!” Vilenov came out of his crouch with all the force of a detonating grenade. As though buffeted by a physical blow, the chopper reared, did a complete back flip, and plummeted spiraling to the crowded highway below. CHP cars began ramming one another, ATVs created erratic patterns in the sand. One drove directly into the surf. Halfway up the cliff, Vilenov clawed his way to a closed park-to-highway staircase, then bounded up the crumbling cement steps and scrambled over the staircase’s locked chain link gate. The park was a bizzaro-world riot. Policemen were clubbing seniors and vagabonds while their huge K9 Shepherds savaged citizens, handlers, and each other. Unnoticed, Vilenov loped back to the bridge, hopped the rail, and tumbled down to the highway. A steaming police cruiser now lay smashed against a cement retaining wall at the tunnel’s entrance, and beside this car ran a telltale trail of blood drops; zigzagging across the lanes, disappearing down the embankment. Dash, seat, and carpet were flecked and smeared with blood. Finding the key still in the ignition, Vilenov fired her up 76

The Influence Freak and made a hard U-turn. He floored the car through the tunnel and onto the 10 freeway. Nobody was going to screw him this time. He flipped off the howling emergency vehicles racing toward the beach. A lone helicopter rose like a Harpy in his left-hand mirror. Vilenov pounded his fist on the steering wheel three times, and the car’s windshield cracked, spiderwebbed, and exploded. A flurry of glass chips blew back in his face. He snarled and accelerated as a second helicopter, a third, then a fourth, appeared in a long ascending tail. Eastbound cars, their drivers freaked-out by all the road-and air activity, were creating an irregularly spaced obstacle course. Vilenov cut off and tailgated indiscriminately while triggering his lights and siren, causing those already confused drivers to panic. As his rage increased, cars spun out or veered off the freeway. Off-pavement, sporadic events occurred at each new burst of emotion: cracks raced across retaining walls, signs rattled, concussive reports in the scrub were followed by brief wisps of smoke. Vilenov hurtled across the 405, his anger scattering everything in his path. He threw a quick look back. The chain of helicopters was much nearer, closing in a tight eastbound line; even as he watched, a fifth fell in line high above the fourth. Miles ahead, half a dozen others were circling like gulls riding a lazy current. He pushed the car over 100, thin plumes of smoke rising in the city around him. And as he accelerated, chips of glass in his hair and the wind in his eyes, he imagined a fleeing figure; stumbling, exhausted, regularly looking back, the face taut with terror. Lawrence Abram. Pampered turncoat and thief. And every time that despised face flashed back it was as if a piston had just pounded in Vilenov’s skull. He opened and shut his eyes with the piston’s rhythm, sensing a seizure coming on. “Not now!” he whimpered. “Not . . . now!” A succession of small explosions to his left sounded in perfect sync with the piston. On his right a tractor-trailer swerved wildly, the forty-foot trailer disengaging and flipping across the lanes. Vilenov avoided it automatically, going through brake, wheel, and accelerator in one motion. But all he could see was that face! Sitting straight-up as he drove, he opened his mouth and just screamed.

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Chapter Eleven The Impact Abram tried the downtown number again, and again got the canned voice rerouting him to the other canned voice. And again the other canned voice informed him his call could not be put through. He took a sip and glanced at his watch. Nelson Prentis should have dismissed the press long ago. He should be home by now, or at least be on the short drive down Wilshire. He tried Prentis’s cell phone and got nowhere. Abram looked around dully. All the stores on Cadillac and Robertson were closed. Traffic was dead. He dropped in two more quarters and again punched Prentis’s home number. And again the DA’s voice came in, the familiar recorded message explaining that he was presently unavailable, and wondering if the caller could please leave a message after the tone. Abram cringed at the beep. “Pick up, Nelson, pick up! It’s Larry. I’m at a pay phone. Cadillac and Robertson. I got sick of sitting inside staring at the tube, watching this city go to hell. Nellie . . . why can’t you keep your liquor cabinet stocked? I looked inside and found nothing but ghosts. So I called a cab and went out for a pint, just so’s I wouldn’t have to be totally alone. And when I left the store the cab was history.” He closed an eye and appraised the area. “All of a sudden the streets are practically dead. Our boy is on his way, and he’s pissed. I can feel it. So just listen, Nelson, I . . . I brought Pearl with me. I know you told me to never take her down, but this is an emergency, and I figured just this once.” He blew into the phone. “Buddy, I need a ride out. You’re probably more aware of what’s going on than anybody other than the Chief, but I just got some fresh gumbo over the store owner’s CB: Nelson, stampeding idiots have blocked every freeway! It’s like Godzilla’s on the horizon. And I can see the smoke of fires . . . one, two, three . . . six of ’em. Now pick up, Nelson, pick up!” The air went dead at the closing tone, but Abram kept right on sputtering into the mouthpiece. “Listen, Nelson, I’m stuck here! Okay, buddy? But I don’t want to go back to your place. I need transportation for the family and myself out of the city, and I need it quick.” He tucked the receiver between his shoulder and jaw, massaging his forehead with one hand while repeatedly clenching the 78

The Impact Freak other. His voice rose and fell, lachrymose and begging. “Oh, buddy,” he whined, “I’ve already seen some looting, and I just watched a bunch of tourists being stomped for nothing over on National! And there wasn’t a damned thing a scared-shitless cabbie and lawyer could do about it. There’s just so much anger and hatred in the air, man. You can feel it. Now I need transportation out of here, Nellie! Surely you can get somebody to me! Please!” Abram dropped the receiver and let it dangle, pulled the half-consumed pint of rum from under his arm and took another slug. The liquor went down like lava. He opened his briefcase and replaced the bottle. Nestled in a clean folded shirt was Prentis’s beloved pearl handled derringer. It was a prized heirloom, kept loaded in a polished walnut saddle on Prentis’s mantel, but for show only. He ran his finger along the barrel, covered the gun back up and snapped shut his briefcase. Lawrence Abram started across Robertson determinedly, obsessed with getting inside a building to privately access his pocket organizer. A lot of people owed him favors. Halfway across the street he grew aware of whipping lights rounding Beverlywood onto Robertson. Abram almost sagged with relief. His buddy, God bless him, had come through. Right away he was struck by the ridiculousness of this drunken notion. Abram froze in the police car’s headlights, every thought and impulse crunched in a cerebral logjam. The car hit Abram so hard the attorney was hurled fifteen yards up Robertson. The driver slammed on the brakes, threw the car in reverse and ran over the body, hammered into drive and ran over it again. The door flew open and a wild-eyed cop almost fell out, his expression a strange blend of frenzy and horror. He whipped out his handgun and emptied it into the mangled corpse, then continued to work the trigger while his head rocked back and forth. Finally his eyes fell on the briefcase and its scattered contents. He staggered to the derringer, shoved the barrel in his mouth, and desperately pulled the trigger.

Although his recovering mind was urgently focused on the road, Vilenov still managed to keep an eye peeled and an ear pegged. The speeding car was filled with a near-continuous stream of police chatter, and by latching onto familiar street names he was able to glean that not far ahead the 10-110 exchange was in gridlock, and that every available police unit was being dispatched to hold the area against him. As he veered onto the south offramp at National Boulevard the chain of helicopters swung right along behind. At first glance National appeared deserted. But the moment he rolled off the ramp a single police unit maybe half a mile ahead came to life and raced along with siren blaring and lights burning, clearing the way. The tactic was lost on Vilenov, yet this single glimpse of foreshadowing authority sent him out of his mind with anger. The manifestations of this anger, radiating in all directions, caused rows of shop windows to pop like firecrackers. The incessant radio chatter only ratcheted up his passion. He was just reaching to kill it when a voice sounded so clearly the speaker might have been sitting right beside him in the hurtling car. “Nicolas Vilenov.” Vilenov took the corner at Venice Boulevard on two wheels, siding smack into the front end of a parked UPS truck. The impact crushed the driver’s door and just missed taking off his leg. “Nicolas Vilenov!” He gave the car gas, over and over, but the door was solidly impaled on the truck’s fender. 79

The Impact Freak Only by continuously jerking in forward and reverse was he able to wrench the door from its hinges, and by that time a crowd was all over him. Vilenov cussed them out collectively and shot down Venice. Half a mile ahead, a different black-and-white came to life and sped away, all flashing lights and siren. Vilenov screamed at it, continuing to accelerate while repeatedly kicking his brake foot on the floorboard. To his left a high brick wall collapsed like a house of cards. “Nicolas Vilenov, this is the Los Angeles Chief of Police speaking. You are ordered to pull over your vehicle, and to surrender at once. All avenues out of the city are blocked; your situation is entirely hopeless. Be advised that troops of the National Guard have been deployed, and will not hesitate to use military weapons.” Vilenov put his fist into the car’s padded roof and stomped his feet up and down like a man playing double bass drums. Go on, he thought, residential windows blowing out around him, keep talking. Hog the radio. Don’t let anybody else communicate. One of the pursuing helicopters, an AH-64 Apache, veered well clear of the chain and emitted a short 30mm burst that disintegrated a billboard just ahead. Vilenov hit the brakes hard, spun out, and jumped right back on the gas. That was a total bluff—no way would they chance on blowing away civilians. But the spinout threw him south on Centinela; he was now moving away from the beach on a course with few wide-open outlets. The avenue was dead: shops closed, sidewalks clear, streetlamps coming up gold in the setting sun. As he burned through Culver City, Vilenov rediscovered his old cocky self. He drove with his waving left arm thrust out the open driver’s side, giving the finger to the patient line of copters. One of rock’s great anthems blew through his mind, the lyrics contorting his lips. “I’m getting closer,” he sang, “to my home.” Another burst from the Apache’s turret demolished a chain link fence dangerously near the clattering cruiser. Vilenov leaned right out of the car as he drove, bawling profanities at the closing copter. The Apache, after bouncing and swaying perilously, veered to the east and hovered at a hundred feet in a southwesterly pitch. In less than a minute it was back on him with an attitude. Vilenov flew across Culver Boulevard while a screaming hail ripped up the road around him. To avoid a very certain and very messy death, he was forced to make a hard right at the dry concrete basin of Ballona Creek. An inland bike path runs alongside this basin, accessible from north-south roads only by lifting a bike’s wheels over a removable locking foot-high steel barrier designed to prevent access to general traffic. Vilenov hit this barrier at almost forty miles an hour, miraculously sparing the tires but warping the front tie rod, crushing the oil pan, and tearing up the transmission. He landed on the rear wheels. Leaving a dozen weaving red and black trails in a miscellany of broken parts, he sped recklessly along the bike path for a hundred yards before taking out the first row of picnic tables. Half of southern Culver City must have turned out to cheer on Vilenov on this lovely mild summer afternoon. Ballona’s bike path was a natural and popular place to congregate, free of cars and commerce. People could hang. Portable televisions and boom boxes were everywhere; folks with binoculars had been excitedly following the line of helicopters while trading observations with friends and families glued to TVs. But, riveted as they were by the cruiser’s televised proximity, no one was prepared for the steaming, screeching steel monster that came at them like a bat out of Hell. Chairs and bodies were pummeled by the cruiser’s smashed grille, children and portable barbecues flew in through the windshield’s frame, battering Vilenov’s face and shoulders so that he could only swerve wildly through the thrashing crowd, colliding with some, running over others. He yanked the wheel left and went over the path’s lip, twenty feet down the cement grade to the basin’s narrow floor, screams of unimaginable horror swirling behind him like a haunted wind. 80

The Impact Freak At this point the Apache dipped its nose and came on hard, firing continuously. Vilenov could only run the car up and down the basin’s opposing slopes in a temporary evasive maneuver, the accelerator to the floor. This went on for less than a minute; the cruiser was coming up on Lincoln, where hundreds of spectators were lining the basin and hanging from the overpass. The Apache pulled up sharply as Vilenov hammered up the grade through dozens of scattering bystanders. He lurched to a stop at Lincoln Boulevard’s bike path entrance, barely in time to glimpse a sheriff’s car streaking away. The foot-high barrier had just been removed; Vilenov was free to drive straight onto Lincoln. Even as he perched casually with one leg and one arm outside the car, pondering this gambit, he was approached by phalanxes of loud intrepid fools, some calling out threats, some shouting congratulations. Vilenov darkly stepped halfway out of the car, narrowly controlling his passion. One by one the rowdies stepped back. When his path was cleared he sat back down just as meaningfully and slowly motored through the entrance onto Lincoln. He braked instantly—a pair of Army tanks to his left were swinging their cannons his way. Vilenov peeled out to his right and floored the car north, only to find every intersection barricaded by highway patrol cars, by SWAT vans, by a variety of trucks and trailers. He automatically hit the side streets, his wrath popping glass, setting off motion detectors, bringing to full throat every dog in the vicinity. And the farther he drove, the angrier he grew: homeowners, refusing to evacuate their beloved neighborhoods, had erected barriers of cars, RVs, trash cans and mattresses, leaving only confidential routes for their personal ingress and egress. These blocked-off city streets were now silent roads to nowhere. Marina del Rey had effectively become a labyrinth. But Nicolas Vilenov was back, and he knew this area better than anybody. He shot across vacant lots and down alleys, zigzagged over sidewalks and lawns, swerved to take advantage of every inch of tree cover; always trying to lose the big eye in the sky. By this method he eventually worked his way clear to Washington Boulevard, his lifeline to the beach and Venice Canals. But as he burst clattering and clanging from an alley he was greeted by an unexpected crescent of cars and motorcycles; everything from SMPD to CHP to LAPD. Vilenov didn’t even slow. He tore straight into a shocked wedge of motorcycle cops, then, in a bloody rain of flesh and metal, smashed into a cruiser, instantly corrected, and barreled west down Washington. The entire force came after him like savages after a covered wagon. At Lincoln additional knots of official vehicles broke into his wake, quickly joined by motorcycles tearing out of drives and underground garages. The line of helicopters veered, closed, and jumped right on his rocking rear end. He punched on his lights and siren. Vilenov’s fuming car became a howling, flashing comet with a growing law enforcement tail. Then, for no apparent reason, the entire cavalcade backed off, and he found himself screaming toward the beach alone. The mystery was solved when he hit Admiralty Way. An explosion on his car near the grille, and a hundred fragments of his right headlight sparkled, blew outward, and vanished. Before he realized what was happening, police marksmen behind bushes and on corner rooftops were letting go with a volley that tore the cruiser’s roof and passenger side to ribbons. Vilenov swerved hard to his left and sped wildly up Admiralty, swiping signs and flowerbeds as he went. The car’s hood flew open, slammed against the roof, blew off its hinges in a cloud of steam. Admiralty was cut off between Sweet Harbor and the Park by sheriff’s cars parked bumper to bumper, reinforced with an antique fire truck from the Admiralty station. Crouched behind those cars, and stretched out on their hoods, officers were watching Vilenov come on through their rifles’ sights. At the sound of gunfire he yanked the wheel left, slamming into the curb and blowing the left front tire off its rim. He plowed across the grass onto the bike path, the exposed rim throwing a low plume of sparks all along the asphalt and back onto Admiralty Way. Every car roared to life and tore 81

The Impact Freak around the fire truck. Vilenov clung to the rocking wheel, staring straight ahead with his jaws clenched. At least a dozen howling black-and-whites were turning onto Admiralty from Fiji Way, cutting him off completely. His eyes narrowed . . . were those Humvees pulling up behind them . . . and now, turning off of Fiji, could those possibly be the camouflaged bodies of troop transports? He peered into his side-view mirror. That Apache was no bluff. The goddamned governor had called out the goddamned Army. His car slammed and hissed to a halt at the corner of Admiralty and Mindanao. To his left, Lincoln Boulevard’s Mindanao access was fully obstructed by used automobiles off Lincoln Ford’s adjacent lot. Marina Market’s parking was blocked by a broad semi-circle of volunteered private vehicles. Vilenov could either stay put or turn right down the short road to the cul-de-sac of Burton Chace Park. For the first time he was honestly appreciating his enemy. He’d been arrogant enough to pretend he was leading them on a merry chase, rather than being pressed into an evacuated verdant corner. Squinting, he peered down Mindanao and shook his head admiringly. So this is where they’d orchestrated his demise; a lovely hidden arena, all grass and trees, surrounded by the ever-lapping sea. Very appropriate. Almost considerate. The ranks came to a halt before him, sirens cut. Just behind, the sheriffs’ cars were also at rest, idling in line with their roof lights spinning. But soundless. They wanted him to calm down. Now there was nothing to be heard other than the complex thrumming of eight helicopters aligned in a long ascendant tail over Admiralty. As Vilenov watched, a news copter broke rank to swing over Chace. He yanked the steering wheel to the right. There’ll be hell to pay for that move, he thought, and gave the car gas. With a groan of tortured springs the cruiser wobbled around the corner and went grinding down the road. The line of helicopters proceeded along Admiralty until their median copter, the Apache, was hovering directly over the Admiralty-Mindanao intersection and pointing straight at the laboring patrol car. The copter began tailing Vilenov with a progress that was almost imperceptible. In a slow motion aerial ballet, the remaining copters produced a formation like geese on the wing and gradually moved west in the Apache’s wake. Vilenov fought his crippled cruiser to the parking area. He was trying to turn in on the hot rim when a rocket launched from the Apache took out the passenger side and sent the car flying. The pulse of the situation instantly jumped from tranquil to frantic. In a heartbeat the Apache was hovering right over the mangled car, the air was alive with sirens, and dozens of vehicles were racing down Mindanao. Vilenov picked himself out of the shrubbery, a mass of cuts and bruises. But very much alive. He was very much alive because he hadn’t been wearing a seat belt in a car without a driver’s-side door. He’d been flung like a doll in one direction, and the heavy, fiery mass of the cruiser in another. The car had landed on its roof in a tree-lined tiled plaza marking the park’s entrance. He shrank back into the shrubs, blinking rapidly, deliberating . . . law enforcement’s complete attention was focused on the spewing corpse of the upended police car . . . the Apache was hovering not twenty feet above, its tremendous searchlight fixed on the wreckage . . . the whole smashed gushing mess was circled by lawmen—in uniforms, in shirts and ties, in jumpsuits and in civvies— their apparel whipping in the rotors’ wind. They were approaching with extreme caution, rifles and shotguns extended like men feeling out a cobra’s nest. Vilenov took a deep breath and, his nose almost to the ground, ran tiptoeing through the park. Chace isn’t a particularly large park, just ten beautifully landscaped acres tucked between the lazy blue tines of Basins G and H in Marina Channel. There’s a community center, a trio of peaked barbecue enclosures, a central courtyard, and a quaint wooden bridge spanning soft green knolls. 82

The Impact Freak Vilenov flitted from one bit of cover to the next, a black roving wraith at the far reach of headlight beams. He knew it wouldn’t be long before someone in charge sent in the Marines, but he had a plan. While running he studied the sleepy silhouettes of yachts and dinghies, inboards and outboards; all gently rocking side by side in their slips. Only a narrow bike path and short fence separated these boats from the trees and grass. Once he’d pirated a vessel it would be a simple matter of five minutes’ silent running and he’d be on the north side of Basin G, slipping away through a new maze of innocent craft. He knew it would take time for his enemies to scour the park; they’d be thorough as hell, and approaching with great care. There were already a number of boats, outsiders attracted or repulsed by all the noise in the air and on the ground, passing back and forth in a quiet, dreamy drift. One more ghost would go unnoticed. He was just stepping over the fence when there came two sharp blats of an air horn. The news copter pulled up from low over Basin H and beat in an arc above the park, capturing Vilenov in its searchlight as he straddled the fence. The chopper came on until well over the waters of Basin G. There it hovered, its dazzling light directed at an angle exposing the park’s entire tip. But the moment Vilenov looked up the helicopter was buffeted as though by a great wind. Its tail dipped, and the huge machine dropped like a bomb into the basin. There were shouts in the distance, quickly followed by the bright points of headlights tearing through the park. Half a minute later Guardsmen were leaping from a transport, their silhouettes flashing through the beams as they ran to line the bridge from both ends. The Apache rose above the trees like a great angry dragonfly, its searchlight’s blinding column quickly fixing on the ragged little man dragging his leg back over the fence. Vilenov turned slowly to face a small army of marksmen, his eyes burning in the white-hot glare. He raised his arms high, but didn’t halt in the classic pose of surrender, lowering them gradually to the ten-and two o’clock position while turning the palms inward. Every man facing him recognized the street challenge, and all eyes were instinctively drawn to his. In this way Vilenov visually embraced the whole mass of his enemy: the dozens of police with handguns poised, the line of National Guardsmen with rifles leveled, the pilot and gunner of the huge green chopper now tilting down its nose with guns and rockets ready. His ugly gray eyes swept side to side and he smiled like a winner, like a man who has done it all. There was a pause; a few excruciating seconds when everyone involved appeared frozen in place. Nicolas Vilenov made a sudden move as if going for a weapon, and the combined firepower of lawmen, Guardsmen, and attack helicopter blew his vile black soul straight back to Hell.

83

Chapter Twelve The End It was warm as many a summer’s day, though most of the pumpkins were history, and Thanksgiving decorations already well on the way up. A few houses were even strung with Christmas lights, and, on the miniature replica lighthouse at Fisherman’s Village, a sun-bleached plastic Santa had been crucified to herald the yuletide. Looking past the Village and across the Marina’s Main Channel, park goers stood watching the Admiralty Apartments and Marriott Hotel undergoing the final stages of fire damage repair. And from where Damon leaned on the fence bordering Basin G, it was easy to visualize those fires breaking out, to hear police and emergency vehicles howling in every direction, and to imagine the loose cannon of Nicolas Vilenov breaking all the rules as he barreled along in a stolen, thrashed police car. And whenever Damon turned to critically consider the park, he could picture, equally well, the hot wall of law enforcement storming Vilenov’s final stand. Damon had to rely on imagination, for there were no visual records. But there were a number of vestiges, and what amounted to, in Damon’s eyes, a virtual shrine. The vestigial evidence consisted of charred branches, half-healed tire grooves, and the occasional wink of a shell casing floating perpetually round the basins. The shrine was a huge space at his left elbow where a chunk had been blown out of the original bike path. This space was now surrounded by a high chain link fence bearing signs warning away children and other scoundrels. Channel water formed a gently slapping pool in the gap. Damon’s reverie was interrupted by a series of increasingly heavy vibrations in the fence. He looked casually to his right and immediately jerked back his head. Shambling along the fence was the most pitiable wino he’d ever seen, dressed in rags over rags, filthier by the layer. The man’s 84

The End Freak trash-tangled, wispy white hair hadn’t seen a comb, a bar of soap, or a pair of scissors in years. His face was devastated by a lifetime of alcohol abuse, by physical and emotional suffering, by a million squints and gnashes. Folds of very loose flesh hung like wattles from his chin and jowls. It looked like one more knock on the head would pop his extraordinarily swollen eyes right out of their sockets. Now, though Damon was a generally compassionate and generous man, he genuinely loathed being approached by the unfortunate. It’s just that there were so many of these people in the area— and handing out money and advice didn’t seem to help a bit. He studied the Marriott resignedly, his train of thought derailed. The wino snuffled right up next to him and copied his position. Damon stared hard at the water, himself a beggar; every nuance of his body language beseeching the intruder to mooch elsewhere. He thought of faking an emergency bathroom run, or maybe moving along determinedly as though suddenly distracted. He even thought of playing deaf. But the wino didn’t move or open his mouth, and time seemed to die. Damon was just turning to walk when the wino hawked one into the water, and so initiated their relationship. “Helluva job,” he sniffed, “patchn up them hotels when they burn. I seen that big one catch, an I thought for sure she’d go all the way.” “They’ve got super-sophisticated sprinkler systems,” Damon alliterated unintentionally, “and the Fire Department is right up the street. Look—” “Hell!” the wino croaked. “Fire department couldn’ get a handle on it! They was spread out thinner’n a church sandwich, an so many cops was chasn that guy they wasn’ no fire truck coulda made it down that street. An when he come runnin in the park this place was blocked off solid, man, solid! I couldn’ show my pretty face or I’da been shot to jesus.” Damon could only recoil (another of his major peeves was hollering strangers). He was just digging for change when the import of the wino’s outburst came like a slap across the face. “You . . . you actually saw Nicolas Vilenov pursued into this park?” The wino glowered. “What I jus say?” “What you just said.” “An what I jus said is what I jus said I seen, okay? I seen ’em all come in here chasn what’shis-face, an I seen ’em all shoot the whole fuckn place up. Up, down, crosswise, and sideways.” “Listen, friend,” Damon said excitedly. “My name’s Raymond Bartholemew Damon, and I write an occasional column for the Argonaut newspaper. You must’ve seen it.” “Freebie,” the wino said contemptuously. “How you make a livn writn for a give-away newspaper?” “I do other work. I write software and handle some consulting jobs. Look, none of that’s important. What is important is that I’m researching the whole Vilenov incident for a book I’m writing. There’ve been a ton of speculative articles and docudramas, but as of yet there’s nothing to go by other than the official police statement. A civilian’s eyewitness account could humanize the whole thing. I’m talking big time here. Millions!” he ejaculated, and caught himself. The wino’s left eye rolled to study Damon long and disdainfully, while his right eye stared across the Marina like a gargoyle’s. Finally the left eye swung back to stereo. “I can’ talk on a dry belly.” Damon nodded. “Then we’ll moisten you right up.” He immediately initiated the walk to Marina Market, through the center of the park and down Mindanao, prodding his companion all the way. The wino was surprisingly nimble for a man in his condition, but his tongue was not so swift. He refused to surrender a morsel of news until he’d encountered that first sweet drop. 85

The End Freak Damon stopped just outside the market’s automated glass doors. “One thing,” he said. “Before I invest a single nickel I want to know just where you were when this all came down. I want to know why you were a witness, and I want to know why no one witnessed you being a witness. That park was sealed. After the whole affair the grounds were gone over with a fine-toothed comb.” “But not the water. Coast Guard comes by earlier that day an kicks everbody offa their boats whiles I keeps hunkered low. Wasn a soul but me for miles. After all the ’citement Harbor Patrol comes by an rousts me; tells me I seen nothin, tells me I heared nothin, tells me I wasn never to be seen on the water again. But I comes back anyway. They’s a rowboat tied up aside one of the slips, with a blue plastic tarp over her. Me an you was standn almos on top of her in the park, right up by the fence. Tha’s my home; tha’s my Baby. I been sleepn under that tarp so long,” he boasted, “I got keel marks where my ribs useta be. When all the fuss gets goin I wakes up an takes a peeks over the cement an through the fence. I couldn take my eyes offa that whole big trip, man, an I doesn crawl back under Baby’s Blanket till it’s all over an the cops is pickn up pieces.” He licked his lips. Damon considered the wino’s story. “Good enough.” He marched right in. A minute later he marched right back out with a pint bottle of Night Train. Against his whispered objections, the wino immediately knocked the bottle back. Shoppers stopped; some laughing, some frowning. “Jesus!” Damon hissed “Cut it out, will you?” The wino ignored him completely. He sucked the bottle dry, staggered back a few paces, turned, and barfed like a dog in one of the little planters between coffee tables. Damon looked away and nodded. “All right. I think you and I are done exploiting each other here.” The wino whirled, the folds of his face flapping along behind him. He coughed out, desperately, “An I seen more!” “What more?” “Everthin! I seen the cops chasn that guy down, an I seen him go nuts, an I seen the cops go nuts right back. But I seen him walk, friend. I seen him walk!” The planet screeched to a halt. Damon clenched and unclenched his fingers. “You . . . you actually saw them gun him down?” “No-o-o-o . . . I ackchewally saw ’em blow away a empty hunka bike path.” “What?” The wino withered at Damon’s bark of frustration. He backpedaled urgently. “No, no, friend! No. What I mean is what you said.” And it hit Damon: he’d been yanked from the moment the wino’d first opened his gummy manipulating mouth. He grabbed the outermost shirt and shook him so hard the man’s head rocked back and forth and side to side. “Now you’re gonna listen, friend! I don’t want to hear what you think I want to hear, okay? What I want to hear, straight up, Dewlap, is what you genuinely saw. Is that perfectly clear? You give me the truth and I’ll pay you for it, gulp for fact. But if I even suspect you’re bullshitting me, man, we part company.” He waited. “Fair?” “Fair.” “Fair?” “Fair!” Damon dropped his arms. After a long moment he said quietly, “Wait here. Don’t you dare move a muscle.” He marched right in. Ten minutes later he marched right back out with a full shopping bag. The wino oozed over. “What you got in the bag? Friend.” 86

The End Freak “I’ve got Christmas in the bag. Friend. Enough presents to keep you happy and loquacious.” A quirky pair on a lovely Bay day, the two made their way back to the park by following the walk alongside Basin G’s fence, drawing double takes from everyone they passed. The wino appeared none the worse for his experience with the Night Train. “Low—” he tried, “Low . . . kwayshus?” Embarrassed by all the negative attention, Damon snapped sotto voce, “Means talkative! Talkative! Okay?” “Okay.” “Okay?” “Okay!” “So we’re gonna have symbiosis here. Okay?” “Simbe? Sim . . . simbe?” “We feed off each other. It’s a mutual thing, one-to-one. Look, as long as you keep talking, you keep drinking. You shut up and we split up. Deal?” “Deal.” “Deal?” “Deal!” Damon approached the shrine embracing the bag jealously; the way he saw it, withholding its contents was sweet turnabout for the wino’s earlier reticence. Besides, he knew he needed to maintain control of the situation. If his companion got too drunk too fast, it could easily shorten or garble the narrative he was praying for. He instructed the wino to lead him directly to the rowboat. Everything depended on precisely recreating the vantage of that warm summer night. The wino was most uptight about this demand, as it meant breaking his own rule concerning approaching the slips before dark, a full two hours away. But Damon wasn’t farting around. “If you wanna drink, man, then we do this right.” He placed the bag to one side of the tall locked gate between the ramp and bike path. He and the wino followed the short fence a ways, then swung their legs over and scooted back along the basin’s high cement breakwater, steadying themselves hand over hand while walking on their toes. When they made the gate Damon reached over the fence to retrieve the bag. They tiptoed down the gently rocking ramp and stood amongst the outboards and dinghies. The water showed an oily film. Damon stood watching the marina breathe on the iron lung of progress: garbage drifting in, garbage drifting out. He could see how the bottom half of the wino’s rowboat told the uneven tale of this flux. It reminded him of the lower gum line of a chain smoker. The rowboat, owned by a man who kept a small cabin cruiser moored in the slip, appeared to have been bumping there forever. According to the wino, this owner showed up only rarely, and so far he’d been lucky. Beneath the faded blue tarp was a hull full of trash and various found objects. It smelled like a wino lived in it. “Phew!” Damon said. “What’s the name of your boat, pal? Old Stinky? Let’s air this puppy out.” “Shhh!” the wino sprayed, angrily hopping side to side with a finger to his lips, his eyes popping. Damon stepped into the boat carefully, kicked aside a small mound of trash, and sat with the bag between his knees. The wino parked himself close, like a hungry dog by the table. After a short pause to emphasize his ultimate say in the matter, Damon extracted a quart of Boone’s Farm Apple and raised an eyebrow. The wino pounced right on it, swallowing and slobbering horribly, only pausing halfway for a single abbreviated gulp of air. Damon prompted him throughout the ordeal and 87

The End Freak its aftermath, only to learn that, deals notwithstanding, drinking and conversing were two functions the wino would never be able to handle in conjunction. He realized he’d have to bide his time until the man’s basic thirst was sated, so he began studying the park from this wonderfully secure vantage—standing to peer, sitting to think—while the wino violated a large bottle of Cisco Berry. Sightseers, sauntering along the bike path above, appeared more amused than offended by the odd pair, and Damon was eventually able to relax somewhat. Although shadows were growing quite long, he was sure he could see the very spot where the news copter had torn up the basin’s rocky bottom. He made mental notes and studied angles, his excitement continuing to grow even as the wino sank deeper into oblivion. But after half an hour of this he found himself dipping in the bag. Damon casually uncapped a quart of Boone’s Farm Strawberry and forced down a third, all the while watching the wooden wino out of the corner of his eye. Finally he kicked the old man’s foot to get his attention. The wino snapped out of it and went straight for the bottle. Damon shook his head. “Uh-uh. You talk first, buddy. I’ve waited long enough.” To underscore his seriousness he put the bottle to his lips and drank heartily. The wino, barely conscious, behaved like a man who’d been lost for days in the desert. His dry lips cracked open and writhed longingly, his good eye rolled searchingly. The other closed up like it had just been poked. When he realized he’d have to sing for his supper he grudgingly began: “I was capped for the night an rockn with my Baby, when I was awoked by this great big ka— boom! out by the street. I snuck out my head. They was a whole buncha whirlybirds singn over the park entrance, an a zillion coppers drivn with their sirens an lights an the whole shebang, right up to the fountn. A great big searchlight was over ever blessd one of ’em, an now this other chopper come swingn round above me till I knowed I’da been shot if I evn dares move. But then she pulls over the other side an keeps low on the water. She kicks off her light an kinda mellows. Pretty soon I sees this guy come runnin toward me through the park, movn tree to tree. He’s all cut up an flittn like a ghost, his tore up ol shirt flappn behind him.” The wino caught his breath and turned to stone, eye rolled back and mouth agape. Damon took a long drink and nodded; first with slow analysis, then with hard certainty. He swished what was left in the bottle and the wino’s eye came alive. Damon handed it over, then fished in the bag while the old man went to town. He pulled out a bottle of Merlot, knocked in the cork with the shaft of a screwdriver that had been rolling against his foot, and took a careful swallow. Damon, only an occasional drinker, had a good buzz on. He couldn’t imagine what kept the wino going. After a minute he nudged the man’s knee with the bottle. The wino dropped his empty amidst a hundred others and began hyperventilating. Damon nudged him again, harder this time. The wino blurted out, “So the guy come runnin up to the fence!” and zoned out completely. Damon kicked him a good one. The wino’s butt bounced off the board as if he was springloaded. He pointed theatrically at the sealed-off gap in the bike path beside the water. “An he steps half-over like he’s plannin on maybe moseyin down this ramp, same as we done. But then that one chopper makes a couple honks an comes up over the park. The guy steps back onto the path an stares at it while it moves over the water. It puts a big light on him. Suddenly the guy jus snaps! He looks up, man. He looks up at that great big holymama bird right where she’s floatn, man, right. . . right. . . there!” The wino pointed to a spot above the water maybe forty feet from Baby. “He looks up like he wants to kill it, an the damn thing goes tail-down smash into the water. The waves offa that thing almos capsizes Baby, an while I’m hangn on I hears another! chopper, an pokes my head back up. The whole goddam knighted states army come runnin and drivn through the park. They all fans out in a big long line on the bridge an points everthin what they got at him. An he jus smiles.” 88

The End Freak Damon’s jaw dropped. The wino’s description was eerily similar to the scene as he’d imagined it a hundred times: the cocky desperado; spitting blood and bile, cornered but not cowed. Then the callous, the inhumane—nay, the inhuman overkill of law and order. Damon’s mind fast-forwarded to an enticingly-near future, when a jaded world responds to a searing manuscript bursting through the rumors and emotional haze. R.B. Damon, the reporter who walked the extra mile, the unsung genius who made the hard truth painfully clear to anyone with a shred of conscience . . . the man who, uncomfortable with all the lights and groupies and hoopla, stood like a rock before his gaping contemporaries and humbly accepted the Pulitzer. But not for himself, goddamn it. For The People! And now the sun’s perfect rim was clipped by the horizon. “Go on,” Damon’s voice rumbled from his dream. “You were spraying?” The wino took a deep breath. “An he jus stans there, with his arms all spread out like that Sherman on the mountain guy, as if he’s embracn ’em all, an he looks ever one of ’em in the eye while the news chopper goes down kickn.” Damon nodded, sighed, and swallowed manfully. He shook his head with wry gravity. “And then they blew his poor ass away with everything they had.” “No . . . no! . . . an then he walks along the rail jus as calm as calm can be, an hops over the fence by Baby here. An he clims aboard the Harbor Belle like he owns her, fires her up an heads on out the channel. He didn see me. We was both starin at the park. Suddenly the whole freakn Army come down on that bike path all at once. I seen ’em shoot tommy guns an ’zookers, an shotguns and rifles an hanguns too. An I seen that great big green chopper unload three rockets on that spot. When the fireworks was all over they was nothn but a giant chunk the size of a house blastd outta that path, an so much smoke in the air I hadda crawl back under Baby’s Blanket to breathe.” Damon sucked down the Merlot thoughtfully, mentally revisiting all those rumors of his man altering the perception of onlookers. Very gradually, very tentatively, that old private smile enveloped the bottle’s heavy glass mouth . . . ludicrous or not, the whole concept was delicious—to be able, as a male, to do what you want, to take what you want, and not have to answer to all the silly artificial crap of society. To not have to be domesticated. No tepidity. No compromise . . . over the last couple months a huge confused cult had grown around Vilenov’s supposed supernatural abilities, and made his memory appealing to every healthy male ego sick of having basic urges demonized or commercialized. Much of Vilenov’s appeal lay, perversely, in the fact that his memory could not be commercialized. No major franchise wanted to gamble on glamourizing a rapist. But, as the archetypal Bad Boy, he’d rapidly become irresistible as a rebel figure. Even nice-guy Damon, although outwardly focused on his project, was privately enthused by the fantasy of an instantly pliable femininity, suddenly docile bullies, and throngs of useless loitering idiots reacting positively to his creative ideas. It’s all about power . . . but power has to be used wisely. That’s the kicker. How in God’s name can a man bring all these flaunting bimbos to their knees, force the fatcats and weasels to surrender their ill-gotten gains, pull all the fly-covered, mud-caked, Koran-thumping Third world bastards into the 21st century, damn it, without being the heavy? Real power is a primitive quality, requiring its holder to wield without conscience, without compassion. Damon, like all decent men, just wanted things right in the world. He knew he’d never have the cool to stomp here, to stand there. And that was Vilenov’s true appeal. He didn’t have a conscience. He was a freak, a throwback, a dauntless representative of a time when men were men, instead of a bunch of spiritually-challenged weenies under the whip of Woman and Law. Wannabe-men like Damon lived vicariously through the legend’s exploits, and so survived to grovel another day. Now he was alternately nodding and shaking his head, wanting to believe. And when he spoke his voice seemed detached, as though it belonged to some future campfire storyteller: “You know . . . 89

The End Freak they never did recover a body. They figured he’d been turned into fried fish food—blasted into fragments and gone with the tide.” Another voice snapped him out of it. “Oh, he’s gone with the tide, all right. Oughta be comn up on T’iti bout now.” Damon began chugging wine in his excitement. He’d become quite drunk, but the gleam in his eyes belied his condition. He passed the Merlot, found a pen in his shirt pocket, tore a large piece off the brown paper bag. “The Harbor Belle, you say? Outboard or inboard? How many feet would you estimate?” The wino huffed while his left eye burned. A dark stain formed in the crotch of his pants. “What do I know bout all that stuff . . . it was a little job, dammit, a motorboat!” Damon tore the bottle from his hands. “I need details!” But the wino snatched the neck right back, put the bottle to his lips and drank furiously, his flickering eye glued to the reporter. Damon shrugged angrily and reached between his knees for the crown jewel. He unscrewed the cognac’s cap and lovingly raised the bottle to his lips, took a long, exaggerated swallow. The wino’s face fell. The reporter gently bounced the bottle against his knee, letting the wino know its dispensation was iffy. “So, you blurry son of a bitch, you fantasized the whole fucking thing, didn’t you?” “I didn fansize nuthn, man. Nuthn! If I said I seen what I said I seen, then I seen what I said I said I seen . . . man!” Damon angrily handed over the cognac. “Oh . . . just mellow out, man! Don’t go getting your gonads all in a knot! And don’t swallow so fast. You’ll just end up puking again . . . man.” The wino tore the bottle from Damon’s hand and drank more than any man should be able. He held the bottle to his chest warningly, blood and brandy flowing from his nostrils. “No puke! No nuthn! I seen him step back over the rail an shimmy down here while the cops an the copters an the tanks an the submarines shot fire an bullits an everthin what they had on that one fuckn pisspoor spot, man! They shot it up, they blew it up, they sent zappers an boms an all hellfire outta the sky on that one spot, man, right after that forin guy clims over the rail almos nex to me, gets on the Belle an sails off . . . off . . .” He pointed at the channel. “Outta here! Gone! An nobody seen it but me!” His head dropped between his knees, the cognac bottle falling upright in the trash. “No bullshit,” he whimpered. A string of saliva rolled off his lower lip and dangled till it kissed the rowboat’s filthy keel. “Nuthn!” He remained in that hunched position, barely alive; a sick ugly statue rocking with the Marina. Damon was studying him blearily when a gorgeous yacht cruised past, its wake rocking Baby harder. His mouth fell open and he almost wept with want. But his pain was short-lived. Soon, Damon knew, a similar vessel would be his. Because he’d made up his mind on the spot. Raymond Damon was no biographer. He was going after Nicolas Vilenov in the flesh, and he would pursue him across the seven seas. A piece of his personality challenged him to name all seven seas, but another piece was flustered by the direct definition of a sea as opposed to an ocean. He tried anyway, counting oceans on a hand. When he ran out of fingers his eye fell on the half-full bottle of cognac, rocking precariously between the wino’s tatterdemalion shoes. In a breathtaking move, he snatched the bottle by its neck before the rowboat’s motion could claim it. Damon smirked. He’d always known he could have played for the big leagues. He took a swallow, squeezed shut his eyes, and began rocking in syncopation with Baby. When he reopened his eyes it was dusk. He turned his head and mumbled to the wino, “So tell me, my oh-so wise and worldly friend. Tell me . . . is this steamer really yours?” The wino snapped up like he’d been kicked. “Mine! My boat, goddam you, mine! Sloop John 90

The End Freak me . . . sloojohn . . . sloop . . .” “Avast!” Damon giggled. “Avay! So you, my good man . . . you’re the skipper of this gallant seagoing vessel?” “Mine, gawwwwwd . . . dam you! Ankers way! Yoyos an Ho-Hos an a bottle of . . . Mad Dog. Tha’s me, matey! So, le’s go, le’s go. Toe-ko to Soho, way we go.” Damon darkened. He shuddered hard, twice, and his esophagus relaxed. “I, my good man,” he managed, “am naming you my mate. Henceforth you will address me only as ‘Captain.’ Are we clear here?” “Aye aye, Cap’n! Ankers way!” Now Damon, in his logy skull, strutted around an imaginary deck. “And we, my loyal sailor and friend, are off on the adventure of a lifetime. We’re going to pursue Mr. Vilenov and bring him to justice. And when we’re both rich and famous we’re gonna buy us an island somewhere and live happily forever and ever after. Are you with me, sailor?” “Aye aye . . . I . . . Aye . . . I can’ sail on a dry belly.” “Then we’ll moisten you right up.” Damon swallowed liberally and passed the bottle. Suddenly his liver was thumping in his gut. He embraced his waist and bent over till his nose was grazing the keel. The wino killed the bottle and dropped it amidst the rest. “Okay, Cap’n! Ready to sail!” Damon collapsed in the fetal position, clutching his stomach. “Okay, matey,” he whispered. “But me timbers is . . . shiverin’. Just let me catch me breath here . . . first . . . and we’ll be off.” “Aye aye, Cap’n!” The wino loomed there, watching and waiting, until he was claimed by booze and gravity. His head dropped a few inches at a time, finally lighting on Damon’s heaving chest. He stuck his hands between his thighs, curled up his knees, and let the black wave of sleep take him down.

91

Lovers Even as a child little Celia was obsessed with self-mutilation. The first time April found her daughter semi-conscious and frothing, Celia’s eyes were rolled back, her limbs and face lacerated by every sharp object within reach. Naturally mother went right into hysterics, and thereupon devoted all available time and energy into nursing her one love back to health. But the shock, to a hard woman perennially battling guilt and self-loathing, triggered something deeper than a healthy maternal reaction. From the moment she smashed that last bottle on the counter, April’s response was anything but natural. After Celia’s recovery, mother and daughter lived in a home devoid of edges and points. April’s small clapboard house, situated on a lonely tract of poorly-lit land, could be modified without the inquiries of authorities or neighbors. Panes were removed, windows boarded over. A carpenter was contracted to construct grilled apertures for light bulbs, and to fit all cupboards and drawers with miniature combination locks. Then April got busy. The resulting décor could best be described as blunt, as fastidiously smooth, and as relentlessly contoured, for April Winter, clad in overalls and bandanna, had methodically filed, sanded, and hammered flush every protrusion in her abusive exhusband’s seized home. Yet there were additional gruesome episodes. April, focused only on that which openly met the critical eye, understandably ignored some pretty obvious potential hazards—simply because their projections were concealed by contours. Thus evils such as car keys and fountain pens were overlooked due to the roundness of their secreting handbag, and the oblong, peaked prongs protruding from the plugs of electric cords were neglected—not only because they were hidden in the parallel recesses of wall outlets, but because the plugs themselves were innocently smooth in appearance. Now, April very deeply loved Celia. But there was a strong neurotic thread running through

Lovers her affection, showing initially in a kind of overbearing momminess, and eventually in outright monomania. Because of this biochemical barrage, April blamed herself, unjustly, both for Celia’s affliction and for the brutal alcoholic father’s violent departure. Still, the woman was immensely strong, weathering Celia’s desperate years of seizures and unforeseeable flesh savageries with uncommon courage and resolution. She grappled with depression by spending afternoons on the front porch, balancing pathos and palette while Celia slept locked away. During these imaginary sittings April painted her daughter in every setting she could concoct, with one proviso—the girl had to be smiling. April would have died to see just one of those painted smiles come alive. Her canvases were hung throughout the house, in obvious spots and in places marred by stubborn blood stains or bashed drywall. These little hanging squares of artificial happiness became more important, and more strained, as Celia approached puberty. But April’s pluck was amazing. For instance, during Celia’s biting phase, mother had, after days of heroic soul-searching, resorted to having the girl’s mouth wired shut, and still managed to abstain from gin and tonic until Celia discovered the exquisite tortures of manipulating stainless steel on freckled forearms and white, yearning wrists. Once the wires were removed, Celia became ferocious and unmanageable. It was with profound anxiety that April enlisted a most callous dental surgeon to, in strictest confidence, nearly dispatch the girl with anesthesia, that he might grimly extract her front uppers and lowers, leaving only those teeth adapted for grinding, rather than tearing. Little Celia, thus mutilated by another party, withdrew completely, and for a time immediately went into seizure at her mother’s approach. The sweetly smiling portraits were now too upsetting for the toothless girl. Again showing her mettle, April overcame her horror daily as she painted out teeth, canvas by canvas, solely for her disturbed daughter’s sake. Alcoholism is such an ugly, such a harsh and unforgiving word. Yet in April’s case it was tantamount to emotional salvation. Through regular and liberal self-medication, she was able to remain all-giving mother first, self-indulgent masochist second. Strange that strength and weakness should cohabit with such balance. April throve on stresses that would crush a less-adamant individual . . . even during those many long drunken nights with her ex, before he’d blacked her eyes and sent her gushing and convulsing to the emergency room, she had indulged in a form of liquor abusegratification common to women of low self-esteem: The bastard beat her. He ripped her off, he raped her. He used her in ways that are incomprehensible to even the shallowest student of ethics. But . . . damn it, at least he was there. April fought down these horrors courageously, so that now the past was just a binge; one long, perilously survived stupor. The present was all that mattered. And the present was Celia. For April, loving Celia was the purest form of giving, because Celia didn’t—Celia couldn’t—take. And even a masochist is sobered by rejection. As to the growing girl’s security, April was inflexible. She would not admit visitors, period, unless they obeyed a single rule: at no time, under any circumstances, was a sharp object permitted indoors. Pockets were ordered emptied, with heartfelt apologies. Purses and suspicious personal articles were kept outside in a locked strongbox secured to the porch, and only then was adolescent Celia allowed to mingle with her mother’s genuinely supportive and sympathetic friends. For a time this method afforded April the semblance of a social life. Then, one Sunday morning, a fellow hospital receptionist unintentionally left behind a simple straight pin that had been lodged in the hidden seam of her recently altered pantsuit. The physical consequences of that single pin were devastating. April entertained no longer; she became a psychological as well as a physical recluse, and changed her work schedule to the graveyard shift to be near Celia during the teenager’s waking hours. 2

Lovers It was on this shift that she met Will, an easygoing security guard with an inexhaustible patter. In the wee hours, when it seemed they were the only creatures alive, the two would sit in the hard fluorescent light and chat, and flirt, and the dreary hours would not seem so long. They shared a love of pasta, a lifelong passion for jazz, and a real fondness for star-gazing. And they had something else in common. One black morning, during April’s lunch break, Will came by to point out M31 in Andromeda. While so doing he nonchalantly draped his other arm over her shoulders, reached inside his fur-lined jacket, and slid forth a nearly full pint of Cream of Kentucky bourbon. After that their working lives were inextricably entwined. They came to the hospital eagerly, and stole away at every opportunity. April now brought her gin and tonic in a plastic thermos, while Will carried a holstered flask of bourbon under his security bomber jacket. They weren’t stupid. They were never recklessly drunk, and they were never caught. Week by week the consummation of their passion neared. The effect of alcohol on Will was to rouse an irrepressible satyr; a beast diametrically opposed to the sober, affable security guard April had fallen for. He couldn’t keep his hands off her; any excuse and no excuse were reasons enough to justify a grope here, a pinch there. For her part, April found it increasingly difficult to maintain her half-hearted parries. It had been so long. She giggled and blushed at his touch, and their façade of professionalism gradually crumbled, to the whispered amusement of janitors and orderlies. Alone together, they tore at their drinks. One peaceful Saturday night there was an unexpected knock on April’s door. In the bulb’s sallow haze a half-tanked Will stood hunched like a punch-drunk fighter, his primer-gray pickup parked with one wheel on the curb. April hesitated; everything was wrong. This eager event should be taking place at a motel, on a back seat, in the park—anywhere but here. But Will hadn’t come to be turned away, and April was still prey to the alcoholic cycle: just the sight of Will drunk and weaving triggered an almost Pavlovian reaction. She experienced a kind of contact high, and her suddenly surging libido just as suddenly demanded she fix herself a drink. This she did, in nervous spurts, while talking to Will through the door; telling him to keep his voice down, asking him to be patient. She threw on a favorite album and gulped down half her drink. The liquor warmed her blood, the music took her mood. Excited, alive again, she peeked into the black womb of her daughter’s room. Celia was in her familiar sleeping posture; curled into a fetal position, eyelids fluttering, the orbs rolled back. April tiptoed in, readjusted the covers. Tiptoed out. Gently locked the door. Will knew all about Celia from their chats at work. So, drunk though he was, he behaved; he was expectant, but compliant. He docilely placed his keys and all other loose objects in the strongbox, then proudly displayed the tall unbreakable Tupperware flask that held his liquor. April was brutally thorough in her physical search, much to Will’s delight, and at long last, after snapping shut the combination lock on the box, she ushered him inside. Only April’s greater sobriety enabled her to keep Will at bay. For a while the man seemed indefatigable in his advances, but finally the bourbon began to work against him. He sagged, and allowed her to ease him onto the couch. April sauntered into the kitchen, returning a minute later with paper cups, a teak bowl full of ice, and a plastic pitcher filled with gin and tonic water. In the space of that minute Will had recovered completely, and was randy as ever. Their embrace was immediate. Will hauled her down on the couch, his greedy hands fumbling with her blouse and bra, his breath hot in her ear. Suffocating, April pushed him off, and they both leaned on the sanded-round coffee table with the sanded-round feet, gulping their drinks out of sheer nervousness. She tried to forestall the inevitable—with chatter, with counter-maneuvers—but Will only grew bolder, scattering pillows and spilling drinks. April, capitalizing on the break, squirmed out of his embrace and made to replenish the pitcher. Will wobbled to his feet and blocked her way 3

Lovers meaningfully. For half a minute April was terrified, but Will only grinned, stole a kiss, and staggered off to the bathroom. By the time he’d returned, April had wolfed down a stiff drink and forgotten both the pitcher and her anxiety. The two fell on the couch as the music’s final strains were replaced by the rhythmic hiss-ca-chuk of the record player’s stylus at the label’s paper perimeter. Behind this rhythm came a familiar scratch and rattle. Celia’s door cracked open. The girl peeked out timidly. In a heartbeat April was wholly mother again. She shoved Will away, swayed to her feet, and held out her arms while Celia shuffled over shyly, confused and vulnerable in her floral-print pajamas. The conflicting emotions could produce only one response: April quickly broke the motherdaughter embrace and made for the kitchen and gin. Celia was fascinated by Will; tugging at his clothes and hair while he glared. He sullenly pulled at his drink, his expression continuing to darken as April stumbled back to the couch, a fresh bowl of ice quaking in her hand. She must have blacked out for a minute, must have tumbled backward onto the couch, for the next thing she knew Will was straddling her with his face buried in her chest. He pinned her like a butterfly. April whipped her head side to side in protest, and Will went right out of his mind with passion. When her head came to rest she was looking straight into Celia’s bright and wondering eyes. April cried out and tried to pull free, only inflaming Will further. He threw all his weight on her, and, so great was his demand, would probably have taken her then and there if not for a haymaker to the tip of his nose. April struggled to her feet and stood reeling in the middle of the room. Will blinked at her stupidly, his right hand gripping her rent and rumpled blouse. His other hand rose slowly, the fingers testing his hot bleeding nose. His eyes darkened. April retained only vague impressions of the ensuing few minutes. She remembered watching Will lurch to his feet and trip headlong over the coffee table, waving his arms like a drowning man. She recalled seeing him hit the floor in a hail of scattered ice, oscillate and bob to his knees, flail and lurch to his feet. In slow motion Will lunged, grabbed April by the hair with his left hand, hauled back his right arm, and smashed his fist flush in her face. The blow sent April backpedaling into the kitchen. She glanced off a cabinet, slammed against the refrigerator, slid to the floor. Through a veil of blood she watched Will stumbling back and forth in the doorway, moving like a ping pong ball jamb to jamb, sinking gradually, at last turning on Celia and dragging her kicking and screaming to the floor. Shrieking right along, April somehow pushed herself to her hands and knees; but that was all she could manage before the combined effects of nearly a fifth of gin and a broken nose sent her reeling into pitch. April’s eyes opened around four in the morning. She rolled onto her stomach, crawled a few feet, and was violently sick. Except for a narrow wedge of bare perceptibility created by streaming moonlight, the house was inky dark—and that one realization was so powerful it overwhelmed all April’s physical ills combined: the front door was ajar. Overturned shapes projected dimly in the living room. April, fighting for air, ricocheted off those shapes to the doorway, steadied, thrust out her caked, swollen face. Will lay spreadeagled on the lawn; face-down and unconscious. His truck’s passenger door hung open, its wing window smashed. A number of smallish, dully shining objects were scattered about the lawn, leading in a winding trail from Will’s body to the porch. A few of these articles showed far away, as though violently tossed. April’s puffy eyes followed the trail back to the porch. At her feet a wide, flat toolbox lay upturned amidst a number of screwdrivers, spanners, and miscellaneous small parts. Chisels and a hammer lay atop the bashed and battered strongbox—the combination lock had been scored and 4

Lovers defaced in a fit of drunken rage. She shook from head to toe. Screwdrivers. Chisels. April turned back and the room turned right along with her. It kept on turning while she felt her way through the darkness, barking her shins on the jumbled unseen. The black maze became too much. Still drunk out of her mind, she pitched onto her face, striking her chin hard on the naked wood floor. Inches from her eyes, a number of half-melted ice cubes gleamed whitely. But it seemed odd, even in her muddled state, that the cubes hadn’t fully melted. April’s eyes burned with the strain. Unwilling to believe her heart over her mind, she picked up a cube and rolled it between her forefinger and thumb. It was cold, certainly, and slippery, but April knew, without the benefit of direct light, that she was holding one of Celia’s bloody severed toes. In a dream she pushed herself to her feet and fell against her daughter’s door, kicked it open, fumbled for the light switch. Celia was seated on the floor with her back propped against the bed. Between her splayed legs lay several articles from Will’s tool box, including a small hatchet, a large awl, and a heavy-duty exacto knife. The girl had chopped off her toes and fingertips with the hatchet, torn her limbs and torso to ribbons with the blade, and used the awl to make mushy pools of her eyes. Only her mouth was untouched. The same toothless grin that dominated a hundred wall portraits now smiled up at a failed mother in an alcoholic haze. Completely undone, April fell screaming on the little corpse of her love.

5

Benidickedus In the quaint hamlet of C’erebadicio, in Northeast Italy, are two nearly identical tall hills, the Mounds of Our Lady Democritia. On one hill stands the charming little chapel of Vita Vista, surrounded by roses, impatiens, and marigolds. The sun almost always shines on Vita Vista, and, upon the occasional cloudburst, her honeysuckles are said to fatten in the rain. The chapel, girded by a lovely ornate fence smothered in ivy and creepers, is unoccupied—indeed has rested vacant since its construction some three years prior. Upon the adjacent hill stands the rather gothic home of Benito il Dinera, C’erebadicio’s founder, financier, and de facto patriarch. Beni, as the townspeople are rumored to fondly call him, has not been visible over those three years. He’s been bedridden, far too ill to resume his beloved coach rides through the hamlet’s pretty little slums and cemeteries. The community of C’erebadicio spills below the Mounds like an unfenced junkyard. An overgrown road winds up il Dinera’s hill, grooved and scattered by cartwheels and hooves. An untouched brick path, nearly swallowed in clover, winds up the Mound to Vita Vista. You don’t ordinarily encounter chateaus in deeply rural Italy; those things are French jobs, famous for their elite charm. Same with Venetian cobbles, Grecian marble pools, and Chinese dwarf pines: these articles, very exotic, are all but impossible to find in that static pocket of the planet. Not so on Benito’s hill. Over many years these, and other very dear objets, were imported, by grateful peasantry via mule and dog cart, across desert and swamp, on the sagging backs of hobbled children and wizened granmamas. Benito paid well: the elsewise impoverished populace were able to season their swill (ordinarily just offal) with bread crumbs, roof their shanties with sorghum and tin, and dance for Benito’s pleasure in the ramshackle town square, children and adults alike dressed in homespun blankets dyed with leftovers scavenged from their master’s generously tossed garbage. And, utilizing this rolling jetsam, their tambourines were made with the cuttings from real aluminum cans, not that discordant tin stuff shaken by their ancestors.

Benidickedus Padre Peste bon Bella was one of the luckier C’erebadicioanami. His hovel stood more magnificent than the rest: an 8 x 10 cardboard lean-to with a roof of tangleweed and a floor of God’s own sweet dirt. Padre Peste lived in this adorable home with Cosito, his blind donkey, with Fhfrhhn, the village idiot, and with Dominique, his blessed companion and soul’s sounding board. And, of course, with God, smiling equally upon the community’s beneficiaries and the famous house of their cherished master, Beni. Sister Dominique was a lovely woman, originally from the convent at Our Mother Most Merciful. God had been generous with His graceful Hand; Dominique was well into her ninetyseventh year now, and showed no sign of relinquishing the Lord’s work. He had blessed her with an indomitable spirit: although rickets, extracrotcherian cancer, and compound dorsal elephantiasis had crimped, folded, and twisted her darling three-foot frame to a degree seemingly physically impossible, she nevertheless retained the presence of mind to darn Padre Peste’s sandals with regularity, and to milk Cosito whenever Fhfrhhn’s giggling screams roused her from her rambling soliloquies. Fhfrhhn, born of a sign painter and a circus cobbler, was responsible for hand-lettering that cardboard sign reading FOLLOW US perpetually hung round Cosito’s nappy neck, and for constructing a sturdy pair of gorgeous orthopedic shoes for precious little Dominique. These custommade beauties, designed for stature as well as for locomotion, came with eighteen-inch heels, causing Dominique’s posterior to stand level with her ash-fringed habit, her shoulders to further round the hunch on her back, and her knuckles to bobble and drag as she walked. One most blessed circumstance of this right-angle stoop was that Sister Dominique’s battered yellow ukulele could rest horizontally on her spine, and thus be spared certain collisions with the multitudinous rock-andbranch crucifixes Fhfrhhn, in his blessed creative zeal, had ordered upon the cardboard walls’ gnarlwood supports. It was Dominique’s wont to play her ukulele with passion, at times that might seem inappropriate to any but the most worshipful of God’s sheep. Dear Dominique knew but one song, heard fallibly over an old portable record player carried by a passing tourist. That song was, not so coincidentally, Dominique, an American blockbuster classic by the immortal Singing Nun. Dominique realized it was the Lord’s way of calling her, and so made a point of singing her sweet heart out whenever His loving touch teased the humongous tumors of her thyroidally-inflated larynx. So poor had been that old record’s reproduction, and so infirm were the auditory powers of blessed Dominique, that her interpretation of the lyrical content was simply: “♪Do♪mi♫niko♫niko♫niko, ♪Do♪mi♫niko♫niko♪ni.” This magic she would howl to the heavens on the moment, while Fhfrhhn stomped in time and blessed Cosito peed accentato. Padre Peste, having enjoyed this ritual far more than he dared remember, had learned to zone out like the mightiest of meditators, and so come to the Lord with a frequency far too blessed to describe. Fhfrhhn now lifted his tatterdemalion sleeve to expose a heavy old wristwatch with a cracked plastic faceplate. It was one of those famous American timepieces, an authentic Roleks, the kind rich men wear when driving their Leksuses to look for seks with the ladies. Our generous God had blessed kindly Fhfrhhn with this illustrious keepsake through a roving intermediary. That man had grudgingly let it go for Fhfrhhn’s life beggings (good a beggar as Fhfrhhn was, he was a better saver), and had even showed the awestruck idiot how to wind it with the little insertable crank. Fhfrhhn’s eyes now followed the second hand round and round, his frame tensing up, his held breath bursting. Just when it looked like his face would explode, he jumped up and stamped twice on the gorgeous dirt floor. 2

Benidickedus Peste nodded. “Yes, dear Fhfrhhn. It is time.” Wired to one posted-branch cardboard-wall support was Fhfrhhn’s most beautiful three-foot bramble-branch crucifix, delicately disengaged from one of C’erebadicio’s many enchanting bloodyhorror trees. Draped about the neck and arms of this crucifix, like an unimpeachable pendant to all that is good and holy, was a heavy chain closed by a red-faced combination lock. Fhfrhhn carefully removed it, went down on one knee, and offered it to the padre. “Master.” Peste received it with decorum. “Yes, Fhfrhhn, a fine American lock company.” He then gently placed the chain about Cosito’s bowed neck, allowing that the cardboard sign was not in harm’s way, and that the thick links rested securely between two of the larger buboes. Peste patted her gnarly rump. “Little Cosito, you are now our noble prow, the Good Book’s frontispiece.” Cosito gratefully dripped on the sweet dirt floor while Peste furiously scratched his forearm. There came a waist-high entreaty. “Domino?” Peste turned with a sad shake of the head. Sweet Sister Dominique had swiveled the ukulele round to her belly, and was poised with one talon on the strings and the instrument’s neck crooked in hers. “Not now, Dominique. When the Lord’s work is done.” “Domino . . .” The good padre bowed, compassion further mellowing the crests of his brow. “Benedicto.” She returned the bow, eyes raised, chin scraping the ground, and swept an arm toward the entrance. “Domino.” Fhfrhhn hauled aside the cadaver hide flap, and the four made their way to that fork in the dirt path resting in the cleavage of Our Lady’s mounds. One branch led to il Dinera’s, the other to the chapel, now standing like a fresco amidst floral watercolors. The entire community stood grieving at the forked path’s bottom; everyone knew the planned hour of Beni’s confession. Padre Peste raised his arms symbolically, but their heaviness wore him down. He dropped his head, and the four began the long climb up the master’s road, past the crumbled columns and lewd statues, around the fungal fountains and brambly benches, all the way to the dilapidated porch of Benito il Dinera. Fhfrhhn waited back, scavenging and chewing blessed Cosito’s salamander-sized fleas in the shade of a drooping elm. The door was opened by Benito’s manservant Mike, bent at the sternum and tail, his gray old head dusted by webs and heel marks, his entire face afflicted with a massive case of Italian Cameltoe. “We have come for him,” Padre Peste announced. “He is well enough to receive us?” Mike, with an effort, took his eyes from dear Dominique’s brokeback posterior. “Hn.” “Lead us, then.” “Nh.” Benito’s bed was partly shrouded by mildewed curtains of gnawed lamé. The room itself was noticeably cooler than the house proper, and downright chilly within the pall containing the passing master of C’erebadicio. Beni the man was the core of this chill: a gray and blue, liver-speckled disease enveloped in cobs. His lids parted at the pair’s approach. The left eye rested on Peste while the right followed Dominique round to the bed’s far side. He raised his arms pathetically, and each took a hand. “Ah, Benito . . .” Padre Peste cooed. “It is with profound sadness that we make this call.” 3

Benidickedus The grip tightened. il Dinera’s jaw dropped. “Not a problem,” he coughed, “Padre. Now, you know the deal.” One bleary eye rolled to the window. “The chapel’s yours, on the condition I leave this world knowing I’m forgiven for any and all what you guys call sins. That’s a fine little chapel there, Padre; you know it and I know it. If you think I’m simply gonna give it away for nothin then you just don’t know Benito il Dinera.” He groaned from the bowel. “I had my time in this world, and I’m totally prepared to make my confession.” Beni feebly tried to sit, collapsing absolutely flat with the effort. His voice went hard. “I ain’t perfect, Padre, but who is? You? You never done nothing and had some doubts later on? How’s about the little princess here? You don’t think there’s some secrets in them panties? Kee-rist. I’ll bet there’s more’n one altar boy you been keeping real close, Padre, if’n you get my drift, and I’ll also bet they ain’t been walking the same since.” Peste laughed delicately. “Ah, Benito! Beni, Beni, Beni . . . you were always one for the wonderful turn of wit, the playful phrase.” “This ain’t no joke, Padre. Now you’re either gonna seal the deal with me and the Big Guy or we’re just gonna have to find a priest who can. Mike!” “Domino!” “Forgive me, Benito, forgive me.” Peste’s smile was aching sun. “Being so long removed from the ways of God’s wonderful world, I cannot help but misspeak on occasion. Your wishes are of course mine.” “Yeah. Well, probably the first really big mistake I made was kicking the nuns out of Sweet Mercy convent so I could turn the place into a brothel. Now that’s what I call a house of worship.” Dominique bit her dear prognathous lip and shook her sweet misshapen head, but the grip on blessed Benito’s spotted claw never relaxed. Peste raised his eyes to the ceiling and stared until the ferocity of il Dinera’s clutch made him look back down. “Did I done wrong, Padre? I need you to tell me if I done a bad thing: right here, right now, right up front!” Peste nodded gravely. “You see, Beni, there are . . . mistakes which can be construed as beyond redemption. Certain hands of the Lord are, in effect, untouchables. This means their violation amounts to an act so unforgivable in God’s eyes that any—” “That’s a sweet little chapel, Padre. Honey of a church.” Peste’s eye turned to the window. Even as he stared, a trestled vine, so heavy with fat grapes that it weighed low the ornate gate, collapsed in slow motion, the plump fruit bursting on impact with Vista’s rose cobbles. The juice was Chianti before it ceased rolling. Butterflies laughed in the lingering droplets. “She is, indeed.” Peste turned back to the cantankerous old man, by contrast festering in phlegm and bile. “What is important is that a man learn from his mistakes, that they not be repeated. He who learns grows wise, and the Lord is pleased.” “On my word!” il Dinera swore. “No more nun whorehouses! Not a one. Oh, I learned my lesson, all right. My clients was so spooked by all that religious crap that not a one of ’em could get it up. And the broads! They all start sniffin and prayin and talkin about self-esteem and junk.” He shook his head. “Good girls gone bad.” Squeezing dear Dominique’s contorted paw, Benito said, “That weren’t just a mistake, Sis, it was a total boner!” and laughed himself into silence. Snarling beatifically, Sister Dominique grated, “Scrabble,” and raised her eyes. Recovering, il Dinera continued: “How’s about giving kids new names? Can’t be nothing wrong with that, eh, Pustule?” Peste grinned ear to ear. “A charming practice. Many’s the youngster given a fresh lease on life with a nickname the gang’ll all appreciate. Dominique here loves the sobriquet ‘Dommie,’ and 4

Benidickedus Fhfrhhn just delights at ‘Ffffffffffffffffffffffh.’ Cosito, of course, can go either way, but he most cheerfully responds to ‘Seato’.” “Groovy. Well, I didn’t say nicknames; I said new names. You know, like changing Fianchetti to Jones. Americans never wanna buy kids with funny Latin names.” “Buy them?” il Dinera’s upper body rose dramatically. His eyes were blazing. “Don’t tell me I done wrong, Padre! Don’t tell me I ain’t forgiven! That’s one hell of a chapel over there—got the works: stained glass, silver bell, rosewood floors, microwave and big screen . . .” Peste’s blisters crimped in their cracked hide sandals. “Rosewood?” “You bet your ass. Smooth as glass. Polished to a high sheen by an army of grandmothers desperate to put food on the table. You just can’t buy a more thorough work force.” “Well . . . I suppose children are the property of their parents. By ‘silver’ bell you mean?” “I mean silver, Padre. I mean 99 fine. I mean covered by a brass cupola so it won’t get any goddamned bird shit on it. Carved with a bunch of fat little flying whatchacallem angel kids. You and Dummy here can take turns ringing with Burmese teak mallets, the heads made of virgin down off of newborns’ bottoms. F sharp.” Peste nodded vigorously. “Our Lord is most forgiving.” “And thank God for that.” Benito fell back on the bed. “That’s real Christian of you, Padre.” The voice tapered to a whisper: leaves through gravel. The eyes were all but closed. “So tell me, Padre, and make me a believer.” The grip tightened almost imperceptibly. “Let me know, as a man of God, that I’m punching the big UP button here; make me certain that I’m not going to hell on a hand grenade. A lovely chapel, Padre, gorgeous to behold.” The whisper escaped in tiny spurts. “All the way, Padre, on your word . . . sweetheart of a deal . . . let the Boss know I’m coming; with bells on, with your blessing . . . step up to the plate, Padre . . . forgiveness . . . chapel . . . make sure I get a hottie angel . . . divine . . . whorehouse—oh, mama; here we go—it’s liftoff, Padre . . . shaka-shakahands with me, Big Guy; it’s your little Benito, all done and delivered . . . open up them gates and roll them bones, ’cause the Padre here says I’m RSVP. Who turned out the lights? Oh, baby, there go the bowels . . . Christ, what a stink; was that you, little Sister? Hear me comin’, Big Fella . . . oil up that cross and goose the gander, ’cause this . . . is . . . it!” “Benedictus—” Peste began. The spotted claw shot up, grabbed Peste’s tunic, and yanked him down. “Knock, knock, Padre. Thanks for the password. I’ll sure rest easy knowin you paved my way. All the fatcats in my pocket: forgiven! All the manure I spread in the States: no problem! God, those red, white, and blue gomers’ll pay right out the ass for garbage!” Peste bent closer, his brow furrowed. “What do you mean?” “I mean money can buy me love, Padre! You don’t think those idiots got that way by genetics, do ya? ‘A three hour tour, a three hour tour’ . . .” He was clearly becoming delirious. “Invisible franchise . . . Snoop Dogg to Spielberg . . . freaking ninja turtles? You gotta be . . . Beni a good boy, mia mama . . . take me, Barbie Twins, all four of ya . . . ooooh, that stings . . . open wide, Oprah . . . it’s your B . . . it’s your Be . . . by the balls, Padre, by the balls! Your Be . . . your Be . . .” Peste pried off the hand. “You don’t mean!” The left eye shot open. il Dinera barked bloodily, “Ha! Who do you think gave ’em The Donald, Rowling, Austrian politicians, and rap music? Ja!” Peste’s entire countenance went black. “You! Are! The! De—” “Do! Mi! No!” 5

Benidickedus “Seal it, Padre! Bless dese boogers! I’m a-go I’m a-go—jack me some wings, baby! Chapel of love! Let me hear it, choir boy! Spew it! Do it! Goddamn your virgin holy ass . . . now . . . sing for your freaking supper!” Peste dangled a hand over that wracked and ruined face. “Si benedictum,” he mumbled, “il Dinera en Christo, obladi oblada. Domino, there you go; roll me over, Romeo. Olly Ollie auction: one, two, three. Mater, mater: gator baiter. Pater, pater: waiter dater. Three, two, one . . . later, satyr!” And the sigh rolled out of the loom. Rigor mortis was almost immediate in Benito’s case. Dear Dominique gnawed the gray fingers wide, while Padre Peste used his knee for a crowbar. “It is done,” he panted. “Come with me, my child.” The two shuffled out, their heads hanging. Exiting il Dinera’s room was like leaving a meat locker. Mike slithered past to attend to his master. Outside it was still overcast, yet a veneer of lemon and rose appeared to solidify round the chapel of Vista Vente. The good people of C’erebadicio stood in a bereft pool between mounds, staring up as padre, sister, donkey, and jackass descended. At the path’s fork the padre ran his hand in blessing over the throng before leading the way up. The citizens closed behind the little knot of four; flowing in ascension, as through a sieve in reverse. Sparrows sang ensemble, lilacs bent in welcome. Hummingbirds hovered ahead, displacing rays. The clover was a lush green pile, the air smelled of hot buttered cinnamon rolls. Fhfrhhn and Dominique fairly galloped up the grade, while the Padre and good Cosito strode with a stately dignity becoming the occasion. At the gate Peste turned and again raised his arms, in every visual particular Christ on the Mount. He looked down on the paused multitude, a sweet tear forming. Buttercups blushed, nectar burbled downhill. Padre Peste bowed, and little Cosito genuflected, that Fhfrhhn might slide free the cardboard pendant. The fool flipped it round. On the opposite side was scrawled in Latin the legend: KEEP OUT! Fhfrhhn hung this sign from one of the gateposts’ blueberry brambles, and the four walked inside, Fhfrhhn slamming and locking the gate behind. The chapel was lovelier than the padre’d imagined. A sunbeam broke C’erebadicio’s cloud cover to light on the hand-polished cedar door. Peste felt a tugging on his elbow. He looked down. “Yes, Dominique. Now.” The sweet sister spun the ukulele round to her belly, clasped the neck in one claw, smashed the strings with the other, and, as the new tenants glided into stained glass splendor, warbled out her dear heart to God’s recoiling Ear: “♪Do♪mi♫niko♫niko♫niko, ♪Do♪mi♫niko♫niko♪ni . . .”

6

Hell’s Outpost Oh dear God, shake me out of this nightmare. Rouse me, unbind me, before I succumb to the horror . . . free my arms and legs—get this warm sticky mucus . . . get it off before that thing comes back. Wake me, please! It’s closer, it’s closing in—that huge, ruby-winged monstrosity of my mind, serrated legs and long sucking feet, chainsaw-buzzing mouth and a dozen feelers; no eyes, no eyes, only black searching pits. I can’t move, God—pull me out before I drown. It’s leaping on me—long slick tongue, crushing press of legs. That curved stinger, rising, plunging, jacking into my chest. That burgundy abdomen, turning about, sinking onto my face . . . and my mouth a sump, a choked pit retching in red putrid slime. No, please . . . don’t wake me—let me pass right now, let me die in my vile dreams. Doctor Freedman waddles back into the examination room. Elderly, white, artificially hearty, but now with a lateral crease to his smile. He motions me over to the little stainless steel desk, places my scan on the polished easel, backlights it. “Here’s the source of your stomach complaint; no doubt about it.” We’re looking at an x-ray plate of my fisting, semi-spiral gut, all swollen and contorted. “Forget carcinoma, forget ulceration, forget diverticula. That’s why you’re so sick, that explains the dramatic weight loss. Your complaint’s parasitic.” I stare at him uncertainly. “You’re telling me I have worms?” Freedman shakes his head. “Singular. At least as far as the preliminary goes. But it’s not a hookworm, not a tapeworm, not a pinworm. How it’s surviving in a gastric environment is beyond me.” The doctor lifts the scan to view against the fluorescents. “That,” he gushes, “simply has to be the largest parasitic growth ever encountered in a living human being!” He looks at me as though I’ve just won the lottery. The good doctor sets me back down. “Go home and relax while I research this little anomaly. If you show signs of anemia call me immediately. But first, let’s go over the fine points once more. You say that your income is inherited, that you live on a boat right here in our

Hell’s Outpost marina, and that you keep your personal area scrupulously clean. You mention becoming sick after eating a burrito at a little cantina in town. Describe that experience again.” “It was awful,” I say, and a rottenness comes to my palate. “Beef and cheese. I didn’t check it out first; I was hungry. I took one swallow, gagged, and spat out the rest. It was such a horrible taste, doctor. I couldn’t flush it; not with mouthwash, not with bicarb. I tried to walk off the whole thing, but I simply got more and more depressed. Eventually I stretched out on a little harbor bench and just lay there with my head lolling and my stomach clenching. When I opened my eyes there were all these sea gulls and pelicans standing around me; dead-quiet, riveted, just staring. Creepiest minute of my life. I guess I was hallucinating, but that strikes me as the first piece in the nightmare puzzle; I mean that flying thing in my boat I told you about.” “Okay. We all know an unhappy stomach can play tricks on the mind. ‘. . . a bit of undigested beef,’ and all that, coincidentally enough. There are no indications of toxic ingestion or of food poisoning, and despite the weight loss and overall haggardness your blood count is normal, so it’s safe to say your mental stress is a direct outcome of your body’s stress. I’m not prescribing any medications until I’m clearer on this thing. Go home and take your mind off it. Get some rest, Mr. Rowan. Relax.” I’ve always been a man on the water. The California marinas have always been my home. I’ve lived on this little sailboat, moored in Mer Harbor, for the last twenty years, in East Basin’s deepest slip—farthest from land, farthest from the profane enticements of neon, farthest from your silly press and scatter. I’m a loner, rooming only with the sea. And, because of my self-enforced isolation, I’m aware of the breadth of things; things shut out by the glare of civilization. I am, by my own honest evaluation, far saner than all you so-called normal people put together. So I have no qualms about laying out my thoughts and experiences on this dictaphone. It fits in my pocket. It’s going with me everywhere. And I swear I can see them from my port window: giant crimson fireflies in the night, moving like embers slung in a line. They pass low over the waves from one beach community to the next. Housefly, dragonfly, gremlin, harpy—what are you things—a new breed, a mutation, some kind of alien stock? And why are there no reports of sightings, no observations other than mine? Maybe because you’re, like me, under the radar, outside the window, obscured by the Glare. I’m tying down the tarp over this roofless cabin, though the pressure in my gut demands I rest. But how can I rest in the open air, vulnerable? The knots are secure, the tarp as taut as a drum. If you come back again you’ll have to earn me. The water boils around my boat—another hallucination? On a distant yacht a housecat wails on and on, and the leathery sound of wings hammers in my skull. My stomach swells and sinks. I’m being eaten alive, sucked dry. Got to recline, got to rest. But to rest is to sleep. “Dr. Freedman?” I breathe into the mouthpiece, and sag against the glass. My stomach squeezes into a knot, relaxes, squeezes again. “I got your message on my pager. I’m calling from a pay phone. What’d you learn?” “Mr. Rowan—I’m so glad you called! I’ve conferred with specialists who’ve gone over your scans in depth. That’s not a worm in your stomach after all.” I jerk upright at a sudden spasm, and grate, “That’s a relief.” 2

Hell’s Outpost There’s a long pause on the other end. Finally Freedman says, measuredly, “Mr. Rowan . . . it’s a maggot.” I sag again. “Pardon?” “I know, I know. Damnedest thing. But we can’t argue with these results. Now, I need you to come to the hospital right away. We’ll run a series of tests, all painless, and there are a number of people who want to speak with you personally. The hospital will of course pay for everything—these are amazing circumstances, Mr. Rowan.” “Amazing,” I echo. “How are you feeling? Have you noticed any improvement?” The receiver grows slippery in my hand. The booth reels, and I can feel the blood trickling down the backs of my thighs. “Oh, ’bout the same, I guess. How’s about yourself?” “Good, then you’re stable. Get thee to the hospital, Mr. Rowan, ASAP. These are some extraordinary times!” “That they are,” I mumble, and let the receiver fall. It’s back. I can feel it approaching, even as I feel the goo congealing at my wrists and ankles. It’s worrying at the canvas tarp; a scattering silhouette of wings and legs dancing port to starboard. Let me wake—can it only find me in my dreams . . . the scratching and tapping picks up; the tarp sags at its center. The stretching canvas produces a space between knots, and a black spiny leg works its way inside. The leg kicks about, reaching. Can’t scream, can’t back away; I’m fastened here, with my gut leaping and locking spasmodically. The black body bounces above me, trying to force the leg deeper. There’s a snap, cotton-soft in my delirium, as the shift in weight redistributes tension in the tiedowns, causing the tarp’s edge to tighten and cleanly sever that questing limb. The tarp vibrates furiously. In a moment there’s another scratching at the point of entry, then the great silhouette lifts and passes. The throbbing in my gut subsides. The nightmare is over. All my impressions succumb to the deep. I know where they’re going. They’ve passed below the horizon, but they were in descent before disappearing. Hell’s Outpost. It’s on my chart, though it’s more a footnote than anything. Dead and porous, only six hundred square feet and barely sixteen feet above sea level. Useful for bearings, otherwise a navigation hazard. The ocean is a fractured mirror as the dry wind tugs me on; silent running. My little boat leaves a black arrow of a wake, far behind that low-flying red arrow, a carpet of tiny blinking stars below the bright gibbous moon. I’ve stocked the boat with five-gallon cans of gasoline, ’cause I’m gonna burn out those bastards’ nest or hive or whatever, and try to save what’s left of my sanity. If I can just survive this lurching pain. There’s a flat smudge on the horizon; a dried-out scab on the ocean. No sign of activity. I’m pulling up smoothly, one eye to the waterline. The whole island stinks, even against the night and sea. But it’s not a guano smell. It’s unhealthily foul—makes you want to up-and-heave. There’s a slight cove to moor in. The rocks gleam dully; a sick air breathes over this place. I creep rock to rock in new rubber boots, a flashlight between my teeth and four full gas cans clamped under my arms and in my fists. I’m Hell’s Outpost’s lone scuttling crab, carefully making my way under a white hanging moon. 3

Hell’s Outpost The smell just gets worse and worse; now it’s godawful vile. The island’s gutted, pocked, honeycombed; big fissures lean in, some almost parallel with the water. I pause at a wide opening, set down the cans and transfer my flashlight. The beam’s torn by crags, baring only hints of the sickness within . . . that stench, rising round the openings—if I gag I’ll puke. A man can just squeeze in on hands and knees. Got to keep my mouth and nose covered while I walk in the cans behind me. Spiny, slimed-over rocks, fouling my fingers, catching my clothes. And I’m in. It’s a cavern, a low rocky vault eaten away from all sides. My light glances off mounds and mounds of rotted and rotting flesh—sharks and dolphins, pelicans and gulls, cats and dogs . . . people, of all shapes and sizes, children and adults. The whole sprawling mess is wildly alive, crawling with pallid glistening maggots and juvenile versions of those scarlet flying monsters. The stench is . . . Christ, I’m suffocating. And now my stomach’s ripping in half, a leaping cavity of unbelievable pain. Air. I’ve got to get out. Air. A flurry at the opening drives me back. Two long saw-toothed legs feel about, and the filtered moonlight becomes a dull bloody glow. Staggering in reverse, slipping on the slime-humped rocks— then I’m hollering on my back in a clinging, crawling web; maggots in my hair, on my lips, round my ankles and wrists, pulling me back into that bleak clotted nightmare on the boat. Strung between two worlds, my stomach blows apart and the fat white maggot erupts glistening with gut, just as the scraping shape breaks through the opening and moonlight floods the cave. The pain drives me to my feet. Roll on the rocks, slap off the remaining maggots. I spin off a cap and toss handfuls of gas on that closing crimson specter. It backs away kicking, but won’t relinquish the opening. It’s a lock, man, an impasse; and there I am, back on my feet, shaking gas on the writhing mounds, can after can, swirling and splashing the stuff wildly, saturating everything that moves. I strike and toss my lighter, and the flare-up almost knocks me over. And I just lose it, in all that horror, eclipsing those flames. I see myself, almost as though watching a film, laughing madly at the sick triumph while the blood pumps down my legs. And I hear myself staggering to the opening, my arms and hair on fire and my voice breaking in the fumes: Come on, bitch, here I am. How do you like it? I’ll kill you, I’ll fry you, I’ll roast you right back into Hell. You want some of this? Then come on! This is the whole tape-recorded journal found aboard Wesley Rowan’s boat The Loner. The District Attorney’s office is treating it as a suicide note, and the coroner has ruled Mr. Rowan’s demise as Death By Unknown Causes. We at The Harbor Herald have permission to print a verbatim transcript, and present it here in its entirety for our readers’ interpretations, whatever they may be. While Rowan’s narrative is disjointed and manifestly impossible as a real-time recording, given the circumstances he describes, it is certainly well within the parameters of a taped dramatic reliving on a subsequent return in The Loner, as posited by at least one analyst. At any rate, comments are solely those of the journalists assigned, as subscripted by the editor, and are not meant to reflect the paper’s overall point of view. Hell’s Outpost was indeed visited by a mariner on the night of 6-4-09; there are mooring marks on the island’s rocks, and these marks match scrapes found on the hull of The Loner. Furthermore, the island’s interior was completely burned out in a petroleum blaze, and Rowan was subjected to third-degree burns over thirty-five percent of his body. These data fully support the journal’s storyline. The journal itself only buttresses the evaluation of Rowan’s personal physician, Doctor Ruben Freedman, as to his patient’s fickle state of mind. 4

Hell’s Outpost The Loner was discovered crashed into its slip; the vessel unmoored, the cabin a bloody mess. Wesley Rowan was deemed, even in deep rigor mortis, to be misshapen and resolved in a manner beyond the pale of all historical pathology. According to the coroner’s final report, a large object of unknown specificity had been forced, or had in some manner independently worked its way, through Rowan’s digestive system, beginning in the stomach and making egress at the anus, distorting and mangling the tract’s every twist and turn in the process. This drawn-out passage contorted his body into a bizarre arch the report describes as “physically improbable.” Forensic findings demonstrate that Mister Rowan was alive and conscious throughout the ordeal. This case, while officially closed, will certainly draw the attention of those interested in tales of the bizarre. It seems likely, too, that associations will be made between Rowan’s tape-recorded ravings and the recent spate of reports involving lost children and pets, along with all these supposed sightings of a humming blood-red creature swooping around the beach communities in the wee hours. It is not The Herald’s intent to throw fuel on these fancies, so we submit this column solely for purposes of elucidation, and beg our faithful and intelligent readers to make of it as they will.

5

The Other Foot

“Kin Ah hep you?” said the big security guard at the door. The voice was an indifferent drawl. Gus looked at the man’s nametag: CHAHLES. “Yes, Chahles, I believe you may.” Gus proffered his paperwork. “I’ve an appointment with a Mr. Earl Maven at nine sharp.” He showed his pearly whites. “I came ‘Earl’-y.” Chahles gestured over his shoulder at the packed waiting room. “So’d dey.” A hundred and forty-one eyes glared at Gus eclipsing the opened glass door. “Well!” Gus didn’t lose the smile. “Where do I sign in, then?” “Yo kin sign yo funny butt in on a empty chair; tha’s if yo kin finds one.” Gus was intensely aware of his whiteness as he apologized his way to a steel folding chair with a collapsed back. He scrunched in between a sleeping man and the biggest, meanest-looking woman he’d ever seen. He hadn’t brought a book or newspaper, and wasn’t particularly compelled to seek conversation. He should have known he’d be out of his element when the welfare processing office referred him to the outlet on Oprah and King, but he was new to the system, and not about to make trouble. Be quiet and polite. You’ll always squeak through. Little by little this quiet, polite man found himself scrunching in while the surrounding tide just as gradually spread, until he resembled nothing so much as a squashed ivory exclamation mark in a smudgy text scrawl. Using his two available fingers, Gus pinched his paperwork into a tiny reading shield for his eyes. By eleven o’clock he’d read it over so many times it was a mantra to delirium. When at last he heard his name called he was barely able to slip from under the sleeping man’s slobbering face and the big lady’s glaring eye. The clerk peered through the bulletproof glass with an expression skewed by a million threats and pleas. “You Gus Tremblen?”

The Other Foot “Yes, that’s me.” “Say here your appointment for nine.” “Yes, that’s right.” One eye rolled to the wall clock. “It eleven now.” “I realize that, sir. I was just called. I’ve been waiting patiently; very patiently.” “You sign in? I don’t see your name on the sign-in.” “I wasn’t aware . . . sir . . . I was told to take a chair, and complied. I had no idea that—” “Who told you take a chair?” “Well, it was the security guard. I believe his name is Chahles.” “Chahles told you take a chair?” “He instructed me to . . . yes.” “You take orders from a security guard?” “He didn’t actually order me.” The clerk threw down his pen. “If that don’t beat all.” He flicked on the intercom. “CHAHLES, YOU COME TO WINDOW EIGHT.” A massive reflection grew on the glass like an overblown balloon. “Chahles, you tell this man he not supposed to sign in on the sign-in?” “Ah did not tell him nothin of the sort, suh.” “You tell this man he supposed to take a chair without signing in on the sign-in?” “We didn talk about no sign-in, suh. Ah showed him where to sit, tha’s all.” “He say he didn’t want to sign in on no sign-in?” “We didn talk about no sign-in, suh. Ah showed him where to take a chair.” The clerk shut Gus’s file. “If that don’t beat all.” A thin man in a suit slid through an adjacent door. “What’s all this hollering?” “This man don’t want to sign in on no sign-in.” “Actually,” Gus tried, “I’d be pleased to sign in, sir. There’s some kind of misunderstanding, that’s all.” The thin man adjusted his severe spectacles for an iron stare. He was one of the angriest looking people Gus had ever encountered. “Why didn’t you sign in in the first place?” “I wasn’t aware—” The thin man slapped down a palm. “If that don’t beat all.” He flipped open the daybook. “You see all these signatures on the sign-in? How come they gotta sign in on the sign-in and you don’t gotta sign in on the sign-in? We just supposed to know you’re here and dispense with procedure?” “I . . .” “Chahles, you tell this man he don’t gotta sign in on no sign-in?” “We didn talk about no sign-in, suh.” The suited man’s eyes burned through the glass. “You refuse to sign in on the sign-in?” “Sir, I—” “Chahles!” The balloon squeezed between Gus and the glass. Chahles’s expression was dead-serious. Gus wasn’t even aware of the next half-minute, so profoundly confused were his impressions. All he knew was he was standing in the doorway with his back to the street, and Chahles was looming like God Almighty. “Now yo kin jus take yo crackajack bee-hind somewheres else.” “Lord!” swore the thin man, glaring through the glass. He looked daggers at the clerk. “Next time someone don’t wanna sign in on no sign-in, he trying to tell you he don’t wanna be served. Why 2

The Other Foot you bothering me with all this?” “Chahles said—” “You take orders from a security guard? If that don’t beat all.” He slipped back into his office. The Post-its were falling like leaves, the phone already ringing. He composed himself before lifting the receiver. “Earlsy?” “Bunny, I told you not to call me before lunch.” “But I miss you, sweetheart.” “I miss you too, sugar. We’ve talked about this a hundred times. Whenever I get a call on an outside line it’s tallied, remember? I have to balance those calls against the client log.” “But my slipper,” Bunny pouted. “What about your slipper?” “It got fried. In the microwave, somehow. You know the mink slippers; the pretty pink ones with the cute little diamonds that spell out I Worship You Bunny? Well, the right one got cooked, and it’s all . . . icky. Now I have a slipper that says I Worship You, and a bare foot that don’t say nothin. How’m I suppose to know who you worship, Earlsy?” “But how did it get into the micro—” “Don’t yell at me!” Bunny wailed. “I’ll get a restraining order, Earl Maven; you know I will. If I have to hop down to the station with one naked foot, I swear I’ll protect myself.” “Bunny.” Maven wiped a hand down his face. “Baby.” He called up his online banking account on the office computer; another no-no. “Sweetheart.” He typed in his password and went to accounts. His face fell further. “Darlin’!” “Earlsy?” “We’re having kind of a tight calendar month, sugar. Must’ve been that rabbit-shaped hot tub.” “You said you loved my bunny bath.” “I do, Princess. It’s just that—” “DON’T YELL AT ME!” And Bunny was in serious tears. “I promise you, Priceless. I promise you. Brand new slippers when I get home. Prettier than the last. As pretty as you.” “You’d better not be jerking me around, Earl Maven. The front door is locked if you come home empty-handed. Smooches?” “Smooches,” Maven said. “And when you’re all dolled-up good as new we can play Counselor. I’ll bring the Baileys. But please, Goddess, in the future try to remember that little rule about calls to the office. For right now I’ll just write this off as a wrong num—got to go now, baby; another call.” Maven punched the glowing button. His voice was instantly professional. “Earl Maven. Department of Welfare Adjustments.” “You’re processing a claimant, one Gustave Merriwether Tremblen?” Maven drummed his fingers on the desk. “Who’s this?” “My name is Harvey Gerbilstein, Mr. Maven, and I’m employed by the State of California to handle complaints from welfare applicants who feel they’ve been denied fair access to resources. We’re in the building right next door. You know the one.” “No one has been denied anything to anything, Mr. Gerbilstein. Mr. Tremblen refused to sign the day’s docket according to specified procedure, that’s all. We are, by order, disallowed the processing of unruly claimants.” “Mr. Tremblen claims the security guard ejected him in a most threatening manner, and used the term ‘cracker’ in so doing. Now, Mr. Maven, a major part of my duties involves claims of 3

The Other Foot behavior which may be construed as racist under article 749 of the State Discriminatory Code. I don’t think we have to split hairs here.” Maven peeled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Security is not employed by the State of California. Any complaints will have to be directed to the proper offices.” He slammed through his rolodex. “And I have the number right here.” “Wrong, Mr. Maven. Your department and ours have danced this dance before. Sukky Security is certified by the State, leaving California liable for any monetary damages incurred by successful complaints.” Maven dropped back his head. When he let it fall forward it was wagging with frustration. “I can’t help you, Gerbilstein. You’ll have to take this up with my boss.” “Way ahead of you, Maven. Mr. Killwater was notified on his car phone prior to this call. I’d like you to know our little conversation, though brief, was extremely interesting. So interesting, as a matter of fact, that he decided to cancel his beloved golf match and proceed instead to your office for what I can only describe as a very-quickie conference. I’m not sure you’re aware of it, Maven, but racism lawsuits regularly settle in the six figures. A man in Mr. Tremblen’s shattered condition can expect lifetime compensation. Now, I’ve never been all that hot at tabulating mileage against traffic, but, if my calculations are anywhere near correct, Mr. Killwater should be showing up right . . . about . . . now.” A harumph and short bellow was followed by a tapering monologue from Chahles. Killwater, looking like he’d just swallowed a mouthful of glass, burst into Maven’s office and slammed the door. The man was in his sixties, and at least as big as Chahles, but there was a bulldog-gruffness to his demeanor that made him appear larger than life. “Maven! I’ve just been on the phone with a Harvey—” “Gerbilstein,” Maven sighed dismally, holding up the receiver. “He’s right here.” Killwater snatched it as though reclaiming stolen property. “Gerbilstein? We’re on conference!” A ping and shift in the ether. “Done,” came Gerbilstein’s voice from the speaker. “Is that complainant still there?” Tremblen’s voice, hard to pick up: “Um . . .” A scrape and throat-clearing. “Yes,” the voice came back, clearer now. “I’m here.” “You were involved in an altercation with a member of our security staff?” “Actually, it was more of a misunder—” “Chahles!” The echo scraped paint off the lobby’s walls. A timid rapping. “Open the damn door, Chahles!” A quirky fluorescent corona displaced the unwelcome door. “Did you threaten a Mister . . . a Mister . . .” Killwater snapped his fingers. “Tremblen,” came both Gerbilstein’s and Tremblen’s voices. Gerbilstein appended: “One Gustave Merri—” “Did you threaten anybody, Chahles?” “No suh. He don’ wanna sign in on no sign-in, suh. Ah showed him where to take a chair, suh. Tha’s all, suh.” “Why wouldn’t he sign in on the sign-in?” “He say he don’ wanna sign in on no sign-in, suh.” Killwater’s steamshovel jaw dropped. Speaking as much to himself as to the room, he muttered, “If that don’t beat all.” 4

The Other Foot Gerbilstein’s voice was the snap of a whip. “Enough! Paperwork is already being processed in Tremblen vs. the State of California. Article 749.A.154,894,000-2B12 states, unequivocally, that no applicant may be denied resources due to conditions of race, religion, gender, national origin, disability, height, weight, self-image, lack of character, hometown allegiance, or body aroma. Calling Mr. Tremblen a ‘cracker’ most definitely falls under the category of racial discrimination, and, since Sukky Security is on record as approved via the office of one Carlton Killwater, Mr. Killwater, along with his subordinate Earl Maven, are hereby notified of their status as defendants in Tremblen vs. California.” In the deafening silence came a sound like a squeal and clapping from Gerbilstein’s end, then a very sober closure: “I’m afraid you’ll have to cancel your golf date, Mr. Killwater. I’ll be in touch. Believe me, I’ll be in touch.” The speaker went dead. Killwater looked stunned. “Chahles?” “Suh?” “What went down between you and Mr. Tremblen?” “He didn wanna sign in on no sign-in, suh. Ah showed him where to take a chair, suh. Tha’s all, suh.” “Chahles.” “Suh?” “Get the hell out of here.” The corona collapsed and the door whispered shut. “Maven?” “Sir?” “Clear out your desk.” “Mr. Killwater, this is all a misunder—” “Maven?” “Sir?” “Get the hell out of here!” Killwater drew open the door and shuffled out like the walking dead, his putter arm swinging listlessly. The phone rang. “Earlsy?” “Bunny,” Maven managed. “Earlsy, my pearl necklace, you know, the one you brought all the way from Budapest, with the dark and light pearls next to each other that go one little bunny, two little bunny, one little . . . well, it got caught in the blender somehow, and now I don’t have no one little bunny two.” Maven was drifting. “In the . . . blend—” “DON’T SCREAM AT ME!” Maven dropped the phone. In a trance, he pushed the personal contents of his office into a cardboard box labeled Trash Only, and dragged the box to his Mercedes. He somehow stuffed it all into the trunk and drove home like an automaton. The driveway was blocked by a pile of shirts and papers and very private miscellany. His photo albums, a collection of floppy-and compact disks, that prized foul ball off the bat of Itchy Krotchenscracher. Two patrol cars controlled the street on either side of Maven’s drive. He left the Mercedes idling between cars and staggered to the curb. An officer blocked his progress. “Are you Earl Maven?” “Yes . . . I . . . I’ve . . .” “Mr. Earl Maven, the Los Angeles Police Department is responding to a call of sexual harassment by one Bunny B. Goldigeur, a professed resident of these premises. It is my duty to 5

The Other Foot inform you, sir, that if you are approaching said premises with malice intended, you will be placed under arrest for the sake of said party. That’s all. Nothing personal. If you are indeed owner or lessor of said premises you are hereby awarded license to claim any and all properties deposited upon this drive. For the sake of Ms. Goldigeur, however, you may not breach said premises.” “My . . . property . . . gather my . . .” “But no farther.” There was a rumble and whirrrrrrrrrrrrr behind them. Maven was too dazed to turn. “You may now claim said personal belongings from said drive. Said one last time: if you approach Ms. Goldigeur or said lodgings you will be placed under arrest. Enough said. Do we understand each other?” The whirrrrrrrrrrrrr became an elongated grind. “Yes, sir . . . I—please forgive me if I have in any way—” “Five minutes,” the officer articulated. “You have five minutes to appropriate your property. Not because it’s property-specific. But because you’ve been warned.” “I—” “Four minutes, Mr. Maven. Move it.” The whirrrrrrrrrrrrr became a tearing, grinding scream! Maven turned. His Mercedes was being dragged up the spine of a Grabby’s Tow truck! The officer shook his head balefully. “No parking in the street. You know that, Mr. Maven. I am, due to your circumstances, waiving the curb infraction. You may reclaim your vehicle from Venal’s Tow.” He patted Maven’s shoulder. “Have a nice day.” The other car’s door swung open and a female officer emerged. Pretty little thing. She charged up like a bouncer on a bad night. “Are we having trouble here, Officer Wyatt?” “He has three minutes,” said Wyatt. She turned on Maven, her expression fierce. “What is your problem, sir?” “Two.” “I . . . she . . . misunder—” “One minute.” Bunny wailed from an upstairs window. The female officer got right in Maven’s face. “Sir, I need you to place your hands behind your back.” “Let’s go,” Wyatt said. “It’s domestic. He’s locked out.” The officers returned to their respective vehicles. Wyatt leaned over his car’s roof. “Your minute’s up, Mr. Maven. Get an attorney.” The head disappeared. The cars drove off. Bunny slammed the upstairs window. Maven knelt to his pile like a sinner at an altar. His eyes fell on a shopping cart with a broken wheel, resting half on the curb. Maven used this cart to hold his belongings. He looked around for a place to store it. The garage would only open from without by way of the Mercedes’ dash sounder. There was a tool shed out back, and Maven had the key, although technically using the yard might be construed as entering the premises. As though reading his mind, that female officer nosed her patrol car around the corner. Maven grimly jerked his cart along the sidewalk, not daring to look back. First thing was to get the Mercedes back. There was room in the trunk, with a little creative stuffing, for both the cart’s and the office’s articles. He’d find a decent hotel. Hell, he’d sleep in the damn car if he had to— Maven’s will was returning with each forced jerk of that dragging front wheel. The car continued to 6

The Other Foot pace him, slowly loitering a hundred yards back. It grew on Maven: he was going to be cited for shopping cart theft; he could feel it. Just to screw him deeper. The female officer probably sided with Bunny, probably profiled Maven solely from the context of a thousand spousal abuse calls. He hunched his shoulders and gritted his teeth as he lurched along, his glasses hanging at an angle. Maven wobbled around the corner and down the short block leading to the pedestrian tunnel adjoining Parasite Park. He was forcing the officer’s hand: she’d have to stop him now if she meant business. The car halted in the intersection and sat idling as he shook his way into the unlit, graffitiriddled tunnel. The car moved on and Maven heaved a sigh of relief. “What you doing with my cart, man?” Maven squinted at the blur. He adjusted his glasses. There was more than one blur; several, actually, and they were moving to block a retreat. “Yours?” Maven wondered. “My apologies. A misunder—” “Tell you what, homey;” said the first blur, now shaping up as a rather large individual with a shaved and tattooed head, “I’m sick of the damned thing. So what I’m gonna do is sell it to you, see?” Maven was thrown into a headlock from behind. His arms were restrained, his wallet removed. The first individual straightened Maven’s tie and fluffed his hair. “On second thought, I’m gonna let you keep it. Like I said, I’m sick of the thing.” Only the cart at his waist prevented Maven from dropping to his knees. “Take the cash! I don’t care; just leave me my credit cards. They’re no good to you!” The tattooed man grinned. “Are you kidding?” He flashed the cards like a straight flush. “Better than cash!” “My I.D.!” Maven wailed. The man shook his head. “My I.D.” And they were gone, swallowed up in the dark tunnel before the el. Maven stood there in shock for a good five minutes. When he surfaced he realized the worst thing he could do was lose track of his wallet. That lady cop might still be nearby, perhaps even now watching the tunnel from the park side, waiting for him to exit. If Maven could finger those thugs while the crime was still hot he’d be back in business. He pushed the cart shuffling, licking his lips eagerly. Maven rounded the tunnel’s el and daylight hit him like a fist. The park appeared deserted. As the window of visibility grew he found himself slowing, knowing the worst. He stepped out into a park abounding with litter, gang graffiti, and dog waste. But no people. Make that one person. At Maven’s feet was an old homeless man with one leg, a can of Steel 211, and an empty smile. “That’s a nice cart, friend!” And Maven was in tears. He dropped on his butt by the old man, accepted a drink. “Don’t be so down,” the homeless man crooned. “Things’ll get better.” He admired Maven’s suit. “B’sides, you look like you do all right for yourself. What’s your racket?” “Welfare adjuster,” Maven moaned. “Ex.” “Then what’s to worry? You know the system.” Maven sat right up and stared at the old man. Gummy or not, that was the sweetest smile he’d ever seen. At nine sharp Maven stood in the welfare office doorway at Duke and Falwell. He was unshaven and hadn’t bathed. He’d slept in his clothes and gone without breakfast. But he’d never felt 7

The Other Foot so alive. “Can I help you, sir?” asked the guard, a ruddy, heavyset man with a crewcut and thinning brown moustache. Maven looked at his nametag—BUFORD—then at the rows of staring white faces. He smiled toothily. “Ah comes to sign in on da sign-in!” “Sir?” The guard was obviously miffed; he could feel the quiet faces watching intently. “Do you have an appointment, sir?” “Ah gots a ’pointment wit yo mama.” The light brown eyes turned umber. Buford said through his teeth, “Sir, I’m afraid there’s been some sort of misunder—” “Well, if that don’t beat all!” “Get the hell out of here—” “Oh, yeah?” “—just keep your stupid ass on the street where it belongs—” “Say what?” “—and never darken our door again.” Maven rolled his eyes. “Excuse me? Did you say never ‘darken’ your door?” “You heard me.” “Bufie, does the name Harvey Gerbilstein mean anything to you?” “No, sir, it most certainly does not!” Maven faced the street and bent at the waist, offering his scruff and rear. “Then let’s get this train a’rollin’.”

8

Alphanumerica Hi, you’ve reached the website of Ace Hunter, the Man Who Can. There are no pictures or graphics up yet, but I’ve tons of cool stuff to share with ya—my favorite movies, oldies, and cinema babes— so I hope we can all become great and longstanding friends on this Wonderful, Worldwide, and Way-out Web. For all the cats out there: I’m a good old boy who really knows how to party hearty. I totally dig rapping sports. I mean football, boxing, NASCAR. Not that other stuff, like golf and soccer and twirls and mitten-making. I like sports. I mean, no offense or anything, but I don’t want this site flooded with pictures of men in codpieces, okay? I like sports. Guy stuff. Are we cool here? That was “guy,” not “gay.” And for all you ladies: I’m 6´2 with deep blue eyes, a long blond mane, and no tan lines, if you know where I’m coming from (and I think you do). I wouldn’t say I’m exactly ripped, but that’s not really my call to make. Anyway, I’m working on it. Maybe we can work on it together. My favorite books are the Kama Sutra and Fear Of Flying, but if you’ve got anything you wanna read to me, I want you to know I’m all ears. And a few other things. I’m not super-particular: blondes, brunets, redheads—I’m easy. And I’m not hung up, either. You can wear whatever you like when we’re typing; it’ll just be our little secret. Promise. I’m the same as any other guy in that respect: I like to keep my sex life private. Hell, we can even rap in the raw if you want. You don’t have to worry about getting up-close and personal; not with Ace Hunter, not with the Man Who Can. I can see it’s going to take a tad to get old Ace up to speed here. I’m not seeing the rush of hits I expected; in fact I haven’t picked up a single response. There must be some glitch in the receiver, so I’m gonna have to ask all you guys and gals out there to just be patient. We’ll get to the good stuff

ALPHANUMERICA soon enough. In the meantime, why don’t you prepare a list of questions for the Man Who Can. You know; who I’m voting for, my favorite outfielder, what’s the raddest Chevy, which starlet has the tightest—you know; don’t be afraid to get personal (especially you babes). That’s what we’re all here for, right? Just let me roust my webmaster, and we’ll be right up and running. But only ten questions per contact, please! That’s odd. They can’t find anything wrong with my site. So we can all just quit playing hide-andseek here (LOL). Ya gots me, pals o’ mine—I surrender; now let’s get down to some heavy conversation. Go ahead, bros and babes; ask the ol’ Man Who Can anything. Blaze away. You guys are just too, too much. So I have to go first; is that it? Real Mature! ☺ Okay, hang on to your blueteeth. I’ve got the inside scoop on that Ahnold and Bixby rumor: they were doing jerks in that weight room, all right! Humma-humma. And that ain’t all. One of me Ears informs me that ol’ Camille had the hots for Lady Die! (Sorry if I offended any of you Crowners out there, but here in the States we like to let it all hang out. Oops! Let me stuff it all back in). So there you go! Now it’s your turn. Hit me with your best shots, buds. Hey, if nobody wants to visit my site that’s no skin off the Man Who Can. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody. Just kidding. Patience is my long shot. But not with you honeypies! GrrruffF! I simply can—not— wait. How’s about you? Whatever. Anybody out there like puppies? I sure do hope so, man. Because I’m not just giving ’em away, I’m blowing ’em away! That’s right. I’ve got a cardboard box here with half a dozen of the little snotnoses, peeing up a storm on my best jogging sweats. Some old lady in the building gave them to me. Why? Because she knows I have so many freaking FRIENDS on the Internet I’ll be able to parcel-post ’em from here to Timbuktu, no problem. But gee, appears nobody really gives a good holy crap about the Man Who Can. So I guess he’s just gonna have to see how these little guys like partying in a sealed plastic bag. And whose conscience is that gonna be on? Not mine. Because I would have been glad to stop, if only someone had been humane enough to give me the word. So how do you want them? All together in the bag or delivered separately in shoeboxes? Here goes Snoopy right now, butt up and let down. Oh, that’s right; I don’t have an address to mail him to— none of my FRIENDS came through. Well I guess it’s down the old bowl for sweet little Snoopster. A shame, really. But you can save him! I can be swayed! Just drop a dime. A nickel. A penny. A smiley face? A freaking “Hey, Bozo”? Okay, enough is enough. I’ve decided if Ace Hunter isn’t good enough to elicit one little response from the world, then the world isn’t good enough for Ace Hunter. So this is it, friends and lovers I’ll never know. I’m out of here; and I mean that literally. I’m closing all the windows in Hunter’s Den. I’m turning on the gas and sticking my fool head in the oven. I’ll do it, too, dig? ’Cause nothing is too drastic for the Man Who Can. So goodbye cruel world, goodbye cruel silence, and most of all, goodbye cruel Internet. This is sayonara, babies. If I don’t get a response from one of you jokers 2

ALPHANUMERICA within the next five minutes I’m fairy food. I’m going for the gas now. Drop that dime fast; don’t stay a stranger. This is Ace Hunter, checking out. Hasta, amigos. Look, I’ve got a book on homemade bombs, okay? And I’m in tight with this guy who can get me all the stuff I need to just keep on producing. OK? Now, I’ve been doing a little work in the kitchen, if you get my drift. Anybody paying attention yet? Maybe your eyes will open when I take down City Hall. I can do it, too. Remember? I’m the Man Who Can. Hey Ace Hunter This is hot69sex4U. I woud lik 2 meat you for good times. I am eighteen years old redhead with long leg and big ta-ta. Blue eye and platinumb blonde hairs. I am 38DDD-22-36 brunet. What are these detail U talk about with the bombing City Hall, Ace Hunter? I woud lik 4 U 2 talk with me about this. I lik metalica, pizza, much beer, and heavywait boxing. They say I look lik 7 of 9 on Star Trik, but she not so hot. For fun I lik to paint myself purpl, gargl cup of KY jelly, and do topless jumping jaks surounded by big and many mirors. R U fun guy, Ace? From who U get bomb material, Ace? I lik 2 meat this man. I bring my many hot girlfrend and we all have fun. But I have problem with man and hope U can help. Problem is called nimfomania but unlik regular girl I can only do with one mania, if I lik him and he cute. R U cute, Ace? Where U keeping bomb Ace Hunter? Hi, hot69sex4U!!!! Sorry to keep you waiting, but I got your message at the same time my agent called. We have this gig over at a swingers bar, and I’d sure like you to come along. You sound like a real cute girl and a dynamite babe. What were those measurements again? Please don’t tell me you have a sticky D key. Gee, it sounds like we have a lot in common. The same taste in food, music, and sports. What more could a guy want in a woman. That was “38” triple D, right? Not 36? It’s easy to confuse those number keys. Not that I care so much about women physically. What’s important is a woman’s mind, and I can tell you’re way smarter than most. Have you ever tried a trampoline with those mirrors? A whole cup of K-Y? Where do you live, anyway? Hey Ace Hunter This is hot69sex4U. I have been wondering about this bombs U are making. I woud lik if maybe we coud C it together. I always think bombmaking man is very much sexy. I will bring my videocamra and fishnet bodystocking. I lik to wear it doggy styl and stand on head whil kissing many long objex and howling at moon. On trampoline. But C-ing bomb make me get turned on. No bomb, no ta-ta. Ta-tas, Ace Hunter, tatas. Hey, hey, hot69sex4U! No sweat. I’ve got the bomb right here, babe, and she’s a real beauty. But, y’know, maybe we should get to know each other a little better first. Like, what’s your favorite hobby? Hey Ace Hunter 3

ALPHANUMERICA This is hot69sex4U. My favorite hobby bombs. I lik mak long hot nasty naked sex with man who talk about bombs. I lik masage him with ta-tas all over whil he talk about bombs bombs bombs. Ta-tas. Bombs, Ace Hunter, bombs. What is Ur real name, Ace Hunter? Well, let’s just leave it at Ace Hunter, okay, babe? ’Cause he’s the Man Who Can. Besides, you’re not using your real name. And don’t you think this is kind of cool, like that sexy-incognito song, “Me and Mrs. Jones?” Hey? Hey Ace Hunter This is hot69sex4U. Yes my real name hot69sex4U. Where Jones keep bombs, Ace Hunter? I woud lik 2 mak nasty with Jones, U watch whil we mak sex with big dick donkey, Ace Hunter, on tabl. With giraf, Ace Hunter, in sink, in toylet. All night long with U and Jones. Bombs, Ace Hunter, bombs. But I not Mrs. I am black mongolyan singl girl with long tung fat ass and big ta-tas. I lik swing with Jones and bomb, Ace Hunter. Bombs. I am littl tiny japanes woman with 58DDDDDDD ta-tas. Geisha. Well, Gesundheit, hot69sex4U. Shucks, I don’t think it’s important what race a woman is, just so long as she’s nice and honest and stuff. I mean, how do you keep ’em off the keyboard, for Christ’s sake? That’s just a joke, hot69sex4U. If anybody appreciates a well-endowed woman, it’s the Man Who Can. I’ve been described as being a tad in the oversized department myself, so I know how you feel (that was a pun. How you “feel.” Get it?). Hey Ace Hunter This is hot69sex4U. All my friend well-endow. We lik box naked, make slappy-slap with big ta-ta. BIG ta-ta, Ace Hunter, all girl BIG ta-ta. We lik ride horsey on bomb, Ace Hunter, show us bomb. Bring bomb, bring plan, bring material. We ring around rosey with ta-tas on you and Jones, Ace Hunter, bring Jones. I wet for you, Ace Hunter, I wet all over. Where Jones? Hey, hot69sex4U. You sound really kinky. And that’s really cool. But, you know, I’m beginning to think I might not be man enough for you. Hey Ace Hunter This is hot69sex4U. Is OK. We can go 3way, 4way, manyway, anyway. Just mak meat hot69sex4U and Jones. Then I kiss you nasty in many naked place whil we talk 2 Jones about material. I gulp you lik fish on rufie, Ace Hunter. I dance on ta-tas upside down in vat of whip cream, shake booty lik disco girl, snap whip in high heel and panty, spank bad cowboy underpants, U name it. Look, Ace Hunter, no bra, no bra. U tell me where U live, Ace Hunter. I do naked hula hoop, I bongo ta-tas on 4head. Make pig sex in snorkles, dip ta-tas in jello, kiss good spot all night long, Ace Hunter, sex all night long. 4

ALPHANUMERICA Wow. That all sounds super cool, hot69sex4U. But this is the Internet. This is the Worldwide, Wonderful, Way-out Web. You could be anywhere. I could be anywhere. Hey Ace Hunter This is hot69sex4U. Don’t worry I very close Ace Hunter. Hot sex much ta-ta, just tell me address. I hurry down street topless on pogo stick. Make stink sex with you and Jones. All night long, Ace Hunter, all night long. Bombs. Well, gee, hot69sex4U. You don’t have to go to all that trouble. I live at 737 Maple, apt. 412A. It’s like this big twin-building, with lots of eucalyptus trees out front. Nothing fancy, but you can see those highrises against the downtown skyline from my bedroom win Hang on a second, hot69sex4U. There’s a whole bunch of official vehicles in the street. I think there’s something going on in this building. Wow. You should hear the commotion out in the hall. We may have to evacuate. Gosh, I think so. They’re pounding on my door right now. I’ve got to run, hot69sex4U. Somebody out there definitely wants to meet the Man Who Can.

5

Remembering Jack I’ll never forget the day I met Jack. Who wouldn’t remember a scene like that—stretched out flat on my back with Nick Kirby straddling me, kicking my ass to Timbuktu and back in front of everybody who was anybody, smack dab in the center of Kennedy High’s main hall. I didn’t really have it coming, of course—everybody knew that; Nick was just whaling on me because I was available, because I was a geek, because he needed the exercise. It was nothing personal: Nick regularly kicked the crap out of lots of losers. I know I was receptive; I had this flip-flop image of lockers to my left and lookyloos to my right, as my spewing tetherball of a head was fisted side to side. I don’t recall feeling any real pain. I guess I was in that what-who-why state of shock that the self-preservation instinct throws into gear in case we jerkoffs and nerds don’t possess the good sense to stay down until the storm’s over. And then, for no observable reason, the barrage just stopped. I know I didn’t say uncle; my lips were too swollen to do anything but serve as punching bags for Nick’s knuckles. The knees came off my arms and Nick’s body lifted like a flying saucer firing its null-gravs. That new kid—the sullen, sweatshirted loner who avoided the in crowd and geeks alike, who glared his way through P.E., who always sat at the back of class—was holding Nick upright by the collar, and he was twisting that collar deliberately while the rigid fingers of his other hand slowly balled into a fist. I probably had a better look at his face than anyone other than Nick, who was clearly distracted, and I think the best word I can come up with for that expression is—wow. “Don’t,” the new kid grated, and smashed Nick’s face into a closed locker door, “pick,” and another smash, harder, “on . . . lit . . . tle . . . GUYS!” Those last four syllables were accompanied by thrusts of increasing ferocity. Nick’s face had crashed six terrible times into the sharp steel gills that

Remembering Jack serve as air vents on these oblong hall lockers. When his face peeled away, it looked more like a package of fresh gutted catfish than the old Nick we all knew and loved. The new kid picked me up and dusted me off. His eyes were clouding embers. “If he picks on you again, I want to know all about it.” He turned to the gaping kids. “This is my friend. Anybody fucks with him fucks with me.” And with that he was gone. When the monitor ushered me into the Principal’s office, I just knew something big was up. First off, hall fights always go to the Vice Principal. Second, the new kid was seated outside the office, scrunched between a cop in uniform and a man in a brown suit. But the kicker was finding my parents sitting across the desk from the Principal, with a starched white nurse standing by the window. The Principal was in no mood for introductions. “Sit down.” But my parents didn’t miss a beat. “My baby!” Mom cried when she saw my used mattress of a face. Dad beat her to the punch. He rose half-out of his chair and showed a threatening fist. “What did I tell you about violence!” “Stop!” The Principal’s bark was the crack of a whip. My parents snapped to as if it was they, not Yours Truly, who’d been yanked out of class to see the Big P. “I’ve had enough of this matter. I intend to wrap it up by lunch.” He glanced at the wall clock. “That gives us exactly fourteen minutes.” He showed me the Official Eye. “Michael Parkson. I’ve heard the other involved parties. Nicolas Kirby is presently in hospital, recovering from massive facial lacerations. Although he is young and healthy, it is likely he will be severely disfigured for life. All witnesses to this travesty are playing dumb; I am convinced there’s a tacit understanding—a pact of silence enforced by peer pressure. Considering young Kirby’s record of campus fisticuffs, I’m assuming he’s at least partly responsible, and while he has implicated recent enrollee Jack Barrett, there are presently no remaining viable eyewitnesses. There is only yourself. Now,” the Principal clenched his folded hands, “Barrett, raised in a succession of orphanages, was transferred to this high school from State detention through a new outreach program. He has an extensive history of incarceration in numerous juvenile halls, and of savage reprisals in each. I argued like a lunatic against his enrollment, but there are,” and he spread and reclenched his hands, “various School Department loopholes.” He leaned back in his chair. “Young Parkson. This is a very serious matter. While I appreciate your position, I do not like liars. I want you to tell me what you saw, and I don’t want any waffling. My hands are tied without a sworn witness. But if you finger Barrett he will be expelled and, I’m certain, returned to the State’s care after facing a police investigation and mandatory psychotherapy. You won’t have to worry about retaliation, if that’s an issue. We’ll place this whole thing in the Department’s lap and wash our hands of it.” He looked back up. “You now have seven minutes.” “Boy . . .” Dad grated under his breath. “I had to call off sick because of this. If you make my day any tougher . . .” “Mister Parkson,” the Principal hissed. “I told you,” Mom wept, “you don’t need to fight, sweetheart. You talk to your mother. Talk to Mom.” “Mrs. Parkson!”

2

Remembering Jack “I’m sorry,” I bubbled, tears welling at the lids. It’s like I could feel Jack’s ear just outside the door, straining to catch every syllable. “I’m sorry! I didn’t see anything. Look at my face, look at my eyes! Does it look like I was taking notes?” “Don’t be a wise-ass,” Dad snarled. “Answer the man’s question.” “No!” I screamed, and now I was weeping freely. “I didn’t see anything. I was totally out of it. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t see anything!” The Principal slapped his palms on the desk. “Take as many days off as necessary. Don’t come back to class without first checking in at the nurse’s office. Speaking of which, Michael, you have an appointment right now. Nurse Taine, escort the boy.” He jabbed the intercom’s button. “Miss Dowdie, ring the damned lunch bell! Mr. and Mrs. Parkson, go home. You’re excused.” Imagine my surprise when I left the nurse’s office and ran into Jack Barrett standing in the hall. He put his big arm over my shoulders and led me to the Electrical room doorway. There were tall ranks of those ubiquitous gray lockers to either side, so it’s not like we were actually all that visible. I mean, I desperately wanted to be seen hanging with a non-nerd, and Jack was anything but a nerd, but at the same time I was put off by the idea of being caught with a guy’s arm around me, if you get my drift. “That was really cool what you told the Principal,” Jack said. He crushed me against his chest. Now, Jack was a pretty big dude. He probably stood six-five, which only gave him like a foot and a half over me, but he was as thick and tough as an oak. “I could’ve been carted back to reform school, or worse, but you saved my ass.” He squeezed so hard I was in real danger of losing my wind. “And you saved mine,” I gasped. “I guess that makes us even.” Jack appeared to be considering the laws of equity while he went on clutching me there, tighter and tighter. Maybe he didn’t realize he was killing me; I mean, compared to him I was a petite Japanese schoolgirl. My shoulder was already deeply bruised, in the shape of a huge palm and five broad fingers. I was all caved in. “Nobody ever stood by me like that before.” Jack looked squarely in my flickering eyes. “I never had a real friend.” Just saying that made him swell with camaraderie, and Jack really laid that squeeze on. See, I know you guys are gonna think I’m bullshitting you here, but me and Jack stood there like that for the better part of an hour; discussing the pros and cons of friendship, debating simple headlocks vs. full nelsons. I lost all sensation on my left side, and a healthy chunk of bladder control. The hallway approached and receded, the overhead lights brightened and dimmed. But the really weird thing is that ninety percent of that conversation took place in the first five minutes. The rest of the time we just stood there in dead silence; a solid yacht of a guy with a trembling bird shit trim. Scads of people passed by during that near-hour. Teachers glanced over oddly, but the kids all seemed to look away. Even that hot little Marcia Tenders walked past, and I got the feeling she was really impressed. Finally I looked cool. Eventually we moved on down the hall and out onto the front steps. Jack was holding me up now, though I don’t think he realized it. He sat me down on a planter ledge and I kind of folded into the impatiens. “We should celebrate,” he said. “What’s your drink?” The blood was returning to my arm. I swear I heard my heart kick. I was just beginning to breathe again when the full import of Jack’s words struck me like a fist. Wow. I was being invited to party with a Somebody. 3

Remembering Jack “Oh,” I gasped vaguely. “Beer’s good, I guess. What do you like?” Jack laughed. “Come on.” “My name’s Mikey,” I ventured. “Michael, actually. Or Mike’s best. Straight-Up Mike; that’s what they call me. You know, like a standup guy.” “Let’s go.” We worked down the steps and across the grass to the sidewalk. There were lots of kids hanging out, mostly the cool crowd, and I just know I was scoring Seen-With Points left and right. Even that fox Candy Wille walked by us and—I know you guys won’t believe this, but she actually smiled at me and took a deep breath to draw my attention to her yum-yums. Like every eye in the crowd wasn’t already glued on ’em. I was in emergency room heaven, man. Me and my buddy swaggered up to the corner. I was about to push the walk button when I caught myself. Me and Jack strutted across the street against the light, while traffic was forced to a halt and everybody who was anybody looked on respectfully. And I took my sweet time crossing, you dig? We grooved on up to Larry’s Liquor. The clerk watched grimly as Jack ran his eye over the bottles. He was a speckled old man, with a melting face and dour expression. The floor plan allowed customers to personally attain liquor and place it on the counter, so the clerk had developed a jaded and wary eye. Jack plucked out a fifth of Jack Daniels and grinned. “Named after me,” he said. He grabbed a glass liter bottle of Margarita mix and set both items next to the register. The old clerk wagged his head. “I’ll be wanting to see some I.D.” “In my other pants,” Jack said pleasantly. There was a long icy minute where the two traded stares. Finally the old man said, “That’ll be forty dollars, even.” “Where’d I say my I.D. was?” The clerk cocked his head and studied Jack out of one eye. “You said it was in your other pants.” “And where do guys keep their I.D.?” “Generally in a wallet.” “And where do they keep their money?” The clerk raised his chin irritably. “If they’re normal, in their wallets, too.” “So where would that put my goddamned money?” Jack demanded. The clerk glared. “In my other fucking pants!” Jack spat, and smashed the Margarita bottle over the old man’s head. Jesus. I’ve always been an anti-establishment sort of cat, everybody knows that, but all of a sudden I was accomplice to both robbery and assault and battery. Or whatever they call it: that inthe-commission-of-a-crime thing. Jack snatched the liquor bottle’s neck in one hand and my girlie little bicep in the other. “The back door,” he panted. “Never go out the front.” He dragged me to the back door, kicked off the alarm, and hauled me out into the alley. We sank down the wall. Jack spun off the cap, took a manly swallow, and handed me the bottle. “Here.” First off, you guys, I want you to know I wasn’t a hard drinker back then; just the smell of that stuff made me start to puke. But I was a fugitive now, on the run with my partner in crime, and Jack just wasn’t the kind of guy you say no to. And, Lord knows, I really needed that drink. I got down a few sips. Jack yanked the bottle out of my hand, gulped some more, and wiped his mouth with a sleeve. “We’ve got to get out of here.” 4

Remembering Jack I was shaking like a Subaru, but I couldn’t break down, man; not right there, not in front of Jack. We snuck down the alley to the street. “Stand tall,” he said. “Act totally nonchalant, okay? Nobody knows shit yet.” He took a drink. I reached up a shaky hand, and he handed over the bottle. I swallowed deeply this time. “What if he’s dead?” I had to fight back the sobs. Jack shrugged. “That’ll give us more time.” He snatched the bottle and really knocked it back. I watched his Adam’s apple bobbing, amazed. His eyes weren’t cinched; rather, he was searching the clouds with a perfectly clear, perfectly direct and unblinking gaze. “We’ll get nowhere on foot; we need some wheels.” And just like that his mind was made up. “Pretend you’re sick.” “What?” “Just act sick.” I stared at him blankly. “Christ,” he said, and punched me right in the gut. I never saw it coming. And “punched” might be too soft a word. I was doubled over; but I mean right in half—my forehead scraped the sidewalk. I flashed everything: the booze, my remaining breath, yesterday’s breakfast, and collapsed into a pathetic fetal ball. Jack scooped me up and waved down a car. “Get us to a hospital fast.” The driver’s eyes were all over the place. He was a middle-aged milquetoast who looked like he was in cardiac arrest. The car was a light blue station wagon. The driver’s window was down only a crack. That’s all I could make out while peeking between my knees. “Maybe you should call an ambulance.” “There’s no time,” Jack said. “He’s dying. Look at him.” “But what hap—” “Open the door, damn you! He’s dying!” The driver shakily reached back and unlocked the rear door. Jack chucked me in like a bag of dirty laundry, hopped in the back and over the front seat. “Get out.” The driver seemed about to break into tears, but Jack ran his arms around him, unlocked the door with one hand, lifted the latch with the other. “Get out.” The driver threw his arms over his face. “God damn you,” Jack said, and kicked the door open and the driver out. He closed the rear and front doors, threw the car in gear and took off. “You did good,” he said. I managed a sitting slump and rolled my head deliriously. “Where’re—where’re we going?” “Not far,” Jack said, punching the dash. “This fucker’s on fumes.” “Maybe we—” I managed, “—maybe we—” He tore into the first available gas station. “Stay here.” I was able to raise my head, just in time to see him flipping around the OPEN sign on the front glass door. In a minute he came out with his arms full of chips and jerky. He tossed it all in, along with handfuls of tens, twenties, and fifties. “You’re in charge of cash,” he said, and bent to fill the tank. I threw up again and again; I don’t know how many times, mostly out the window. The next thing I knew I was sitting up front, it was dusk, and we were on the freeway, driving way too fast and changing lanes unnecessarily. “Jack . . .” I managed, “Jack, maybe we could drive a little slower and not look so suspicious, you think?” He sneered. “That’s gonna fool that helicopter, huh? We’ll just blend in no problem, is that it?” “Heli—” I looked in the side-view mirror and broke right into tears. “Oh my God, Jack, they’re almost on top of us. It’s over, man, it’s over.” “Bullshit. I filled the tank.” 5

Remembering Jack Then it was dark, and we were rolling in and out of a spotlight while Highway Patrol covered our front and rear. I could see black marshy fields along the freeway’s sides, but we were moving way too fast to make out details. Another helicopter was pacing us off to my right, and a pair of sirens were clearing the station wagon a path. What’s the name of those things they lay down to puncture your tires? You know, so they can bring a chase to a close . . . Spike strips, that’s it. Well, when we hit, the car didn’t spin out, it just kept going sideways, across three lanes, a turnout, and twenty feet of open space before taking out a couple of small trees and landing belly-up in an old culvert. Once again it was Jack to the rescue. He pulled my semi-conscious ass out the window and dragged me through the scrub and down a little gulch. Half a dozen Highway Patrol cars were lining the embankment when I opened my eyes, and one helicopter was hovering over the station wagon while the other swept an area three hundred yards away. And I was all gnarled up in Jack’s bearhug of an embrace, and in more pain than I’ve ever imagined. “Jack . . .” I said, “Jack, I think my neck’s broken.” “That’s all right, little friend,” he whispered, and almost crushed my spine. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He reached into his left front pocket and I heard the click of a switchblade. There was the frantic whine of a police dog, very close. Half a dozen flashlight beams tore all around us. Jack swung behind me and threw an arm round my neck. All I could see was a faceful of flashlight beams. “Stay where you are!” came a voice. At the same time one of the helicopters veered and hit us with its spotlight. I don’t know if any of you guys have ever been in one of those things, but it’s like a trillion candlepower, or whatever they call it. I mean bright white. “Back off!” Jack shouted. “I’ll cut his fucking throat; I swear I will.” He took a handful of hair and yanked back my head so that his lips were right up against my ear, then pushed the blade into my skin until blood trickled down my throat. “Act scared!” he whispered. No problem. I wailed like a weenie, you guys. I cried out to Mother, to God, and to Jack himself, in that order. But not to the cops, man, no way. I’d never turn on a pal. “Put down the knife and release the prisoner.” “Fuck you!” “Lay down your weapon!” “Fuck you!” There’s this thing they do with light. Even though it was so bright that everybody in that sea of white would have been visible from space, those state-of-the-art flashlights had us dazzled to the point it was impossible to see the cops, the dogs, or the special agent with his rifle trained right between Jack’s eyes and not six inches from my left ear. When the shot came it was just one more element of the kaleidoscopic panoply, and I wouldn’t have put two and two together if not for the thunk, jerk, and splatter. You know how they say a bullet makes a small hole going in and a big one coming out? Well, they don’t tell you that you can look right through that little hole and see cerebrum soufflē. The whole back of Jack’s head had been blown off, and the original contents were clinging to my shirt, face, and hair. Most of the uniforms did a compound swan dive onto what was left of Jack. A pair of cops rushed in to take me down, but one was forced to restrain the German Shepherd from finishing the job on my throat, so the lone cop twisted back my arm until I screamed like a Camp Fire Girl while he used his other hand to crush my head into the dirt. His knee was in the small of my back, and he was applying the whole weight of his body. I felt the cuffs go on, saw the Shepherd slobbering six inches from my face, and heard that awful voice drilling straight through my eardrum— 6

Remembering Jack “You have the right to remain silent.” Anyway, that’s how the whole thing went down. Since I was just sixteen at the time, I only had to do two years in juvenile hall, and then the P.D. successfully argued that I’d been acting out of fear for my own safety. Given Jack’s gnarly history, everybody agreed probation was the best adult option. Don’t you just know I was a popular dog in juvie—that high-speed chase was major news, man, and the arrest was broadcast gazillions of times. The dudes all knew me before I was even processed! There weren’t any girls to hang with, of course, but I made friends in the cells, in the dayroom, even in the showers. Straight-Up Mike, they called me. Yeah, yeah. Those were the days. You guys can think I’m bullshitting you all you want, but me and Jack were buds to the max, dude, and I’ve got the scars to prove it. So go ahead and walk away; out of this bar, out of my life, just like everybody else. I don’t need you, I don’t need anybody, ’cause I’ve got my memories, man, and I’ll always remember Jack.

7

Empire Alura is a planet as lovely as its name. The air, you would swear, has a sweet bouquet, and among Captain Scott’s ground party, sick to the gills of canned air, there was whispered talk of an aftertaste upon inhalation—something between caramel fudge and hot buttered rum. Native Alurans are friendly to a fault. The men are wise and mentoring, the women ample and unabashedly nude. The men can be firm, however, and so for propriety’s sake made certain the damson-toned nymphs arranged their flowing blonde tresses strategically in the company of Scott’s all-male, cabin-fevered, skin-starved crew. Alurans are humanoid. They are social creatures, prone to lounging and fond of dissertation. The planet Alura, with its bounteous fields of stellarium-rich photocrystals, has from Day One provided its denizens with long lives of peace and plenty. Still, sometimes a prodigious native energy supply can be too much of a good thing. Aluran males go almost directly from puberty to senescence, fulfilling their reproductive function in a single season, only to linger in decrepitude for decades to come. Aluran woman suffer throughout their lives with that exotic and unpleasant condition known as mammaria vulgaris, wherein supercharged estrogen causes the mammary glands to engorge in the company of males, and to spontaneously engage in profoundly mortifying paroxysms of projectile lactation. The ejected product’s sugar content is so stellarium-enriched that, upon exposure to air, it leaves a most unbecoming veneer of crystallized threads and filmy residue. Very many Aluran women are also cursed with the stigmata of superfluous breasts on the back, shoulders, and underchin—a humiliating condition that, during this, the first meeting of officials from Earth and Alura, caused the Elders considerable grief and embarrassment. Stellarium crystals, or stellaria, are not all that uncommon in the Milky Way. They can be found carpeting the temperate zones of most planets; absorbing, storing, and concentrating starlight by way of their unique arrangement of stepped internal faces. Some older crystals have been known

Empire to power a medium-sized city for a good solar year. Since their discovery by 23rd Century Earth prospectors, they’ve been the prime energy source in every Solar System project from transportation to military. The natural consequence is, of course, a steady depletion of this hardy but highly exhaustible life form. Aluran crystals have a paradoxical relationship with their galactic neighborhood. Alura is a remote, recently uncharted, most unpromising candidate for life of any kind. But its crystals’ struggle for distant starlight produced a rigorousness, a high field presence, and an unparalleled ability to photosynthesize. The evolutionary result is a robust, self-contained mini-system; warm, steady, and perennially paradisiacal. It was in this setting, on the crystal-rich bank of a perpetually mild lagoon of the Silken Sea, that the Aluran Elders received the bug-eyed Earth crew. After much apologizing and womanscolding, White the Eldest brought the small talk down to basics, speaking haltingly in the Universal Tongue. “There will be no need for the Elders to Counsel, Captain Scott. Your generous offers to purchase stellarium crystals wholesale, as well as to join with Alura in business partnership, are entirely unacceptable. These fields are not only our life-blood, they harbor a deep and timeless spiritual significance. To all Alurans. As you have informed us that you are fully empowered to speak on your home planet’s behalf, I feel honored as well as saddened to relate to you personally that, no, regrettably, we will never comply with this request. We are not for sale.” Scott bowed. “I will inform my world’s leader of your feelings in this matter, and return with his thoughts.” He paused as Gray the Elder wheeled his chair up against White’s. The two huddled for a whispered confab. White looked back up. “And . . . Captain Scott . . . we feel it best you return as sole representative, that your wonderful crewmen not be forced to endure the unsightly spectacle of our hapless women.” A mutinous groan rose from the men. Eldest White, nodding sympathetically, said with great bearing, “Thank you gentlemen, and a safe and very brief sojourn to you. May time wipe this unbidden, untoward, and disgustingly messy spectacle from your minds.” “How backward can these idiots be?” The President of Earth zoomed his image up tight, that Scott be irresistibly apprised of his displeasure. “I’ve given you full powers of emissary, Scott. They’ve heard our complete offer? What do they want, jangling baubles and party hats?” “It’s like a religious thing,” Scott hemmed. “‘Spiritual’, he called it. Doesn’t want to let go of the past, or posterity, or something like that.” “Oh, what a load of crap. Every race has its price. Now you get back down there and you do some fancy talking. You know what’s resting on this project, and you know how imperative those crystals are. If the Third Ring catches us with our pants down this time, we won’t have enough power to send up a surrender beacon. Money isn’t an object—we’re already through the roof on this. I’m authorizing your direct military command of all Group Bases if need be, of limitless and instantaneous funding, of total support from every proxy in the Quadrant. Damn you, man—get it done! If I see your pasty face again without a full work order for the immediate export of stellarium crystals, I’ll bust you right back down to janitor before your pansy-ass lips are dry. There’s an election coming up back at home, in case you’ve forgotten. Do we have an understanding here, 2

Empire Scott? Now, either you’re gonna make me happy or I’m gonna make you history.” “I’m so glad you could make it,” Scott whispered, peeking out his quarters while desperately avoiding looking at his guest. He’d leaked word that he needed to meet with the most intelligent of the Aluran women, and she’d tiptoed blushing through the flapping door, her long hair fluffing all around her gently swelling self. He began gathering the strange metallic marbles into a pile. The woman plucked one up, turned it before her wide violet eyes. “Pretty!” “Telefiles,” Scott said, placing it back in the pile. “I’ve been studying some ancient Earth records, looking for ideas. I’m Captain Scott,” he breathed. “And you are?” She spread her arms and giggled nervously. “Shela!” “Shhh!” Scott couldn’t help breathing her in: a sweet musk emanated from her every distending pore, while he grew clammy at the pits and groin. “Shela, I have very important work for you, a mission of the utmost moment. We have discovered that the Elders of Alura are plotting against us. It is imperative that we learn all we can to spare us from disaster. You can be our eyes and ears. You must eavesdrop on their conversations, you must find out all you can about how they manage and secure stellaria, and report back to me.” Shela bent nearer, her chest heaving. “Oh, but Captain Scott! Whatever will I tell my friends?” Scott’s eyes began to wobble and ache; the taste of peaches in cream came to his tongue. His fingertips grew sticky, and a pulsing gossamer web grew about them. “It’s a secret,” he whispered. “It must be, do you hear? You must come to me here, every night, and report everything you hear. No one must ever ever ever see you come and go, do you understand?” The woman’s entire body blushed ripe plum. “But how can I be of both Earth and Alura? In what manner do we merge?” She was expanding before his eyes. “I,” Scott gasped, “am hereby deputizing you. You are now an agent of our command. Of my command.” He scooped his tunic off its hook, raced his eyes across the colorful bits comprising his rows and columns of commendations. Cadet Mentor . . . Stellar Emissary . . . Galactic Commander . . . and peeled off the flexy starburst medal for Best Ship’s Hygiene. “What are those, Captain Scott?” “These,” Scott maundered, “are breast badges. They’re the proofs of all my manly endeavors. They’re awards: what Earth’s elite, political and military, give to officers of merit upon the successful completion of missions great and small.” He demonstrated the badges’ attachment and removal. “They’re just latex suction pads, what we call ‘Peel and Paste’.” Shela’s eyes swelled in their sockets, her lips plumping as he stared. “Breast,” she hissed prettily, “badges! But why do they call them that?” “Well,” Scott said reasonably, “because they’re worn on the breast. Flashing one of these babies is a great honor.” Shela’s eyes sparkled, following the badge in Scott’s rocking fingers. “For me?” “Remember—” Scott panted, “our secret.” She looked down; left, right, and supernumerary. “But where will I wear it?” Scott reached out his shaking hand, his breath hot and moist in his throat. “Right . . . here.” “I bear grave news.” 3

Empire They were in the Aluran’s command Circle, overlooking the Silken Sea. Scott studied his clenched hands. “It grieves me even to speak it in this fine and lovely place.” White the Eldest gripped his armrests and leaned forward, the veins throbbing in his forehead. Immediately his harem gushed to his sides, fanning him with their endless tresses while blushing furiously at their flashing pendulous fantasies. “Speak it,” White urged, “Friend Captain Scott.” Scott rose and began to pace, hands clasped behind his back. “Your world, Eldest White, is under the scrutiny of a devious and relentless species.” He raised a hand. “This race, the Klingons, has engaged an assault upon Alura under the auspices of their wicked ruler Kal-El of Oz.” He whirled. “Make no mistake! They seek only your stellarium crystals, and will stop at nothing to get them! No ruse too shallow, no ploy too obtuse . . .” He wagged his head sadly while raising a hopeful forefinger. “I am ambivalent. First: I, like all good men of Earth, am weighed down by this terrible turn of events in the life-cycle of a great and generous planet. But second, and far more important: I am overjoyed that we have arrived in time to protect you.” He bowed to the waist. “If you will permit us.” Gray the Elder placed a hand on White’s forearm. “Surely we must Counsel!” “The moment is urgent,” Scott said. “Proof of this threat, alas, is presently at hand.” He triggered his vocalizer. “Ensign Manson. Do it.” A second later the skies over Alura were erupting with pyrotechnic rage: Roman Candles, skyrockets, podloads of sparklers and Sneaky Petes. The women jiggled in terror while the Elders gasped and wheeled in erratic circles. The spectacle ceased. “That should hold those awful Klingons for a while,” Scott said. “Bless you!” White panted. “And bless all you fine men of Earth. Our stellaria are saved!” “Only temporarily,” Scott reminded him. “We can’t hold them off forever. I suggest a peace offering; a few carriers of your richest stellaria to keep them at bay while my selfless colleagues desperately attempt to work something out.” “Never!” White vowed, and with surprising passion. “We deeply appreciate your kind Earthling concern for our security, Captain Scott, but understand that under no circumstances will we ever relinquish a single rod of our beloved crystals! We are bound by ancient promises—to the beaming fields above and the chiseled roots below. None of this sacred growth shall ever leave our world!” He shakily raised himself half out of his chair, waving his bobbing nursers away. “Never! Do you hear me, sir? Not ever!” “But surely, a—” White clutched his chest and fell back in his chair. For a minute all was confusion. Presently Gray the Elder freed himself from White’s supporting fleshy tangle and looked over gravely. “I suggest you remove yourself, sir, and with the utmost haste.” There was no doubting his savvy, nor his hostility. “While it may be true that Eldest White’s advancement in years may have made him slow and over-trusting, and while the word of the Eldest is final, be advised that,” and his eyes burned across the Circle while he tapped a forefinger on his temple, “his true friends know things, and are a force to be reckoned with.” Shela quietly slipped round the flap, her chest beating hard. “What took you?” Scott whispered. “What have you learned?” She huddled there, vainly attempting to contain herself. “It is Gray you must fear. He is inciting the Elders to retaliation. Nothing will change him.” Scott gripped her passionately. “Shela! You must understand—Gray is a wicked man, bent only on destruction. His one course is pure selfishness—he must be destroyed!” 4

Empire She began helplessly sprouting and exuding, so great was her consternation. “But what can we do, Captain Scott? I cannot keep The Secret from my friends much longer.” “Take a deep breath,” Scott advised. “Relax.” Peaches in cream. “Now take another deep breath. Relax, relax. Breathe deeper, deeper; oh Shela, Shela, breathe! That’s a good girl. Now, there’s an old Earth saying: if you can’t bribe ’em, enlist ’em. So I want you to bring all the girls here, the whole gang, every night, and I’m gonna make sure each and every one is deputized with a breast badge!” Her eyes welled. Shela’s shoulders fell and she slowly began to deflate. “No, no, no!” Scott said hurriedly. “They’ll just be your deputies. You’re so smart, agent Shela; you’re smarter that all the rest put together. That’s why I’m promoting you.” He snatched his tunic from the wall and peeled off the Second Place, Three-legged Sack Race badge. Scott leaned forward in a crystallizing haze. “Let’s just see if we can find some more room in there.” Captain Scott strode purposefully into the Circle, flanked by Military Police. The Aluran sky was choking with hovering Earth craft, an awesome and intimidating sight since long before dawn. Every few minutes another carrier landed in a brilliant splash of gravity repellant. “What,” White tottered, “is the meaning of this, Captain Scott? And why have we been confined to the Circle these many hours?” “For your own safety, sir. The situation is far worse than our original reports led us to believe. It now appears that the Romulans have sided with the Klingons, and are gearing up for a Trump maneuver even as we speak.” “These words you use,” Gray said darkly, “are of no meaning to us. By what authority do you impose your military upon our neutral world?” Scott met him eye to eye. “By authority of the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts, Elder Gray. And it is not an imposition. The United Federation Of Planets has declared this planet a protectorate of the Borg Confederacy, and ordered Battleship Earth to her defense. It is we who bear the onus of this venture! Not you, we!” “And bless you, son,” White rasped. “And bless your fine people all.” “Cease!” barked Gray. “You use these terms, alien and obtuse, to divert us from actuality! What are these things, sir, and what do they imply?” A tic worked in Scott’s eye. “You’ll have plenty of time to learn, Gray, in the comfort of our brig. Men, remove this scoundrel.” The MPs immediately grasped Gray’s handgrips and wheeled him away. Scott turned to White. “It pains me to inform you, Eldest, but Elder Gray is actually an Ent working for the Dark Lord.” White paled further. “No . . . I . . .” “Yes. I’m afraid you’ve been confiding in a traitor and informant. We Earthlings come from a long tradition of wheeling and dealing with just such rascals.” Scott turned to the cap of Crystal Hill, where the Terran Blue & Green was being raised in a mild breeze. “Look to the future, Eldest! See the Aluran flag replaced by the Terran, so those cruel invaders are made visually aware of their formidable foe. A major battle will be won, perhaps without a single shot fired! Our President has even brainstormed a replacement name for this glorious planet—so that all potential villains know they are one step behind in the game.” He made a frame of his hands and peered through. “Think of it, Eldest White! A grand name, an imposing name, a name feared by all—a name that will give even the Death Star pause.” His eyes grew misty as he genuflected by the chair. “Try it out for yourself, 5

Empire Eldest. Give it a shot.” Captain Scott articulated broadly, running an arm over the gleaming panorama: “New . . .” he enunciated “. . . Earth . . .” “New . . .” White mumbled, “. . . New . . .” His sunken eyes rose Scottward. “And this strategy will preserve our precious stellaria?” “Absolutely. Our precious stellaria will be unapproachable! Even now drillers are tearing up fields. Loaders are stocking carriers, carriers are unloading in cargo ships. Tons and tons and tons of stellarium are ready to be transported to Earth for safekeeping. I want to guarantee you, Eldest White, that no foreign power will ever get their greedy mitts on these crystals!” “I, sir,” White breathed, “am impressed.” He impulsively kissed the Captain’s hand. “Nay, I am in awe! You will forgive my physical impertinence, but your ways of thinking are far beyond we simple Alurans. Please accept our tears of gratitude, and let us know how best we may assist.” “It’s all worked out, Eldest; you won’t have to do a thing. Aluran males are even now being rounded up en masse. And since you are civilians in a military arena, we are sworn to protect you in the grand Terran tradition. So all males will be safely ensconced on a special parcel of land in the Deader Desert, where no Orc or Oprah would think of searching. Aluran women will be transported to Earth for protective housing in some of our politicians’ finest mansions, and thereby inducted into the illustrious Great Chambermaids Society. Graduates are highly prized. Who knows—one day an Aluran woman may even bear the coveted Golden Chamberpot.” “No . . .” White’s eyes were brimming. “But, Captain Scott . . . the Deader Desert?” “No longer, sir. The area has been renamed the Aluran Reservation, in your honor. A ‘reservation’ is a place we Earthmen use to house our noblest peoples. All Elders will be preserved therein with complete security, and provided unlimited supplies of a popular Earth elixir known as ‘vodka’.” He unholstered a flask and had the Eldest sip. “It is . . .” White gasped, “fire on the tongue.” “Don’t worry, Eldest, you’ll get used to it.” He placed a comforting hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Someday, my friend, this fire will certainly be your dearest and most trusted companion.” “Folks—” the reporter gushed, addressing the hovering cameras while backpedaling up the walk “—you’ve heard about her, you’ve read about her, you’ve seen her wise and beaming face shining as the brightest star in the galaxy—the Woman of the Future, the symbol of success, the highest inspiration for all those yearning young girls, now viewing from home and dreaming of all they can be. So, with the whole Solar System watching, we give you that Stellar Sacagawea, that Purple Pocahontas: Senator Scott’s Mystery Princess, the Fabulous Aluran Muse who brought us our life-saving stellaria—Earth’s unparalleled Heroine—ladies and gentlemen . . . Shela!” The camera zoomed right in. Almost overwhelmed by all the excitement, Shela promptly popped off her breast badge, held it high overhead, and smiled into the bespattered lens. “Latex!” she bubbled, “Peel and Paste!”

6

Carnival

“Kevin, I’m convinced mankind’s true evolution will commence when this whole aboriginal God trip is junked!” —Eddie “It’s just that honesty takes all the fun out of a witch hunt.” —Lance “Shit, I seen eunuchs got more balls than you got.” —Nefertiti “I tell you, life’s a gag, man, a joke; a silly little diversion in the endless labor of creation. And I’m not saying it’s not a good joke. I bust a gut every time I think about it. But it’s like this is a running joke, you dig? It just goes on and on and on! Okay, so maybe I’m not smart enough to see the glorious purpose of this living hell, and maybe I’m not deep enough to know whether it’s a deity or demon running the show, but before I go, man, before I go, I’ve simply got to get my hands on whatever’s in charge and say, ‘Hey, Sucker! I’m hip to sick jokes, okay? And I’ll take the fall as lamely as the next second-billionth banana. But don’t leave me hanging! Man oh man oh man, just what the hell’s the punch line?” —Sahib “Too trippy,” Kevin said, slowly shaking his head, “much too trippy.”

Part One Bleak News From The Gene Pool 1. The Itch Of Being 2. Good Dogs, Inc. 3. Suffering Synapses 4. Beach Blanket Bozo 5. All Things Must Piss 6. Hooked 7. Planet Of The Humans 8. Sacrilege!

Part Two Weasels And Peacocks and Whores, Oh My! 9. Save The Cockroaches 10. Homo Erectus 11. Why I’m Single 12. Louie In The Sty With Dinah 13. A Sur Thing 14. Love Is For Losers 15. Thrasymachus Was Right 16. People In Motion 17. Ungoodness 18. Man Down 19. Be Stupid And Multiply

PART ONE

BLEAK NEWS FROM THE GENE POOL

author’s note, post-mortem:

It’s a riot, it’s a romp, it’s a ride. It’s a roller coaster of a revolution that jangles to this day. Actually, it’s 1967, and the place is Haight-Ashbury, a district of a few square blocks just outside downtown San Francisco. The occasion? A spontaneous gathering of revelers, all set to erupt into lawlessness, licentiousness, and madness—that roller coaster’s mind-blowing feature plunge. And it’s the intent of this document to accurately describe not only the event but the times—to, in so doing, fairly portray a philosophical dichotomy that pitted American against American with a bitterness not seen since the War Between the States. The work does not mean to defend one side against the other; it strives to be an account, rather than an argument. The following introduction attempts a brief history of the political climate and social turmoil leading to that emotional maelstrom known as The Summer of Love.

For Lucian

Chapter 1 The Itch Of Being In the beginning there was a burst of energy.

To the disillusioned it was the sweet flowering of the human spirit, the blossoming of man. We were shell-shocked—a charismatic young president was in the ground. Smog was in our lungs, mercury in our fish, acid in our rain. And every night the tube laid it out straight for us: the sky was falling, ghettos were ablaze, drought-stricken countries were somehow producing starving children even faster than their desperately concerned parents could frantically copulate. Amazing. And, still playing King of the Mountain, the goliaths were scrapping over some festering wound in Southeast Asia. But that was all just news and nonsense—more emphatically than all these crises combined, the Bomb made it plain. We were doomed. The blossom emerged Underground, with roots in British rock, Mexican hemp, Indian mysticism, American pharmaceuticals. Suddenly there was a beat in the air. We became light-headed and gender-fuzzy, politically hip and vagabond-chic. Rather than bear arms, we bore daisies. Instead of seeking enlistment, we sought to bedevil our senses. It was our world now, and we were going to fix it; with smiles, with slogans, with symbols and songs. At the very brink of perdition we stood, synchronizing our auras to chant the Devil down. It would take time. But we were young and strong and many. We had all this energy. Enough to galvanize even the witless and despondent. Enough to give the staunchest of doomsayers pause. Enough to, for a stutter in time, make a difference. 1

Carnival The Itch Of Being And that burgeoning energy was Love, flinging its seeds and budding anew, fitting piece by piece each anomalous member of the stubborn human puzzle. To our fathers, however, the choreographer’s hand was unmistakable. All this business about peace and love could only be the usual commie line, designed to seduce and regiment the usual parade of whining followers. And the parade grated. After Normandy, after Inch’on, after all the lost lives and limbs—that we hairy young hedonists should spew a single syllable concerning policy riled even the most moderate of conservatives. We’d turned their Beaver Cleaver streets into psychedelic playgrounds, muddied the mat of every Judeo-Christian ethic—but pacifism under fire was the final straw. They raged and appealed, threatened and condemned, hurled accusations of everything from homosexuality to treason. Almost overnight “peace” became a dirty word, and any mention of spiritual flowering made palms itch for the rough kiss of a trusty scythe. Eventually the blossom shriveled. We grew bored with it all, became pragmatic, and, to our everlasting and unforgivable shame, adopted typically pedestrian lives of dollar-based drudgery, bald-faced brown-nosing, and soulless confrontation. Now the Revolution is little more than a doddering irrelevancy. Yet there are those who still believe the corpse can be resuscitated, the rush reproduced. They’ll bend your ear if you let them. They’ll hound you with tales of an age gone by, when freedom grew wild in the Pollyanna Spring. Be gentle with them, and never broach that lesson every generation learns way too late: that all that energy—all that optimism, enthusiasm, and potential—was vested in, of course, the impetuous hands of youth. joon 28 1967 jime wuts hapunen man hav i gawt nooz 4 yoo dig this i finule tawkd mi old man in2 ltn me rid up 2 frisko with ed an mik 4 rel i thenk i wood hav split newa evn if he kp saen no bcuz i kant stumak stommuk stan thu thawt uv hangen urown this dump awl sumr 4 1 theng mi mawmz rele bin awn thu rag L8Le she keps thrtnen 2 grown me or snd me 2 sumr skool so its u good thng im gtn owt yl thu gtnz good 4 unuthr theng thu vibz mi old man poots owt wood kut throo stil sumtimz he triz 2 ak lik he kaerz but i bt hez ltn me go jus 2 gt rid uv me thu giz u rel dinusor jime awl he duz iz sit urown hawlren an gripn an guzlen ber lik thaerz no 2mro he wont lt me gt uwa with nethen but thats kool he duzn no it but 4 3 wex now iv bin shaken kwrtrz owt uv that sprklts bawtl he throz hiz chanj in iv gawt ovr 20 bux 4 thu trip stil b4 i go id lik 2 tl him hez jus u wrthlus old frt drenken hiz lif uwa but i thenk hed kil me newa i lookd in thu fre prs an fown owt thu big goldn g8 prk konsrts stil awn thaerz goen 2 b so mne fr owt bichn sooprhv groops it jus bloz mi min 2 thenk ubowt it jfrsun aerplan kand het an thu gr8fl dd 4 shr wut u gas 2 bad yoo had 2 go an bus yr lag but il b ritn an il lt yoo no wuts hapunen ech groov stond mil uv thu 2

Carnival The Itch Of Being wa wl i gs thats awl 4 now im rd 2 jam jime im so xsitd i cood flip owt thenk uv it thu hol sumr awf an her im awn mi wa 2 thu sit mab il ml yoo sum pawt bkuz i no wel b gtn hi up thaer wl thats awl iv gawt 2 rit 4 now im awn mi wa bi thu tim yoo gt this ltr il prawble b gtn it awn with sum groopz or rapn with hendrix az we pas u joent don b srprizd if i gt 2 yootopu an dsid 2 nvr cum bak thaerz nuthen down her evn wrth remmbren xsp 4 awl mi sooprtit frnz uv kors wl i gs thats awl jime so b kool an sta hi kevin Kevin ran his eyes down the letter lustily, nodding with savage glee. The thing was a bombshell, all right; just the kind of brutally crafted, carefully polished communication he needed. A sprinkle of subtle allusions, a dash of trenchant wit. Something to play cat and mouse with the imagination. Jimmy’s frustration would be calamitous, and this missive would lodge, hopefully, at the very root of the hobbled boy’s misery, remaining to fester all summer long while Kevin, hundreds of miles up the coast, tapped salt in the wound with further letters exaggerating his own good fortune. Now Kevin dropped the sheet of paper and wrung his hands, visualizing Jimmy, confined to his room in Long Beach, receiving an endless stream of mail postmarked an instant before arrival. This letter would be the first irritation—the first indication of the itch that couldn’t be scratched. Kevin could just picture Jimmy’s face contorting, the paper in his trembling hands smoldering with tales of high adventure and lush conquest. Kevin clenched his fists with the image, pounded his big paws together and nodded harder. For the briefest moment—so brief he wasn’t sure it had really occurred—the boy’s mind went utterly blank, like the switching-off and immediate switching-on of a hall lamp. This instant of blackness was accompanied by a sick pain behind the eyes, of such brief duration it, too, was questionable. Strange. That had been happening a lot lately. Or had it? He felt anxiety coil in his chest and pass. Stranger still. There wasn’t any reason to be anxious, was there? Things couldn’t be more bitchen. Outside his bedroom rose a thundering, heart-stopping bellow of absolutely mindless passion, finally punctuated by a tremendous two-footed stamping that rattled the windows and shook the door. A string of black obscenities, another bellow, and a long groan followed by a truncated curse. Kevin, so accustomed to these outbursts he hardly noticed, folded the letter and slid it into an envelope. Before repetition could sour the image of Jimmy’s frustration, he licked the envelope’s gummed edge and sealed it, trapping the image inside. But while laboriously centering Jimmy’s address in thick block print he felt his enthusiasm slip away, almost as if it were leaking out the pen’s felt tip. It was an old problem, this relentless sinking of spirit, connected, in some way, to the effort expended in concentration. At least he was pretty sure it was an old problem. Hadn’t he just, only seconds before, been thrilled, awed, or expectant about some notion, conviction, or gambit related in some way to some plan or other? He wished he could put his finger on it, and wished, too, that he could include in his letter some reference to this problem—if there really was a problem—and maybe get his friend Jimmy’s advice. But it was too late, the envelope was sealed, and besides, Jimmy really wasn’t that close a friend. In fact, Jimmy wasn’t much of a 3

Carnival The Itch Of Being friend at all, the prick. When he had moved to Long Beach there had been no goodbye for Kevin, no acknowledging the big shy boy as a human being worth remembering. Kevin had procured Jimmy’s new address from an acquaintance in common, and had continued the charade of having a pen pal (even though he’d never received a note in return) only because he so desperately needed friends. His emotional turmoil had not diminished with time. But Jimmy would be sorry now. He sure as hell would. Kevin looked around for some assurance, for some kind of tangible evidence to support his excitement, and saw nothing but the dirty, cracker-thin walls of his bedroom, coldly returning his stare. He tore through the clutter on his desk, found a clipping scissored from the Free Press, held it up to his eyes as if it were pornography: HAIGHT-ASHBURY—Now that the long-awaited and much-ballyhooed Summer Solstice Festival is history, the Hashbury flower children are clamoring for more. And apparently their very vocal reactions to the Festival, a disappointing assemblage of less than 5,000 on Golden Gate Park’s Speedway Meadows, have inspired several hip organizers to rally freaks statewide for a comeback which, in concert promoter Bill Graham’s opinion, will be a tribal gathering to dwarf even January’s highly-publicized Human Be-in. And so—in effect—this new festival will simply be an extension of the big July 6 concert announced in the Freep’s May 7 issue. Since the date for the festival coincides with what is expected to be the peak of Hashbury’s Summer of Love invasion, San Franciscan officialdom is doing some pretty tough talking. By now, however, it must be obvious even to the hard-hearted civic council that any effort to halt an enterprise involving such a multitude of freaks would only exacerbate the situation. After endless bullying and cajoling, the Freep was granted an interview with Mayor John Shelley Himself, whose outlook on the festival was something less than positive. “It’s a disgrace,” the mayor stated. “It’s an outrage! You people think you can exploit the common goodwill . . .” (and here Kevin skipped down the column impatiently) “. . . latent communists . . . swinish habits . . . hotbed of drug users and runaways . . . HaightAshbury district . . . reputation as a haven . . . rebellious types . . . indications of this cancer spreading to the park proper . . . over three hundred men covering the park, and drugs will not, repeat will not be tolerated!” Then some obviously inflated figures dealing with current Park Station manpower, followed by one of Shelley’s stock got-it-covered speeches. Kevin frowned smugly and read on: The mayor’s precautions, however, are bound to prove embarrassing. Reports from The Berkeley Barb—and rumors substantiated by reliable underground sources—indicate an expected crowd of some 30,000 freaks from Marin, San Mateo, Contra, and Alameda counties, and a possible influx of up to 20,000 from other parts of the state. Kevin dropped his arm and let the lost smile slowly reform. Although he’d read the clipping a hundred times, the joy he now felt came as something new and refreshing. Oddly, the repeated readings hadn’t improved his spelling and punctuation comprehension a whit. He was one of those essentially lazy individuals who absorb the world selectively. If it required any work, any application that did not result in instant gratification, it was far too abstruse for Kevin. But he carefully folded 4

Carnival The Itch Of Being the clipping and filed it in one of the flimsy plastic windows in his wallet, where he could always reach it and, like a fresh convert riffling Bible pages, search it for those familiar words so vital to his ambition: flower children, Summer of Love, drug users, runaways. A haven. A hotbed. Freaks, underground sources. It was way too good to be real. Just emancipated from high school and one week into a promising summer—a summer that had, only two weeks ago, presented all the horrors-to-be of a long and depressing three months divided into neat halves: six weeks of summer classes, followed by six weeks of stewing around the house dreading each confrontation with his parents. That this prospect was no less unappealing to the parents had been revealed by the father’s uncharacteristically quick compliance. Big, tough, irascible Joe—who wouldn’t let no goddamn punk kid of his get away with doing any goddamn thing he wanted t’do, and just who the hell d’you think wears the goddamn pants in this goddamn family— big, booming, diehard Joe had, for some obscure reason, readily acquiesced to his son’s desperate request. And Kevin, always forced to remain in the neighborhood, had felt new wind under rusty wings. Unaccustomed to independent thought, his mind was suddenly teeming with plans. And slowly an idea had taken shape, at last solidifying to become The Secret: Kevin had no intention of returning to this zoo—ever. But The Secret had to remain a secret. If Big Joe found out his son had pulled one over on him he would kill the boy, slowly and exquisitely, with his bare hands. Even Eddie, who had initiated Kevin into marijuana smoking and to the vague principles of the youth revolution that cold rainy night last November—even loyal revolutionary Eddie could not know The Secret. Not yet. From the front room came muffled television sounds, a whine from his mother, another bellowed curse from his father. Joe was in a particularly bad mood, and getting out of the house without facing him would be impossible. Still, Kevin wasn’t about to be intimidated by the old man, not today. He tucked the letter into the pocket of his checked Pendleton shirt, stood and crossed the room determinedly. But he made sure to open his bedroom door quietly, and to close it with care. In the hall the composite blast of television and squabbling parents was overwhelming. Kevin slipped into the bathroom and eased shut the door. The bathroom (ceiling sagging with the weight of the avocado’s boughs, floor tilted by the tree’s humongous roots) was forever in gloom, the air thick and sour. The ghetto-like clutter and heavy stench had always dispirited Kevin, and today his conviction firmed as he disgustedly looked around. Nobody deserved this hell. Paint was peeling from the walls in limp sticky leaves, damp and discolored. On the bathtub’s rusted curtain rod hung a dismal still life: the enormous, billowed balloons of his father’s jockey shorts, the ancient drooping cups of his mother’s brassieres, an old throw rug spotted with blood and grease. This whole side of the room stank the musty stench of broom closets. The sink’s drain was clogged, its basin filled to the brim with dark filmy water for long as Kevin could remember, corpses of cockroaches and flies blemishing the surface like tiny tankers at anchor. Empty and near-empty prescription bottles were scattered behind the faucet handles and atop the commode tank, with labels reading mysolin, chloromycetin, compazine, methotrexate, lasix. The steel-reinforced toilet’s extra large bowl was streaked with black, the throne’s high-impact custom seat veined with cracks. Now, Kevin had spent a good deal of his young life creating fantasies to blot out the assorted horrors of living in this house, and so it was that, paradoxically, he could at times dredge glamour from unutterable foulness. This bathroom could be a Shanghai back alley or a tenement in Delhi, and he a dark secret agent, or a nameless footsore Hero of the Common People on some unclear mission 5

Carnival The Itch Of Being of goodness and selflessness. Standing in front of the sink, his back to the mirror, Kevin assumed an expression of coolness and sensitive macho charm. He abruptly whirled to face this tough, virile paladin. A fat, brooding boy of sixteen blinked back from behind the glass, the eyes dejected, the lips moping. He wore, because his parents insisted he wear, large, conspicuous horn-rimmed spectacles that were forever sagging on his nose. Almost every part of Kevin sagged. He stood just over a ponderous six feet, sulking and hulking, his slumping shoulders burdened by a cumbersome adolescent despondency. His face bore out this slumping; the expression hangdog, the flesh drooping at the cheeks and underchin. Only the great tumbleweed of uncontrollable frizzy brown hair countered this overall collapsed effect, radiating from his scalp like a frayed clump of fine wires. There was nothing you could do with this rowdy growth. You couldn’t part it or style it in any way. Those hairs were tensile as steel wool. The tough, virile paladin dissolved as Kevin stared, exited sneering at his inquietude. For the thousandth time the boy tugged irritably at random clumps of hair with a huge stubby hand, as though to inspire straighter growth. He could almost hear the clumps scream in protest as they were released to bunch closer to the scalp. Wagging his head, he stepped aside to confront the commode. All was quiet for a while. With eyes squeezed shut and forehead resting against the wall, Kevin was at last granted a trickling emission. San Francisco, he thought, grunting. Frisco. A whole city run by refugees from the plastic whirlpool; by liberated souls tuning in to life and reality, turning on to faith and love. And the chicks! Free Love. The trill of his waning stream churning water in the toilet bowl accompanied him now, as he for the thousandth time visualized himself grandly arriving in the legendary city on his derailleur, all his fat turned to lean muscle from the exertion of riding. He saw his torso sun-baked a golden brown, saw his hair streaming down straight with sweat. There would be a virginal covey lined up to greet him, attired in the scantiest of scanties, or (according to some of the juicier rumors) in the altogether. The excitement welled up again, grew intense and uncomfortable. He shook his head to clear it. Again that instant of blankness, again that sense of having just been robbed of a second’s thought. He zipped up quickly, remembered to flush the goddamn toilet, and snuck back to his bedroom. This room was Kevin’s sanctum, and the one thing he’d never be able to replace. Within these four stained, ratty walls cowered all the sanity the house could claim: there were posters and colored lights, record albums and comic books, piles of collected junk—all to be abandoned, he reminded himself, as the debris of a former incarnation. Most of the junk was of a psychedelic nature—mind toys and smoking contraptions mass-produced by enterprising young companies making a killing off the hippie phenomenon. Kevin had worried sorely over his property. He knew he couldn’t take it with him, although he’d entertained various ideas and alternatives—even, in one desperate moment, a mad notion of building a trailer to haul it all nearly four hundred miles up the coast. Lacking money and specific destination, he couldn’t have it shipped by air or rail, and he couldn’t trust his parents to ship it after he’d arrived. And there was something about giving it away to his few ungrateful “friends” that caused him to swell with a fierce sense of ownership. Selling it all would somehow be just as bad; like prostituting his personality. In the end the only thing to do was leave it. His parents would hopefully expect him to return if they saw his treasures still piled high. Leave it. That was it. Leave it and let his memory haunt them evermore. And, leaning gracefully against the wall opposite the door, was Kevin’s pride and joy: his sleek Peugeot ten-speed derailleur. The bicycle was only half a year old, bought by Joe to keep his son busy and elsewhere, an arrangement which suited them both. The custom paint job was Kevin’s 6

Carnival The Itch Of Being own; an enthusiastic work of smeared greens and oranges, with current “camp” slogans painted in mustard yellow and dayglo purple. The pedals were swathed in pile carpet for barefoot riding, and strategic spokes had been blacked to make huge peace symbols of the wheels. Scrawled on the beige plastic tape covering the handlebars rode the words PEDAL POWER in India ink. Kevin’s khakicolored double sleeping bag, strapped to the rack behind the bike’s seat, was lined with an authentic, if soiled, American flag. The boy said his farewells to the room with feelings of regret and relief. He quietly walked his bicycle into the front room, his breath held. Once again that suffocating depression took him, and Kevin had to slow at the sight of grimy carpet, of piled-up magazines and starved, cringing houseplants. The room was dusty and shaded, ransacked of cheer and the fragile, priceless personal touches that make a house a home. There were no memorabilia nostalgically preserved, no grinning family portraits proudly displayed. A petty neurosis lurked in every corner, ready to pounce the instant the thundering, throbbing television was switched off. Tears were perfunctory here, and laughter, when it came, was a nerve-shredding howl that teetered on the verge of hysteria. Kevin despised the room as he despised the two absurd, selfdestructive people responsible for its oppressiveness. The fact that these two rude people just happened to be his parents didn’t dampen his hatred a bit. His father—seven hundred and ninety-six pounds of ill-tempered, foul-mouthed, intractable Pole—sat stuffed into a split, legless loveseat, guzzling beer and muttering obscenities at the picture tube. The man was immense; a harrowing, towering mountain heaped with layer upon layer of drooping glaciers of fat. On even the coolest days he perspired around the clock, wheezing and hollering, verbally abusing anything that would hold still long enough to receive the withering brunt of his wrath, sucking down six-pack after six-pack of Eastside beer in the eye of his own progressively darkening storm. An ex-trucker forced to retire due to gross obesity, frequent roaring tantrums, and an absolutely stupefying flatulence condition, he remained indoors day and night, seldom leaving the terribly distended loveseat. Utterly unabashed, he was never to be seen wearing other than discolored jockey shorts and a moth-eaten T-shirt, both marinated in his own sweat and worn like a sticky thin second skin. Jozef Mikolajczyk, vile and tyrannical, was given to flaring, unprovoked fits of murderous fury. He’d proven himself both provider and protector, but in Kevin’s eyes only a malicious Fate would have kept Big Joe from his coffin all these years. By all rights he had it coming; an opinion confirmed frankly by each consulted, insulted, revolted professional. Each had mentally written Joe off, and each had stringently warned him to control his purple rages. It’s said that your heart is about as big as your fist—if that’s so, Joe’s heart was the size of an overripe honeydew. Footage of January’s Rose Bowl game was being aired for the daily Sports On The Line feature, commentary by one of the receivers blaring from the set’s single, ruptured speaker. The film clip was half a year old, yet Joe had every sense—every pleading, hating, raging bit of his attention—bent on wracking his brain for a winning countermove in a game he already knew had been lost. “I was lookin’ to be tagged on this one,” the set blasted, rattling the windows, “an’ I figgered he’d be lookin’ fer me.” The explosive roar of a crowd, an avalanche chuckle from the receiver. “But I gotta hand it to that line. They got on him so fast he didn’t know what hit him.” Kevin watched his father lean forward as the quarterback arced back his arm for a pass. The boy snuck a peek at the set, saw the quarterback get mauled. His father lurched to his feet. “GODDAMN YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH! Throw the fucking ball! Don’t hold it, throw it!” He hurled the empty beer can across the room to illustrate. 7

Carnival The Itch Of Being Deeply red in the face, he collapsed with a gravelly gasp on the loveseat. Fresh lines of sweat broke out on his cheeks and forehead, his heart bucking almost audibly. “Jesus,” he rumbled, sucking down quarts of dusty air. “Jesus, what a ball team.” Kevin’s mother, stout, stunted and curlered, waddled in from the kitchen, clucking and feebly reprimanding in her raspy, warbling voice; wearing a limp terrycloth bathrobe, her chipped rhinestone spectacles, and an expression of weary, bewildered hypochondria. She was a wretched creature; squat and chicken-skinned at forty-five, forever cowering indoors. Hair sparse and fried, forehead deeply pinched and wizened. Rotting teeth, dumpy legs intricately marbled by purplish varicose veins. Her eyes were buggy with hyperthyroidism, her nerves shot to pieces by a lifetime of harried ineptitude. The woman’s list of ailments was staggering: rheumatoid arthritis, bronchial asthma, hyperalgesic whatchamacosis, indigenous culture shock, acute choreatic distress syndrome. Heart failure twice, cirrhosis, glaucoma, gout. She suffered the painful swelling of hemorrhoids, the heartbreak of psoriasis, the drip, drip, drip of acid indigestion. Heat prostration in summer, pneumonia come winter. Insomnia year round. Cancer of the uterus, the larynx, the breasts, and, through a freak of either nature or radiology, the prostate. The poor woman had been abducted, analyzed, ridiculed, and released by too many uppity extraterrestrials to remember, lost countless nonexistent relatives in tragedies too horrific to convey, had been cheated of stardom by shortsighted talent agencies, of riches by the Mob, and somehow lost at least three Gothic masterpieces in the mail. Self-pity and overexposure to the corrosive vehemence of Big Joe’s pointless rages had mottled her perception of reality, and now disenchantment was evident in her every move as she bent grotesquely to pick up the can her husband had thrown and, straightening arthritically, froze in a paleoanthropic stoop when she noticed her son standing sheepishly across the room. Her harassed expression quickly changed to one of harsh reproval. “Kevin! How many times do I have to tell you to carry your bike out? You know your tires dirty the carpet.” “Don’t shout!” his father shouted. He turned and scowled at his son. “Keep the goddamn tires off the carpet!” Kevin cleared his throat. “I’m—I’m going now.” They stared at him with glassy eyes and slack barracuda jaws. From the television came a strafing of cheers. Joe grunted. “Ellie, turn down the TV.” When she began to object he grimaced and said, “Just turn down the goddamn TV,” gesticulating downward with his huge arm. The room plunged into an eerie, electric silence. Joe looked wetly at Kevin, smiled. “C’m’ere, son.” Kevin leaned the bicycle on its kickstand. He walked over warily, stood grudgingly before his father, tensed. “Sir?” Joe beamed over his shoulder. “I like that. My son respects his old man, calls him ‘sir’.” He looked back at Kevin and sighed fondly, gently nodding his small, nearly spherical head. Kevin, irritated by this sham of paternal pride, wondered what his father was getting at. As Joe seemed reluctant to elaborate, the boy repeated himself. “Sir?” “Son,” said his father, “I know you must think your Pa is just a worthless old fart drinking his life away, and that neither one of us gives a good long crap about anybody but ourselves. But the truth is, well, your goddamn mother and me, we care a hell of a lot for you around here, boy.” Kevin clenched his fists, his palms suddenly moist. “No sir,” he said cautiously. “I don’t think that at all.” 8

Carnival The Itch Of Being His father chuckled. “Well, the point is, son, we want you to have a good time, but we want you to take care of yourself.” Now the muscles holding the great masses of fat in an insincere sunburst smile collapsed. Big Joe’s expression underwent an instantaneous inversion: from relaxed and chummy to righteously stern. The huge saddlebag jowls trembled. Fat drops of perspiration popped from his pores and rolled ponderously over his cheeks. “Now you listen to your old man. I hear a lot about all them hippies up in San Francisco. You think your Pa don’t know shit about what’s going on in the world; you dumb kids think you know everything nowadays, but me,” and he poked a thumb the size of a mango at his chest, “I know. I watch the TV. I seen about all them goddamn protestors taking all their goddamn dope and I seen the goddamn cops busting their goddamn frigging heads in. Now you hear me, boy. I want you to steer clear of them freaks, right?” “Yes sir,” Kevin lied. His mother squinted in his face, smiling hideously. “Your father knows what’s best, dear. You just do what he says and have a good time.” She winced and forced a hand to the back of her neck. “Yes ma’am. Well, can I go now?” “Hang on a sec’,” Joe said. “I know you been shaking quarters outta my change bottle for three weeks now, kid, but I figger it’s already been spent on whatnot. You don’t gotta pull that crap. You ask.” Grunting and groaning, he reached to the floor, picked up his trousers, found the left rear pocket and pulled out a patent leather billfold flattened and molded to the curvature of his elephantine behind. “Joe Mikolajczyk takes care of his son,” he wheezed, and began thumbing through the bills. “Now, here’s three hundred dollars for your trip, and I don’t want you spending it on no dope, hear?” Kevin’s jaw dropped. This sudden, unaccountable generosity astonished him; it was radically out of character. He looked at his mother, smiling kindly—also very much out of character. She gave her face an extra crinkle, said, “Go ahead, dear. Take it.” Kevin held out his hand. As Joe placed the money on the boy’s palm he gripped it firmly, almost painfully. “What I said I meant, Kevin. You keep your ass out of trouble.” He belched. “Now go on, get the hell out of here. And have a good time.” His mother clamped his head in her hands and gave him a sloppy hyperopic kiss. “Now don’t forget to write, dear. I would’ve packed you a nice lunch of cheese and salami sandwiches, but my back is so sore and I can’t get around like I used to.” Her expression became resentful. “And you know salami makes me break out!” She showed him a trembling claw, the digits twisted and rigid. “See my hand, how it shakes? That’s because we’re worried about you, dear. You don’t think we worry about you, sweetheart, but if you only knew of the migraines your poor mother’s developed from worrying about you. All the time. Night and day I worry and I worry and I worry until I think it’s going to kill me!” “Aw, g’wan, leave him alone,” Joe mumbled. He grunted and shifted with a strong blast of rectal wind. “Get out of here, kid. Beat it.” Kevin’s mother pawed at his hair, trying to put it in order, but he pulled away. “Have a good time, dear!” she called, though he was standing right next to her. “Send us a postcard!” Kevin nodded, walked to the front door and opened it gratefully. “Thanks,” he said. “I will.” He carried his bike out. As he gripped the doorknob a jangling thrill raced up his arm. With the closing of this door he would be shutting away all the pressures, all the domestic minutiae that made his life unbearable. He closed the door firmly, and the electricity stopped. From inside, muted by the door, came the sound of a long gargling belch, followed by a sour, drawn-out report from Joe’s posterior. There was an explosion of raging exclamations, a whimpered objection from his mother, then Joe’s voice, booming like God Almighty, “Goddamn it woman! Just turn up the goddamn TV!” 9

Carnival The Itch Of Being Immediately a crowd roared and the windows shook. The madness was drowned out. Kevin trembled and stuffed the bills in his wallet. There was no getting around it now: he was gone. One hundred percent officially free. He mounted and rode down the walkway as fast as he could. For a moment he was certain he heard his mother open the door and call after him, but he closed his mind to it, veered onto the sidewalk and thence into the street. He tossed the letter into the first mailbox he encountered. According to plan, Kevin and Eddie were to rendezvous at Mike’s house, and Kevin was preparing to turn onto a street that would lead him there when he remembered the money he’d crammed in his cheap plastic wallet. He pulled to the curb and stopped, shook his head unbelievingly. Three hundred dollars! That was a great deal more money than he’d ever dreamed of possessing at one time. He wanted to pull the bills out and count them over and over, but that would be foolish in broad daylight. The world was crawling with people who would cut your throat without hesitation for such a sum. Three hundred dollars . . . And suddenly, disgustedly, he thought of one crucial item overlooked in the haste of preparation: unless he was severely mistaken, he and his buddies didn’t have a single joint between them. Kevin shook his head, marveling his own absent-mindedness. What was the point of their pilgrimage, if not to keep their minds defiantly fogged in the name of the Revolution? The problem had always been one of money, but with his new small fortune Kevin could easily afford an ounce of the best marijuana around and hardly dent his capital. And hadn’t Perky, a senior at Kevin’s high school, told him in the hall to come by if he wanted any grass? That had been a week ago, just before school let out, and Kevin had seen Perky—who had been on his way to the principal’s office to be expelled for lewd and rowdy conduct—only in passing, Perky giving his message without slowing his insolent gait. Kevin didn’t know him well; Perky was way too hip to publicly acknowledge the existence of a boy as shy and uncool as Kevin, and, if it hadn’t been for the slight elevation in popularity Kevin had gained by turning-on with Eddie that cold November night in the Mikolajczyks’ garage loft, his status might well have remained a miserable zero. As it stood, he now knew a few students previously scornful of his society, and, by extension, of Perky’s trafficking in marijuana. Of course, in a week’s time it was entirely possible Perky was already dry. That gamble would just have to be taken. Kevin knew no other dealers. But he knew where Perky’s house was, as did anybody in school who was anybody, or aspired to be Somebody. Perky was the only kid from Santa Monica High to have attained the supreme status of tenant. His parents—one chronic whore and one terminal alcoholic—shared the school board’s disgust of their incorrigible son, and were more than glad to let him move out on his own. Legend had it that Perky, obstreperous insider that he was, had traveled and partied with some of the most outrageous freaks imaginable, and could actually knock back a whole pint of tequila without barfing. So Kevin found himself pedaling hard, up and down the little maddeningly neat avenues, till at last he stood panting across the street from Perky’s house. It was an old, decrepit structure, all rotted lath and crumbling plaster. The yard was in an agony of neglect; overgrown with weeds, choking with refuse. Very little of the original paint remained at the time of Perky’s occupancy, so he and his wild friends had (according to legend) thrown a terrific three-day party; a party replete with every drug known, with fell motorcyclists and hot-blooded girls. There on the opposing sidewalk, Kevin stood and admired their handiwork; the fruit of three days’ mind-blown labor. Each windowsill was painted a different hideous color, and on most Kevin could see how the paint had oozed from the sills to dry on the walls or wretched hedges beneath. The tongue-and10

Carnival The Itch Of Being groove sides of the house were a continuous painted mural; some portions ridiculously childish, some not so bad. Each side of the sharply angled roof bore a huge peace symbol in off-white paint, presumably for view by air. Kevin’s father, who had read about Perky’s house in the offended local newspaper in a famous article dealing with bizarre lifestyles, had often wondered aloud why the goddamn police didn’t come and raid the goddamn place, why the Air Force didn’t bomb it all to hell. Apparently the owner, who lived in Nevada and received his ill-gotten rent by money order, didn’t know or just didn’t care. Kevin, having waited for a break in traffic, now pedaled across the street, up the drive’s curb outlet and along the oil-marred driveway to the front porch. An amazingly old Airedale drew itself up on spindly legs at his approach, disturbing a cloud of flies. The dog woofed a half-hearted, perfunctory warning, gave it up and crumpled back down, the cloud descending with him. “Nice doggie,” Kevin said, looping his lock and chain through the bike’s spokes and around the frame. He snapped shut the combination lock, turned and confronted the front door. The door’s window was smashed; a tie-dyed rag of a curtain fluttered behind the knives of splintered glass. This would be the door leading into the famed anteroom, the purported scene of so many lecherous parties. The house proper was built back of this narrow anteroom, so that the room itself poked out like an add-on, which it probably was. Kevin could hear familiar music blasting inside the house. Moving his lips to the lyrics he realized it was The Doors, and that that was Morrison barking out Back Door Man. The music emboldened him. Kevin, front door man, stepped up and rapped three times on the scarred, splintering wood. At once there was a sound of stumbling, of a scrambling body knocking over a piece of light furniture. Then an abrupt tapering in volume as the music ground to a halt. The house seemed to grow cold in the new silence, seemed to draw into itself. Kevin heard what might have been voices in distant parts of the house, but with all the air and street traffic he couldn’t be sure. Then came a quick pattering of bare feet on creaking floorboards. More silence. Kevin had, after half a minute of this silence, an odd feeling he was being watched. He turned his head and could have sworn he’d peripherally glimpsed a dark, intense face watching him from between parted newspaper curtains. But the newspaper curtains were closed. There was no face. He turned back to the door, thought for sure the corner of a curtain behind another window had just ruffled shut. The house was obviously occupied; why wouldn’t he/they answer? He knocked again, harder, small chips of the door’s smashed window tinkling at his feet. This time there was the sound of heavy furniture crashing on the floor, followed by a quickly muffled breaking of, perhaps, crockery. Thumping footsteps. Quick whispering. The music wound up to its former ear-splitting volume like an air raid siren. Clearly the plug had been pulled at his first knock, and just now reinserted. Uneasily, Kevin locked on the footsteps booming to the door. The door was wrenched open and Perky squinted out, long tufts of dirty black hair disturbed by his quick movements. From the heavy footfalls, one would have expected a person at least the height and weight of Kevin, but Perky was a little guy, who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. Though Perky’s startling face inevitably brought on unintended stares, any initial interest was quickly replaced by a kind of morbid thanksgiving. Perky had lived a rough, cheap life on the streets. At some time during his violent childhood some rival or other had secured the weapon and opportunity to smash little Perky’s nose so badly as to make it, in profile, virtually unrecognizable as a nose at all. Perky’s forehead was quite broad, which in a way bore out the flattened nose and lent his face some congruity. But the bones making up the lower half of his face were thin and brittle and looked, except for a haze of black stubble and patchy acne, almost 11

Carnival The Itch Of Being effeminate. A fractional harelip gave his mouth a permanent snarl, and when he spoke one couldn’t help but notice that all his front teeth, save a lonely incisor on the bottom gum, were missing. The consequential awkwardness with consonants caused him to snap and grimace when he spoke, which only made him seem meaner than the frightened and frustrated survivor he was. His skin was the color of tallow, his eyes—with whites visible all around—the color of lead. Of course he was a most touchy and cynical young man, yet, in all Santa Monica, his reputation as generous host was without parallel. His alarming eyes narrowed now as they looked straight into the eyes of Kevin, two steps down. He edged out, partly closing the door to block the music roaring out like floodwater. Kevin smiled crookedly. “What’s happening, Perky? ’Member me? Kevin Mikolajczyk. You told me last week at school you had lids for sale. Hope I’m not too late.” Perky sneered. “Hate to have to bum you out, man, but I sold all that pot the same night. I got some more yesterday but it was a burn; all full of parsley and crap. That’s all right, though; partner of mine’s got a sawed-off .44. Tonight we’re gonna pay the dude who ripped me off a visit, blow off his balls and screw his old lady.” “Wow!” Kevin said, jolted by the graphic mental image of Perky and his friends kicking in the door of a rip-off’s pad and exacting their rough street justice. Then he remembered his own tough luck and frowned wryly. “Sorry to hear about you getting burned, Perky. I was really hoping you had some lids for sale, ’cause me and a coupla partners are jamming up to the City to catch the big concert, and it would sure be a drag to go dry. Do you,” he wondered unwisely, “know anywhere else I can score?” Perky considered. “Yeah, well maybe I can do you right. Buddy of mine couple streets over’s got some lids. Really righteous shit. I gotta go rap with him about something anyway. Come on in.” Kevin stepped up and inside. As Perky slammed the door there came another smash and stumbling of feet. They were now standing in the well of the anteroom. An old gravy-spattered tablecloth concealed most of the room, while to their left upon entering were three wood steps leading up, then the doorway into the front room, which, though narrow, extended the width of the house. Kevin followed Perky up the steps and his pupils quickly dilated. The front room was all in gloom; scarcely a ray of light could squeeze beneath the mangled curtains or through interstices in the grime on the windows. All the furniture and appliances looked like junk thrown out of Salvation Army shops as beyond repair, or pilfered from Goodwill boxes in the dead of night. The carpet was a mishmash of oily, jagged scraps, nailed indiscriminately wherever most convenient for the drunken decorators. Walls were riddled with holes and smudged with the acne of puerile graffiti. Wherever possible those holes had been covered with loud and outrageous posters depicting feverish rock stars. There were coffee tables scarred by cigarette burns, broken lamps with boxer shorts for shades. On the floor a child’s phonograph, hooked up to a bulky amplifier and public address loudspeaker, shrieked, crackled, skipped and sputtered through a very scratchy copy of The Doors’ first album. Perky knelt and turned the volume down to a tolerable level as Kevin shook his head in fascinated approval, a thin smile on his fat lips. This place was a revolutionary’s dream; the atmosphere positively reeked of freedom and good times—of drugs, booze, and wild parties unhampered by the gross, antiquated antics of embarrassingly naïve parents. Kevin’s eyes, wide with wonder, continued their sweeping appraisal. Several brassieres were nailed triumphantly to the ceiling, their straps hanging in yellow withered surrender, like crepe streamers. A few badly-torn easy chairs hugged the walls, each with a single rusty spring poking up as a bitter unidigital comment on the state of its surroundings. It didn’t take much imagination to visualize those chairs occupied by bearded revolutionaries and sneering motorcycle outlaws, all engaged in the wholly laudable business of headlong whoopee-making. 12

Carnival The Itch Of Being Then the boy’s eyes grew wide and his smile crumbled. For he saw—thanks to the dull glint of a brass earring—a strange little man standing tensely in the corner. The man was lamentably scrawny and small, wearing a gray cut-off sweatshirt and baggy Levis, grungy sneakers. His hair was a riot of long black tangles shot with white, and amid that mess his tiny eyes were in constant flashing motion: from Kevin to Perky to the anteroom doorway, from Kevin to Perky and back to Kevin. He was apparently frozen with apprehension, and this motionlessness, the poor visibility, and the stranger’s congruity with the gaudy and wasted face of the room, had initially fooled Kevin into believing he was alone with Perky. Now the guy glared rabidly at Kevin, radiating an instantly infectious paranoia. He looked starved and punished, dogged and discombobulated by some utterly absurd vision. “Hey, man, it’s cool,” Perky said, metronomically rocking an arm back and forth before the wildman, whose irises appeared to follow the motion while the orbs remained fixed. “This guy’s a friend,” Perky went on hypnotically, “a friend.” He turned to Kevin, indicating the quiet guy approvingly with a thumb, “He’s been stoked on speed for three days now without crashing. He can get you and your partners some righteous crystal for your trip if you want.” Kevin looked at the quiet guy, feeling haunted, and shook his head. “Whatever,” Perky said. “How is this pot?” Kevin asked, feeling the quiet guy’s eyes scrambling across the back of his neck like tiny tarantulas. “Like I said, man, it’s really good shit. That’s why it goes for fifteen dollars. It’s from Lebanon, man, way over by China. Lebanese Lavender. You know.” “Sure,” Kevin said. “Right.” He’d never heard of any such strain of marijuana, was reasonably certain this would be just so-so local stuff. But Perky’s transparent assurance was not entirely unexpected. In the groggy dawn of the age of Aquarius it was rare to score without complications or deception. He was also sure that this ounce didn’t really sell for fifteen dollars, that Perky would pocket the extra five. That, too, was to be expected, was part of the game. “Here,” Perky said, reaching into his shirt pocket, “I’ve got a joint you can sample.” He fished out a thin marijuana cigarette and lit it with a showy gesture of cordial indulgence, took a long draw and passed it to Kevin. Kevin sucked on the joint and could tell by its harsh tongue and wishy-washy bouquet that the weed was local, though of fairly good quality. A seed popped at the cherry as the joint began to spider, fell to smolder on the carpet. Perky was straining to hold the smoke in, taking small quick gulps of air to force it deeper, his face growing red and contorted with the effort. “Whaddaya think?” he wheezed, letting the smoke out slowly. Kevin exhaled, took another hit. He nodded, let the smoke out with a whoosh. “Yeah,” he croaked, as the boo’s effects crept up on him. “Yeah.” He took another deep hit. “Well c’mon then, man . . . gimme the money. C’mon!” Perky was suddenly all impatience, and didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. Kevin looked at him uncertainly, pondering the mystery of Perky’s words. And what was the reason he was . . . money. Why money? Because! A holdup? Kevin’s expression clouded progressively toward absolute blankness. He didn’t remember owing Perky any money. “Well, c’mon,” Perky said exasperatedly. “You want a lid or not?” Of course! That’s why Perky wanted money. Kevin could have kicked himself. He chuckled. This grass was better than he’d thought. “What’s so funny?” Perky demanded. 13

Carnival The Itch Of Being “Sorry,” Kevin said. “This pot’s really good.” He pulled out his wallet and froze. There were all kinds of bills in the wallet; fives, tens, twenties. He was suddenly and unaccountably rich! Then he remembered Big Joe giving him the money and imagined himself slapping a palm on his forehead. He drew twice more on the cigarette. It burned his fingers and he gamely ate the butt. “Yeah,” Perky was saying, nodding. “What’d I tell you?” He took a ten and a five from the fan Kevin had made of the bills. “That’s a lot of bread, man. I can do you a really good deal on a pound of this stuff.” “That’s okay,” Kevin quacked, his voice seeming to originate in his nose. “I need the bucks.” “Whatever. Back in a flash.” “Oh, Perky,” Kevin postscripted, not thinking, “you won’t let any of it get away?” Perky stopped dead and glared. “Fuck no,” he said with quiet acidity. “I got enough stash I don’t gotta go pinching any lid I get for you.” Kevin colored. “I was only kidding.” “Yeah. So was I.” He slammed the door in Kevin’s face and left him alone with the quiet guy. Following the slam, the record player’s stylus hopscotched across a particularly warped section of The End, ripped through the final grooves, and settled into a rhythmic bobbing at the label’s perimeter. Kevin knelt and lifted the arm, turned down the volume, started the record over. It was the only album around. Shrieking laughter blew out of one of the bedrooms, but right now all he wanted was solitude. He’d put his foot in it with Perky all right, no doubt about it, and maybe stiffed his one and only big opportunity to step up the social ladder on the off-chance he, a seasoned traveler, should ever return from his pilgrimage. It was that joint. Grass, grand old herb, had made his tongue stumble again. And now he was beginning to feel self-conscious; hulking and silly-looking. With Perky offended, the logical move was to try to build some sort of casual, cynical rapport with the quiet guy, who knew Perky and was therefore, most likely, something of a celebrity around town. But before he could approach a conversation the quiet guy jumped up and began peeking between the curtains, his head darting side to side. Temporarily satisfied, he cocked his head as if listening intently, repeatedly flexed his fingers, turned his head. Stared crazily at Kevin. Kevin cleared his throat. “Big jam in Frisco,” he managed. At last the quiet guy spoke: “Man,” he said, and something behind his eyes shot past so quick Kevin got a kink in his neck trying to follow, “there’s always something heavy going down in Frisco, y’know?” The quiet guy’s jaw worked back and forth and round and round as his face fought to find a center. “People be going there getting wasted, man, y’know? Yeah man, anything, everybody, y’know? Heavy sounds, man, yeah heavy people getting stoned, y’know? Everybody!” Kevin could have sworn the man’s head had just spun around. Now the quiet guy shrank into himself like a rattler backing into its hole. From that imaginary hole two tiny coals peered guiltily at Kevin. “Did some crystal,” the quiet guy hissed, punching the side of his fist into the wasted crook of his arm. “Jeez! That’s my thing, y’know; if nobody digs it, well, that’s their thing, y’know?” “Yeah,” Kevin said uncomfortably. “I know.” The quiet guy came out of his crouch, smiling and gently shaking his head like a man suddenly made aware of some mild irony. “Yeah, man, dudes be amping out in The Haight, y’know? Twenty cats to one spike, man, hairy, let me tell you, a super rush, y’know? All of us, man, everybody, man! Getting jacked-up, y’know?” The quiet guy pressed his face up to Kevin’s in a pose of confrontation. “Some dudes me mainlining skag,” he whispered threateningly, “y’know? Heavy man, very heavy.” He cocked his head, nodding. “Very heavy, man, very. Heavy.” His eyes rolled like coins. “Getting 14

Carnival The Itch Of Being wasted, man, y’know? To the max, man! Man,” he concluded, “man, there’s always something heavy going down in Frisco, y’know man? Always. Y’know?” “Right,” Kevin said. “Right on, man.” But something was nagging him. “The Haight,” he mumbled, almost inaudibly. “I. . . I guess you mean the City.” He asked incredulously, “Guys are shooting up? But that’s not . . . right . . . that’s not what Eddie said . . .” He demanded in a voice thick with urgency, “But what’re the people like? I mean, it’s all peace and love, right?” The quiet guy’s eyes went foggy at the word people. His stare did not seem to register Kevin before him, but was rather focused inward, as if the boy’s question were a real poser. He spun around and darted to the newspaper curtains, then systematically moved along the wall, carefully separating pages to peek outside. “Who—who are you looking for?” Kevin asked, worrying that perhaps the quiet guy knew something that he, Kevin, didn’t. The quiet guy whirled, blinking. A fevered look of warped understanding made his eyes appear to sink deeper into their caves. He edged along the wall until he was as far from Kevin as the room’s confines allowed. He looked frantically to the front door as if debating dashing out into the arms of a lurking gendarmerie, then quickly back to Kevin. His mouth fell open, a string of saliva joining the lips. Pressing his palms flat against the wall, he froze in the white-hot glare of an imaginary spotlight. “Um . . . I have to use the head,” Kevin mumbled. “I’ll catch you later.” He turned and pushed past the soiled bedspread separating front room and dining room. “What a trip,” he breathed, and realized he was trembling. After a moment he gently pulled back an edge of the bedspread to peek into the front room. The quiet guy was back at the windows, inching aside the classifieds, carefully looking out. Kevin let go the bedspread and turned to contemplate the small dining room. Garbage all over the place. The room stank of three-days-old refried beans and of cigarettes doused in beer. One leg of the dining table had collapsed; plates and utensils, crusty with the molding residue of meals long forgotten, were scattered on the dusty, tattered carpet. True; Perky’s place was rumored to be a mess, but not like this. Now, instead of awaiting Perky’s return where they’d parted, Kevin was stuck with having to make a choice. He could go, a stranger treading private premises, through either of two doorways he was facing. Retracing his steps into the front room was out of the question. He stood there a good while, twisting a lip with forefinger and thumb; his mind, murky from the grass, interpreting sounds as a kind of mixed track of music and sound effects. To his left was an improvised door of stringed ceramic beads. From behind this partition came the orchestral braying of a television, with choral accompaniment of soprano giggling and baritone guffaws. To his right was a hanging American flag. From behind this flag came the sounds of more voices from the kitchen; voices gurgling like streams, rumbling like quakes. Kevin listened closely, and was unsurprised to discover he couldn’t identify a single voice in either room. The marijuana’s addling effects had subtly grown more pronounced with this steady bombardment of curious impressions, and his mind was so busy merrily making mud pies out of each new thought that the simplest problem automatically became a crisis. He stood stockstill, dreading the likely outcome of any confrontation. But his choices were simple. He could confront the strangers in the kitchen. He could confront the strangers in the television room. He could stand here, confronted by his own cowardice, until Hell froze over. Kevin impulsively pushed past the flag into the kitchen, where the worst conceivable thing happened: all movement and conversation ceased abruptly as everybody turned to stare at him. Out of all nine or ten people he knew only Gary, the sycophantic, squat little Jewish informer who had ratted on him for having marijuana in his gym locker last month. There were three girls in the room; 15

Carnival The Itch Of Being the teasing, coquettish type, each with slender limbs and seductive eyes. As in an advertisement for hair dye, the hair shade from girl to girl varied to the extreme: an ashy blonde, a fiery redhead, and a brunette whose long waves were a glossy raven black. The blonde was perched on the lap of a guy wearing wraparound sunglasses and mechanic’s overalls, a paisley-pattern headband keeping his long hair out of his face. He zoned out on Kevin, grinning stupidly. The redhead, interrupted while drawing little heart shapes on the kitchen wall in bright vermilion lipstick, stared at Kevin drunkenly before yawning widely. The raven-haired girl—a young woman, really—had apparently been flirting with three strangers sitting on the sink counter. Kevin cursed his intrusion. Two of the guys were campus honor boys, wearing the blue and gold letterman jackets with the school’s insignia on the front. The guy in the middle looked tough and dangerous; dark hair combed to cover the tops of his ears, a cruel jet-black moustache. Weekend hippie, Kevin thought. He avoided the guy’s unwavering stare, felt instinctively that he was a bully; maybe some punk on leave from the Marines. Christ, the way he looked he could even be a narc. The three other boys in the room were about Kevin’s age, and were gathered in a tight circle on the floor, like aborigines around a campfire. One made an obscene noise at him, bugging out his eyes and puffing his cheeks in a mocking caricature. Now Kevin could see the object of the boys’ concentration. Two were shaking a cracked aquarium back and forth on the floor. Inside the aquarium was a small, terrified brown rat recently fished from the garbage. The third boy was using a slender steak knife to playfully poke the scrabbling creature. This boy now looked at Kevin and grinned ear to ear, plunged the blade into the rat, held it up bloody and squirming for Kevin’s revolted inspection . . . . . . but the raven-haired girl had the loveliest red, red lips, the brightest, bright green cat eyes Kevin had ever seen . . . Oh, she easily outrivaled the other girls, with her skin so creamy and white it seemed almost translucent. Her jaw line was a fine, sweeping cut, her neck slender and gracefully elongated—like the rest of her figure tapering and so . . . very supple. But what really blew him away was the LARGEST AND FIRMEST PAIR OF BREASTS he’d ever witnessed on a figure . . . so slender. They were— were—barely concealed by the lapels of her unbuttoned! beige cotton shirt, which was casually tucked into the waistband of a pair of skintight snow-white slacks. This tucked bit of shirt promised to pop . . . FREE! at any moment, as each breath or shifting of weight worried at the waistband’s hold. Kevin, instantly in love, supposed correctly that she was an enchantress much sought after. But in reply to his stare of longing she giggled, then buried her face in the lap of one of the honor boys and laughed uncontrollably. Despite her sparkling eyes she’d plainly had a lot to drink. “Debbie,” said the dangerous-looking guy, patting the girl on her fantastic behind and nodding toward Kevin, “kiss this dude and see if he turns into a prince.” Gary laughed. It was a hollow, underhanded laugh. “Hey, man. Hey, hey; what’s happening, Irving? What’s on your mind, man?” Kevin’s flabby cheeks turned crimson. These people were making a fool of him. “Just tripped in to say ‘hi’.” His voice was a hoarse rattle. He straightened, said with businesslike demeanor, “I’m waiting for Perky to get back. He went to score me a lid.” “Why don’t you just trip out?” suggested the guy with the moustache. Kevin cleared his throat. His mouth was suddenly very dry. “I was talking to Gary,” he said weakly. “You’re talking to me.” The guy lowered himself from the counter with catlike grace. He looked as powerful and obstinate as a rhinoceros. “Oh Christ,” Gary said. “I mean, look you guys, don’t go starting no fights in here, okay? Perky told me to watch the pad and keep things cool if he leaves. So if you wanna hassle, do it, like, 16

Carnival The Itch Of Being do it out back.” He shrugged and dropped his arms; body language meant to convey a simple message to everybody present: he wanted absolutely no part. All eyes turned to Kevin expectantly. “Look, I don’t even know this guy—” “My name’s Dave. Your name’s Shit.” “—and I didn’t come here to hassle anybody. You know. Peace is my bag.” “Oh my God,” said the raven-haired girl. “Peace is his bag.” The big guy shoved Kevin hard, sent him crashing into the kitchen wall. The redhead inadvertently drew a line across her hearts motif and moved out of the way. The talking and joking had ceased. Someone in the adjacent bedroom thumped playfully on the wall in response to the thud of Kevin’s poor head. “Listen, creep,” Kevin’s antagonist said viciously, “if you want trouble, you’re fucking with the right guy.” He grabbed Kevin’s shirt at the lapels and lifted the boy a good foot and a half off the floor. As big and as heavy as Kevin was, the dark-haired bully had hauled him up with what seemed a minimum of effort. “No man,” Kevin gasped. “No sir. I don’t want any trouble.” Now the raven-haired girl tugged at the punk’s sleeve, looking annoyed. “Oh, come on, David. You’re not impressing anybody.” Kevin, sputtering in a miasma of beer breath, squirmed against the wall, completely helpless. His glasses hung over his mouth, his face steadily grew darker as his assailant’s knuckles pressed into the soft wedge of flesh over his windpipe. He intermittently heard arguing voices, then a very direct challenge as Dave looked back up, grimacing. “You want trouble?” “No sir,” Kevin croaked. “Then split.” “Yes sir.” He let go of Kevin’s shirt and the boy dropped in a heap, retching, at last lurching to his feet to stagger into the dining room. Kevin was half-conscious of voices in the kitchen, but the words bounced around in his skull like caroming billiard balls. “You’re quite a man, aren’t you? A real tiger.” “Yeah, yeah. And who’re you supposed to be, Pocahontas?” “Oh, when are you gonna grow up, David? That poor kid couldn’t be more than fifteen.” “Listen, slut. This is my fist, see? I want you to repeat what you just said, real slow this time so I don’t miss a word.” Kevin plowed through the bedspread, whacked his toe on the doorjamb, and stumbled into the front room waving his arms like a drowning man. The quiet guy, running the gamut of his wildest nightmares, almost climbed the wall as Kevin blundered by; choking on his own saliva, using one hand to knead his throat and the other to guard his head against any obstacle he might encounter. Through the front room doorway, past the gravy-stained tablecloth, into the trashy anteroom. Kevin plopped down on a badly lacerated couch and a cloud of dust enveloped him. He coughed. Someone was tiptoeing through the front room. There was a hell of a racket as the quiet guy stepped squarely on the record’s turning face, a moment passed, and the tablecloth was pulled aside as the raven-haired girl looked in. One side of her lovely face was bright red. The sparkle had left her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, to be wiped away like eyeliner. She sniffled, smiled weakly and sat, with a springy settling of breasts, next to him, snapping open a glossy black handbag embossed with turquoise and silver wildflowers. From this she exhumed two silky hankies, her compact, a filterless Camel, a disposable lighter. In the compact’s little round mirror she watched herself light the 17

Carnival The Itch Of Being cigarette, dabbing at her subdued green tigress eyes, speaking to her reflection: “Look, I’m sorry about David. He’s always like that after a few beers.” Kevin grunted noncommittally. “He your boyfriend?” “Oh, he’s not my old man or anything like that, if that’s what you mean, and I’m not his old lady. We’ve shacked up a few times, but we’ve never felt, like, all that serious about each other. I don’t think I’ve ever felt really serious about anybody.” She paused to peel a tobacco fiber off her lip. “Anyway, it was sweet of you to take it so well, and please don’t hold it against David. He can’t help it when he gets drunk. I mean, nobody is really responsible for what they do or say when they get drunk. Why else would you drink, if not to have a good time and forget your responsibilities? So it’s not really his fault, is it? Oh, it’s not your fault either, don’t get me wrong. Just bad timing. You had as much right to be there as anybody.” She switched her gaze from the little mirror for a moment to look at him with a transitory curiosity. “Just what are you doing here, anyway?” Kevin yanked himself back together. His attention had of course been focused on the gentle gyrations, vivacious vibrations, and miscellaneous mind-bending movements of the raven-haired girl’s magnificent, mouth-watering mammaries. Now he looked at his hands defensively, afraid to meet her eyes lest she read the guilt cringing behind the black ports of his pupils. But he was certain—certain she had seen. “I’m wait—I’m waiting for Perky,” he said gropingly, his voice damp and hot in his throat. “He went to score me a lid.” “Oh, I really am a mess. Crying like a little girl. Over nothing, am I right? Here,” she commanded, handing him the compact, “you hold this.” She then handed him her half-smoked cigarette. This left her hands free to finger shiny tufts of hair into place while exhaling twin streams of smoke from her exquisitely chiseled nostrils. And he sat there, his own hands wretchedly full, helplessly staring from one marvelous melon to the other while they dipped and rose, as if puppeteered by the fingers arranging those long waving tufts of hair. He’d already forgotten the incident with Dave. She finished with the hair and, to make matters worse, plucked a lipstick tube from her handbag and began, occasionally licking her lips with a slender red tongue, to paint her lips a moist, vulval pink. Kevin squirmed in gnashing misery, wanting desperately to bury his head in the hot valley between those impossibly buoyant mounds. He had his inhibitions. In the first place, he was too inexperienced to find the courage—he was certain such an ungentlemanly response would fill the raven-haired girl with rage and disgust. Second, he was becoming aroused to the point of giddiness. He felt sweaty and faint. And he was spellbound, hypnotically affixed to the bewitching quivering of those barely concealed love loaves. But most important, and most perturbing, was his own numb realization that he was already in the grip of a need so powerful it was making him physically ill. “I know it’s just sickening,” the raven-haired girl was saying, “to see a guy act like that. But he’s not really like that, he’s really sweet, really. No really, David’s like that, really, and I wouldn’t want him, or any other guy, any other way. Really. Honey, I’m really sorry about the whole thing. Sometimes I think he likes trouble, but that’s just the way guys are, I guess. I mean, I don’t need to tell you what guys are like, am I right? Haha. Not that I give a damn what he does. He can play up to that little bleached-blonde bitch all he wants; it’s none of my business. It’s his business, not mine. Am I right?” She paused to consider him again, her expression, Kevin felt, not unlike pity. Then she leaned close, wraithlike, seemingly without the slightest shift in weight. Kevin trembled little tremors of panic, perspiring in the heady fog of her breath, all beer and nicotine and cosmeticized femininity. 18

Carnival The Itch Of Being Very near, she tickled his eardrum with that manipulative breath, her tiny voice whispering, “I just don’t give a damn.” Kevin recoiled from the intended peck of moist painted lips on hot puffy cheek, his ears burning bright red. She drew back in mild offense. He tore his heart from her eyes; his own eyes, being the furtive and traitorous telltale red of a pot smoker, certain to reveal his agony. All the glib lines and knowing looks he’d cooked up over thousands of lonely hours were instantly dissolved in the aching reality of her loveliness; and now, in the shadow of that loveliness, his own body seemed to grow clammy and foul. Sick with embarrassment, he turned his head to face the still life of dusty objects in the anteroom’s corner: a poster reading LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH, the paper peeling and discolored, as was the wallpaper, by last January’s rain; a ruptured beanbag chair, its innards scattered all about the room; a halfcollapsed mahogany end table—perhaps once a fine piece—shoved in the corner and bearing: a dozen empty beer cans; ashtrays overflowing with mashed butts, ashes, and peach pits; an ice cream cone turned end-up, the ice cream itself having dried trailing down the table’s legs; a small portable television with coat hanger antenna, its dark picture tube miraculously intact. Captured on that dark convex surface was a fisheye image of Kevin, his head and shoulders flattened and expanded comically. The image of the raven-haired girl was very tiny behind his flat mountainous face, and as she drew back she grew tinier, minute, vanished. “Oh, Christ, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said wearily, having caught the agitation in his eyes before he turned his head. “Really.” She placed a reassuring hand on his thigh and squeezed, to let him know, and to remind herself, that she was a real, live, flesh-and-blood woman with thoughts and feelings of her own, and not just another mindless, flirtatious fleshpot. “Really I didn’t. Why is it that whenever I’m upset I think roses and talk crap?” Kevin tried to correct his posture, but there was a weird energy keeping his body crimped unnaturally, bent away from the raven-haired girl’s sultry radiation. He’d never been this close to a real, live, flesh-and-blood woman before, let alone one with a slim ivory hand on his leg. The hand seemed to be passing some sort of current through his body, and, so close to the hand, Kevin’s chubby little pecker was beginning to respond. If she didn’t remove her hand soon, he knew, there would be a violent internal upheaval; he would erupt and ooze off the couch into a silly-looking puddle on the floor. “Listen,” she said, “I really am sorry about David making such as ass of himself.” She removed her hand and rose to her feet, embarrassed. “No sweat,” Kevin whispered hoarsely. “He was just stoned, like you said.” Out of sympathy, more for herself than for Kevin, the girl now experimented with tact, saying, “You take it just like a man,” fully knowing how important those words could be to a boy at his stage of development. “Really.” Kevin blushed furiously. The girl paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder, holding the old tablecloth away and presenting a captivating view of her backside. Her snow-white slacks stretched gracefully over her beautifully rounded cheeks, clinging with heart-pounding precision to every perfect curve. Her stance was statuesque; weight on the right leg, one hand resting assertively on the left hip—just the way nudes posed in the photographs Kevin had hungrily, secretly studied. Her hair fell loosely to her shoulders, an apostrophe-lock dangling in front of her eye as she looked back. She was, Kevin thought, far more beautiful than any of the glossy, margined girlies he’d ever admired. The look on that face should have been erotic: oily, sexy, turned-on. But she was only 19

Carnival The Itch Of Being gazing sadly, and he was gripped by the terrible realization that she was looking right through him, not seeing him at all. The girl smiled sweetly, her eyes sparkling. She cupped and shook her right hand at waist level, blew him a kiss and whispered, “Peace is my bag,” before letting the curtain fall. The incredible image dissolved. But the vision—that one grief-triggering, mind-rending exaggeration of reality that can make or break a personality—remained onstage, and Kevin swore to himself right then and there, even as its author passed out of his life forever, that he would never lose it. He stared bleakly at the tablecloth. Then at the wall. Standing, he tore the cloth aside and peered out. Kevin stepped anxiously into the front room, but the raven-haired girl was nowhere to be seen. She was gone. The front door flew open and Perky blew in. He plucked a rolled wax sandwich bag from under his belt, handed it to Kevin. “Here, fucknut.” The quiet guy, his hands clenched into pathetic bony fists, wailed horribly and half-crossed the room. “Man!” he cried, with maniacal indignation, “don’t ever do that! I thought you were the pigs.” Kevin tucked the bag into his shirt pocket. It felt like a good-sized ounce. “Thanks,” he said. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. And look at the fucking tape. I never even opened it. Did you hold down the fort? Have any hassles?” “No . . . yes and no. Everything’s cool.” Kevin stepped outside, plodded down the steps and stood on the walk, knowing his heart was heading for hell in a hurry. It was as though all his gingerly-embraced, sluggishly-entertained reasons for keeping on were being left behind in that house, his soul scampering puppywise at the raven-haired girl’s nerd-damning heels, or hovering plaintively to now and again be caught as a silly-looking reflection in her compact’s all-seeing mirror. “Later,” he said. “And thanks again, Perky. Really.” Perky was about to close the door when his jolted features softened. He cocked his head quizzically and studied the look of absence on Kevin’s face, as though he too could feel the power humming like a well-tuned engine inside the house. There was a long and somber silence. “Have a good trip,” he said quietly. “Watch out for our Boys in Blue.” A thought struck him and he smiled. He closed the door gently. Alone, Kevin automatically genuflected at his bicycle’s rear wheel and began, with thick nerveless fingers, to work the tumblers of the combination lock. The raven-haired girl’s face, lips puckered for casual near-kiss, swam into focus on the truncated knob on the lock’s round, numbered face. The face drew nearer, and, as in the reflection on a Christmas tree’s bulb, the smooching lips enlarged until they became the whole image; the lips parting as they grew closer and larger, then only the black hole leading into her mouth, which grew larger and larger until it completely filled his senses. A sharp pain stabbed behind his eyes, grew intense and passed, left him staring at the lock in his hand. The lock was open. Perspiration was thick in his eyebrows. He stood weightlessly, took off the lock and chain and secured them under the bike’s seat. The world revolved giddily and a metallic taste came to his palate as he mounted. He coasted across the flat driveway to the sidewalk and veered blindly on the pavement. There was a jarring thump as his bicycle lurched off the curb. The jarring wrenched him back in time to avoid spilling, and then he was coasting clumsily alongside parked cars. A man with close-cropped hair and a very red face leaned his head out the passenger-side window of a passing car. “You stupid-ass hippie! Watch where the fuck you’re going!” Up yours, Kevin thought. 20

Carnival The Itch Of Being With another jolt he remembered Mike and Eddie, and was just pulling into a gas station to make a call when he saw them riding his way. Eddie turned his snubby, freckled face and pointed. Eddie had reddish-brown hair brushed down all around, to make it look long as possible. He was tiny and intelligent, bashful and thin, with large brown doll eyes wide with winsome enthusiasm. Mike, a spry, testy boy with very white skin and very black hair, was wearing cutoffs and his big brother’s Army shirt. Mike was so scrawny that, shirtless, the veins of his arms and chest showed clearly. He looked up darkly and waved. Then they were both pedaling hard. “We figured you were at your house,” Eddie said breathlessly, “but your mom said you left already, so we looked all over for you. We’re ready to go.” “Yeah,” Mike said, “let’s go. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” Kevin grinned conspiratorially and pulled out the fat sandwich bag. Eddie’s eyes opened even wider. “Far out!” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Hey, put it away!” Mike hissed. “Goddamn you Kevin, you’re gonna get us busted!” Kevin tucked the contraband in his sleeping roll. “Well then,” he said, surprised to hear his voice so steady, “all we need is some rolling papers and we can get going.” “I brung plenty,” Mike said proudly, his voice ringing as in anthem: “Banana-flavored and wheat straw!” He tamped it down a tad. “And I got two roach clips and swiped my old man’s pipe.” “And I’ve got all the pots and pans and a bunch of canned food,” Eddie panted. They looked at one another nervously. Mike raised his arms and Kevin saw that the middle finger of each of Mike’s hands was erect in the flip-off sign. Suddenly Mike cried out, with rude loudness and all the sincerity he could muster, “Fuck you, you goddamned cocksucking son of a bitch of a town!” Eddie gave a war whoop and they all began riding to the corner. The light was against them, and as they were waiting for it to change Kevin turned and looked back to where the roof of Perky’s house jutted sharply above the others. His vision returned, only this time it was not the numbing, unforgettably curvaceous pose. The raven-haired girl was on her knees in this scene, wearing only a few strategically draped scraps of silky fabric; fragments as flimsy and tattered as her recent hauteur. She was looking up repentantly; bruised, bemused, and belittled—all hair and bosom and tender femininity—and her DEFEATED BUT FOR YOU, MY LOVE eyes were rapidly scanning the cold, hard features Kevin’s generous imagination had ascribed to his face. Don’t go, the girl’s eyes begged. Please. “I’ll be back,” Kevin said aloud. His friends turned and stared. The light changed to green. The girl in Kevin’s vision trembled. “I’ll be waiting,” she said.

21

Chapter 2 Good Dogs, Inc. It was less than three miles to Highway 1—along this stretch known as Pacific Coast Highway, or, locally, as PCH. Soon the boys could see palm fronds dotting the overlooking cliff, and in no time were yahooing and dodging senior citizens out soaking up the day in the long verdant swath of Palisades Park. They stopped and leaned against the cement railing to savor the moment. Far below stretched the highway, and a bit to their left the colorful spine of Santa Monica Municipal Pier, straddling on barnacled pillars one lovely slice of the sweet Pacific. That vast blue prairie would be their westerly panorama for most of the journey. “Hot damn!” Mike shouted. “Hello ocean, goodbye hometown blues!” “Forever,” Kevin breathed. Eddie looked up sharply, one thin eyebrow arched inquisitively. “For the summer anyway,” Mike said. He spat over the railing, trying, unreasonably, to hit the matchbox cars crawling along the highway. After a minute he turned to Kevin, who’d been inappropriately down over the past couple of miles. “So what’s eating you, toadpuss?” “Huh?” Kevin grunted. In his mind the raven-haired girl’s undulating udders ballooned inches from his burning orbs. But even in his imagination he lacked the courage to meet her eyes. Much as he’d looked forward to this journey, he was half-prepared to slink back to Perky’s. “I said what’s bugging you, deafboy? I thought you were the one who was supposed to be all jazzed about ditching this burg.” “Nothing’s bugging me, man. I just tripped out for a minute, that’s all. If you’d hit on this stash you’d be spaced-out too.” “Well then,” Eddie offered, still studying Kevin’s face. “Don’t be such a bogart. Roll one up.” Mike tossed a book of rolling papers just as Kevin produced his stash, almost causing a spill. They propped their bikes on kickstands. Kevin looked around warily. Sun worshippers from all walks of life laughed, jogged, gossiped, 22

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. and panhandled about them. “You sure this is cool, right out in the open?” Eddie nudged him. “Listen to Mr. Paranoid! We’re free now, Kevin! If any of these people don’t dig our trip, well, they know what they can do with it. They won’t be seeing us again for a long, long time.” “Right,” Mike said gruffly. He swiped his papers off Kevin’s palm. “So if you’re too chicken, I’ll do it myself.” “Not chicken!” Kevin snapped, and grabbed the papers right back. He glared at Mike, a boy he hadn’t known long and was just this side of despising. Mike had come along as part of the package in acquiring Eddie’s friendship, and had never warmed to Kevin, who’d done his level best to be at least tolerant. Mike was for sure the darkest presence of the three, the wildest and hottest, always suspicious of nonexistent conspiracies between Kevin and Eddie. His hatred and jealousy had simmered over the past few months, as he’d noticed Eddie confiding more and more in the big clumsy intruder. In fact, Eddie really was interested—almost fanatically so—in the great mushrooming of color and energy firing his generation. While Kevin, who was genuinely intent on learning to be a good little hippie, provided a pliant sounding board for Eddie’s lectures and musings, Mike really didn’t give a damn about the politics of the Movement. What Mike wanted, and what the Movement’s flexible parameters provided, was an excuse to raise hell and have a good time. And now, thanks to Kevin’s discussion-goading intervention, Mike would always be just on the other side of an impenetrable membrane: an interrupter, a bother, a stranger. “Not . . . chicken,” Kevin repeated in an undertone, licking a paper’s gummed edge while staring fiercely at Mike. He slowly rolled a large cigarette from the aromatic crushed leaves packed in the sandwich bag, occasionally picking out random stems. To prove his fearlessness he rolled four more, taking his time, then dropped these four into his shirt’s pocket. He boldly fired the joint for all to see. A few passersby smiled or sniffed knowingly, but the boys passed it around thrice without a single offended look cast their way. “Wow,” Mike said, his eyes a dull red and half-closed. His voice sounded hollow to him, as though his ears were stuffed with cotton. “Wow,” he repeated doubtfully, tripping on the primitivity of the expression. “This is good pot,” Eddie muttered. He tried again: “This is good pot.” He blinked at Mike and then at Kevin, wondering if his words made sense, hearing the crowd sounds as through headphones. His own voice sounded soft and distant. His round teddy bear eyes were bloodshot and glazed. He looked at Kevin. “This is good pot,” he said. “This is.” He looked back at Mike but Mike was embarrassed, and avoiding his friends’ eyes. Eddie grew absorbed in a study of the dirt under his fingernails. “You got this from Perky?” he asked his hands. “That’s right,” Kevin said, basking in the impression of being a local Somebody’s chum. The marijuana hadn’t hit him quite as hard as it had hit his friends, thanks to the bracer joint he’d smoked earlier with Perky. “It’s a special blend from Germany and the Far East. I only got it because me and Perky are such tight friends.” “Wow!” said Eddie. Mike looked at him hard. “I didn’t know you and Perky were partners.” “Well . . . now you know. So’s everybody got their heads tight? Let’s get going.” And then they were rolling down the road-to-highway onramp, digging the feel of warm air on their ears, alive to being alive. They jockeyed for lead position happily, indifferent to dangerouslyclose northbound traffic. In a matter of minutes the boys were riding hard and fast alongside Will Rogers Beach. But by the time they were into the curve that would eventually lead them to Malibu, Kevin was experiencing 23

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. the toll of rigorous exercise. The three were accustomed to wheeling leisurely along the city’s tame avenues, not to going all-out on the highway. Kevin’s legs were already sore from the job of driving his bulk hard enough to keep up with his lighter friends, and now even keeping up had become a nightmare. His breath was rasping in his ears, his heart racing. He couldn’t afford to appear weak in his friends’ eyes, not after he’d boasted of matchless stamina and resourcefulness, but he was falling farther and farther behind. “Hey!” he called out desperately. “Slow down, for Pete’s sake!” Mike and Eddie, still passionately vying to be leader, didn’t hear or didn’t care. Kevin put down his head and forced himself on. “Wait up!” he snarled. But they wouldn’t slow, and didn’t stop until they’d reached a gas station at Sunset Boulevard. There they stood, panting, watching a small crowd milling round a roped-off display at the lot’s far end. The object on display was a blood-red Corvette Stingray, gleaming like a burnished ruby in the summer sun. Mike and Eddie, inconsequential specks in the ruby’s halo, were too dazzled to hear Kevin slowly grinding up behind them, head down and eyes closed, grunting, “wait up,” with each searing exhalation. His pace slackened to that of a drunken march, then to a wobbly crawl, and finally he chugged to a halt almost at their heels. He dismounted gingerly and doubled over, beads of sweat the size of polliwogs falling from his nose and chin. “Now that,” Mike was saying, “is what I want for Christmas, Eddie.” He vigorously rubbed his palms. “Who wouldn’t give his left nut just to be seen in that baby!” But Eddie seemed distracted. “I guess . . .” he said absently. Mike’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, you guess? Look at that and tell me what you see.” “I already looked. It’s a car.” “A car? A car? A Volkswagen’s a car. You mean all you see’s a Volkswagen?” Eddie shrugged. Mike threw out his arms. “What a weenie!” He began walking circles around Eddie, scowling and shaking his head like a man fuming over some obscene and immovable object dumped on his front lawn as a prank. Finally he stopped and just glared, hands on hips, waiting. But Eddie had known Mike far too long to be impressed by his histrionics. So Mike now found himself in the extraordinary position of actually having to appeal to Kevin, a totally out-of-it and altogether untogether load he considered the lowest form of company imaginable, and the last person in the world he’d want on his side—especially when it came down to agreement on a symbol of virility. “How’s about you, Kevin?” he asked, turning toward the Corvette and spreading his arms to simulate the gesture of a man on a hill overwhelmed by the abundance of his valley. “Can you dig that or not?” Kevin smiled goofily. “For sure,” he panted, still getting his wind back. “Once you got behind a honey like that everything else’d just fall in place. I’d spend my nights cruising the boulevards with a blonde and a brew. What more could a guy want out of life?” “Maybe some self-respect,” Eddie mumbled. “Well, what do you call that?” Mike sputtered, pointing at the ruby. “Something to be ashamed of? Oh! I forgot. It’s just another Volkswagen. Kee-rist Almighty, Eddie! You’re starting to let this Movement stuff screw up your head for real.” Something made Kevin watch Eddie closely. Mike was being careless now, as the Movement was not a matter Eddie took lightly. It was his guiding star. Eddie seemed to shiver in the sun. He said not a word, but looked out to sea. For a wild instant Kevin saw his friend as a kind of Moses figure, somehow all the taller for his diminutiveness, 24

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. something behind his eyes burning with a radiance that easily surpassed the feeble luster of golden calves and ruby Corvettes. There was an absolutely wrenching suspension of communication, of camaraderie, of that indefinable force that can make seemingly incompatible souls fast, and bind its subjects with a sense of brotherhood deeper even than the imposition of blood. The surf boomed like cannon fire, and a pair of gulls fought vociferously over some nondescript Angeleno’s naked garbage. “. . . Yeah . . .” Mike managed. “Well, I’m gonna go check it out anyway. No offense, Eddie.” He glared at Kevin, as though Eddie’s mood shift was all the fat boy’s fault, and walked his bike over to join the crowd. “When I said I dug the car,” Kevin said quickly, “I wasn’t saying I worshipped it, Eddie. I mean, when you’re hip to the Movement, you’re totally hip, right? I was just saying that, as far as cars go, you gotta admit that’s a nice car.” Eddie shrugged again. “I don’t mean you gotta admit it,” Kevin amended awkwardly, “and I didn’t mean you when I said ‘you.’ I just meant . . . well, you know, what’s good is good, and what isn’t . . . isn’t.” “And what’s right is right?” Eddie probed. “And what’s wrong is wrong?” “Sure.” “So it’s wrong to treat something wrong right, right? And it’s right to treat something wrong wrong?” Kevin blinked. Something . . . All else notwithstanding, Eddie was a dyed-in-the-wool philosopher. “And don’t you wrong right when wrong isn’t right wrong? Or is there a right wrong and a wrong wrong, a wrong right and a right right?” Kevin’s jaw dropped. Eddie emphasized his point by rhythmically stabbing his right forefinger into his left palm. “And if there is, is the right wrong right right wrong, and the wrong wrong right wrong wrong?” Glasshopper’s eyeballs seemed to spin in their sockets. His brain became a simple sensory organ for sniffing out mastodons and competing troglodytes. Slowly his speech-center recovered. “Ugh,” he said. “Big rock in stinkbush.” “What?” Kevin’s eyes refocused. Eddie was studying him with an odd expression. A sharp pain sprang up somewhere behind Kevin’s eyes, and his fingertips began to tingle weirdly. But the pain and tingle passed almost immediately, left him staring stupidly at his friend. Sweat trickled around his eyes. Gonna be a hot one, he thought, or thought he thought. “Well?” Eddie demanded. “Can somebody just arbitrarily do whatever he likes, or do his principles guide his actions regardless of gain or loss? Are you gonna hang with what you believe in, or cop out?” “That’s easy,” Kevin parried. His heart added a flam to its regular beat. He gulped. “I don’t cop out.” “Then there’s no compromising the Movement,” Eddie said firmly. “You can’t suck up to the glamour and garbage of this society and still be free. It’s one or the other, Kevin. We’ve got to turn our backs on all the plastic crap before it eats us alive. The Movement isn’t a part-time experience. We’ve got to forget about cars and money and status, permanently, or we’re right back where we started before we know it.” “But,” Kevin objected, feeling better now, “we can’t throw out the baby with the birth water, can we? I mean, certain things are just too important to give up on.” 25

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. “You said it, Kevin: ‘just too important.’ Nobody’s ever satisfied with the basics, because having anything only whets the appetite. Soon as they get it they lose interest. It’s the wanting that’s in control. Only now they want better, and they want more. It starts to snowball, and you end up with a world of greedy adult children.” “But what about money, Eddie? You can’t do anything without money, and if you’ve got the money it doesn’t make any sense to not spend it, does it? And if you’re gonna spend it, you’re gonna spend it on what you like, right? And unless you like junk you’re gonna need lots of money; so you’re either gonna have to love money or love being poor.” Eddie sighed. “You mean you still don’t see why it’s wrong to take the real world seriously? You can’t see what’s wrong with having a cushy career and a bank account? Or why it’s such a bummer to be all turned-on by a bunch of shiny stuff everybody else is drooling over, or the reason it’s a hangup to have wants in the first place? And doesn’t it bug you knowing what you’ll have to sacrifice for the sake of all that prestige you’re trying to accumulate? You’re gonna buy self-respect? Can’t you see that dignity, even though it doesn’t have a price tag on it, is worth more than all the materialistic bullshit in the world put together?” Kevin struggled to come up with a succinct response, sensitive enough to Eddie’s commitment to know the boy’s challenge was in earnest, but uncomfortable with the way it seemed to be blinding him to everything else in life. “Wrong?” he muttered. He looked at the car—futuristic, sexy, powerful, poised . . . the thing was reflecting the sun so dynamically it appeared ready to burst into flames. There wasn’t a human being alive who could fail to appreciate it, and, since Eddie was human, Kevin felt he wasn’t getting the whole picture here; that he’d missed something simple but vital in Eddie’s argument. Either that or the grass . . . but, ever since that damp November night of their first meeting, the friendship had proved an uneasy alliance when conversation got into the deep end. Eddie could turn the simplest issue inside-out. “Wrong?” Kevin sputtered. Abstracta had always eluded him. He had a sneaking suspicion that any query regarding that which was intangible—such as whether something was wrong or right—had to be a trick question, a verbal ambush designed to confuse the listener by making him think. This whole jive thing about values was just some phony Government head trip contrived to keep people bored and in line, and the fact that Eddie had been seduced so thoroughly sometimes made Kevin wonder just what kind of stuff his friend was made of. So for a moment he found himself entertaining a vindictive-but-constructive urge to tell Eddie to grow up, or to put him in his place by coolly countering with the one macho response any red-blooded, All-American Guy would make; namely, a half-attentive look of utter disdain, followed by a pointed turning of the head to proclaim complete dissociation. Because the All-American Guy doesn’t require intelligence. What he utilizes is far more valuable in the real world than something as ineffectual as a mind. It’s a license to bluff; unspoken, unchallenged—but understood, by every gonad in every garage from puberty on, to be the prime postulate of the streetwise: what’s wrong is what I don’t like, and what’s right is what turns me on. And if I can’t spend it, drive it, flaunt it, or fuck it, then hey, what good is it? Men killed for the sake of principles like that. But knowledge existed, Kevin was sure, just to make ordinary people feel really dumb about all the things they didn’t know; in exactly the way churches existed solely to make people feel guilty about . . . everything. Yet Kevin genuinely liked Eddie, even though Eddie had a dangerous habit of asking useless questions, and of caring about things that didn’t matter to anybody who did matter. Intelligence was obviously the boy’s Achilles’ heel; a prissy quality which probably came from being short and indifferent to football, or from wasting his time at school burying his nose in books instead of checking out the babes. He was hopelessly out of touch. And now Kevin found that having to defend the self-evident could be a real test of friendship. 26

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. “Wrong?” he repeated. “Eddie, what’s wrong with wanting to own good things? What’s wrong with wanting to be somebody? I mean, I know it’s uncool to be greedy and selfish and all that, and to make money into some kind of god or something, but how can it be bad to want lots of money and all the neat stuff you can get with it, and then honestly do your thing to earn it? What’s so great about having nothing?” “Because it’s not your thing you’re doing. It’s their thing. Don’t you get it?” “No, Eddie. I really, honestly, totally, truly, absolutely-positively-super-seriously don’t. If I’m earning it, why’s it their thing?” Eddie puffed out his cheeks and stared at the gas pumps. He squinted and grimaced, rolled his eyes heavenward. Finally he exhaled. “Look, let me explain it with an analogy. You know what I mean by analogy?” Now Kevin was getting pissed. “Eddie, who the heck’s gonna be allergic to money?” “No, Kevin, not an allergy. Analogy. A way to explain a certain quality using an example where it’s obvious.” “You mean like a story or picture where you use different stuff to show what you’re trying to get across?” “That’s close enough. In this analogy I’ll use dogs, okay? Okay. So here we’ve all these dogs in this house, and the dogs’ master comes up like he does every day, with a big box of Liver Snaps in his hand. And he says to the first dog, ‘Speak!’ The first dog goes ‘yap! yap! yap!’ and his master gives him a Liver Snap. The master says to the next dog, ‘Play dead!’ Down goes the second dog like he’s been shot. Then he jumps back up to get his goodie. The master moves down the line of dogs, going, ‘Fetch! Heel! Roll over!’ and each dog obeys and gets a Liver Snap. Finally he comes to the last dog and he says, ‘Shake hands!’ But this dog just looks at him as if to say, ‘Go shake your own fucking hand.’ The master freaks out. ‘Bad dog!’ he says. ‘Bad, bad, ba-a-a-ad dog! No Liver Snaps for you until you behave!’ And he walks away shaking his head and wondering just what the heck’s wrong with that dog anyway, and trying to figure out some kind of punishment that’ll straighten him out. Now, all the other dogs are tripping on this dog who won’t behave, and laughing at him. They think he’s too stupid to perform simple tricks. Anyways, they’re all fat and happy, and have more important things to think about, like when the next Liver Snap’s coming. So time goes by and the good dogs get better at their tricks, and hang around snoozing on their cozy circumstances, knowing how choice it can be for a good dog, and how the meaning of life is just a Liver Snap away. But the bad dog refuses to perform, and he gets scrawny and isolated. Eventually he dies, with only his dignity for company, and the house breathes a sigh of relief. More time passes. The good dogs have puppies, and the puppies grow up learning the same tricks by imitating their parents, who are now slow and clumsy and can’t compete with the young dogs. But the master doesn’t care about the old dogs anymore. The old dogs are bad dogs because they don’t perform with the enthusiasm of the young ones, and anyway Liver Snaps don’t grow on trees. The old dogs begin to feel the pinch. So what do they do? They tell the young dogs a story about this wise old dog who wasn’t greedy, but instead had the self-respect to not jump up and down making a fool out of himself on account of a lousy Liver Snap, for Christ’s sake. The young dogs are made to feel guilty, so out of a kind of peer pressure they try to not make a big thing out of performing, but secretly they dream of pigging out on Liver Snaps, and wish the old dogs would just hurry up and die.” Eddie paused, all the frustration gone from his expression now, his winsome features made even more so by that rare gratification that can only come from giving the priceless gift of insight. “So now do you see what I mean about dignity, and about not taking the real world seriously?” Kevin, chewing his lip sadly, tried to not sound condescending. “I . . . guess so, Eddie. You’re 27

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. trying to tell me I should feel sorry for skinny dogs, shake hands instead of being a real prick, and never listen to my parents if I don’t wanna die on an empty stomach.” Eddie’s jaw fell. Kevin had to look down, feeling he’d overextended himself by encapsulating in one breath what Eddie found moving enough to spin into some weird speech about dreaming dogs. And, goddamn it, that was precisely why smart people always ended up looking like such fools, and why they had to be ditched in public if you didn’t want your reputation ruined: they always alienated themselves by talking about things that would bring down the happiest party in no time flat. Like rapping about if we were justified in going to war, one of Eddie’s favorite sermons. Now, it’s no big secret that war can be a real bummer, and the kind of trip any happening cat doesn’t want to get into if he doesn’t have to. But . . . when somebody’s fucking with your country and all that, it’s like what’s the use of talking? The guy you’re up against is rowdy because his country’s rowdy, and if he doesn’t dig apple pie nobody’s saying he has to open his big mouth in the first place. If you love peace, if you care about your fellow man, then you gotta be ready to kick his ass to prove it. Everybody knows that, whether they want to make speeches about it or not. Sitting on your thumb discussing your differences is like John Wayne playing Confucius to Genghis Khan. A couple of pithy maxims and slash: no more John Wayne. Or like babes: what the hell good are books and speeches when you’re dealing with a hefty pair of knockers in a fuzzy pink sweater? The very thought caused Kevin’s palms to perspire, and he wondered if Eddie, finding himself alone with a hot and long-legged bunny, would respond with a sermon about sex being wrong. All real men know intelligence is a turn-off to chicks, and like a total insult to what it means to be a Guy in the first place. And that’s why the smart kids in school hang out in the library instead of joining the crowd: it’s a way to avoid getting your ass kicked for being intelligent. But Kevin liked Eddie, and respected him despite his flaws. In the end, Kevin realized, you simply can not argue with intelligent people! You can only feel sorry for them. Furthermore, Kevin was painfully dependent on a reciprocal relationship with Eddie, the only friend he’d ever had. So, in the name of friendship, he now compromised himself, blushed credibly, and said, “Am I warm?” Eddie stared straight ahead without replying. After a minute he said, “You’re cooking, Kevin. But maybe I shouldn’t have been so elaborate. Too many images. Look, what I was trying to say is . . . a good pet isn’t a good dog. A good pet is a dog who’s sold out. And when I say wrong I don’t mean unprofitable or stupid. A ‘winner’ is a man who’s sold out. And the Mephistopheles in this picture is appetite. Anybody whose motivation in life is profit, or pleasure, or any kind of gratification not stemming from the heart, will do or say anything to get what he or she wants. It’s their instinct. They’ve totally fucked up the whole world since Day One, and they’re the enemy. Because they want they take. That’s all the justification they need. It’s not, you’ll notice, in their nature to contribute. But at least they’re not hard to spot. In fact, they’re impossible to miss, because they want you to notice them. They wear their appetites like badges. So listen, Kevin. Any time you see somebody wearing expensive clothes, or driving a sharp car, or displaying any signs of prosperity, that guy’s telling you what his priorities are, and if he says anything like he cares about the Movement, or about people or positive values, well, you know he’s just handing you a line of bullshit. He wants to impress you about how wealthy and successful he is, and in the same way he wants to convince you he’s basically a really deep person. See? Since he wants you to believe him, there’s nothing wrong with lying to you, and to him you’ll be wrong if you tell him he’s a liar, because that’s not what he wants! So you’ve got to mean it when you believe in something, and use your life to help make this world a better place for everybody who lives on it. Otherwise you’d might 28

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. as well walk around wearing a sign that reads: ME NO KNOW. ME DUMB FUCKING HIPPIE. And you don’t want to be a public creep, do you? Of course you don’t. You see, Kevin, human beings are hung up on being mammals. That means they instinctively join the crowd and imitate everybody else. And that’s why almost all the people in this story are caricatures. They don’t, for the most part, have the balls to develop independent identities, because it pays to be a clone among clones. What really blows me away is that it works! I mean, it’s okay for monkeys to see and do. They’re just monkeys. But what about this marvelous advance, this human brain we’re all so proud of? Nobody uses it. Instead our heroes are . . . what? Athletes? Why? Are we trying to outjump kangaroos, outrun horses, outswing chimpanzees . . . run and catch the ball, little human! Attaboy! Good human! And let’s not forget . . . actors. Yeah! Let’s all worship some dink for pretending to be somebody he isn’t: somebody with character. And just look how big he is up there on the screen! Boy, am I impressed! And on and on—Homo sapiens: Man of Wisdom. Ha! Try taking wisdom to the bank!” “But Eddie,” Kevin interjected, “if what you say’s true, then what are we but a bunch of monkeys for joining the Movement? We’re just a different brand of clone.” “Uh-uh, Kevin. You’re being over-literal. We’re not taking the Movement to the bank. A guy can be a head and still be an individual, still have merit. You can use your mind to be a follower, if what you’re following is worthy of being followed. That requires judgment with a proper bias, which is a requisite of wisdom. Anyway,” Eddie closed, watching a pair of apparent twins coasting exhausted to one of the gas islands on their bicycles, “I’ve got lotsa faith in you, Kevin. I’m pretty good at gauging people, and I can tell you’ve got what it takes to be a totally together flower child.” Kevin grinned and pulled out his baggie of grass, held it up in display. “I sure do,” he extemporized. It was a throwaway gesture, meant to disguise his discomfort. Kevin knew, in his balls, that he was unworthy of Eddie’s confidence, unworthy of the world’s analysis, unworthy of his own strut and swagger. He rolled a cigarette carefully, watching the cyclists collapse at the gas island. Mike eyeballed the newcomers thoroughly while slowly walking his bike toward his friends, feigning nonchalance all the way. Kevin couldn’t remember ever having seen two people so done in. By wordless consent he and Eddie sidled over, kidding around until the three boys met at the gas island. It was now evident the cyclists weren’t twins after all; that immediate impression was due to their similarly gaunt frames and identical apparel: white T-shirts and shorts with black trim, red and blue-striped Adidas athletic shoes and matching socks, a foot-wide band of gauze wrapped round the left knee of each, and a nylon-and-plastic crown of webbed headgear. The only noticeable difference: one man had the number 19 stenciled on the back of his headgear, while the other sported the number 137. Now Kevin bent down to see if he could help 19 up, as the man appeared delirious. He was muttering something while pawing at Kevin’s shin. “Lucy Ann?” he gasped, “Lucy Ann?” Kevin stared at his friends, shrugged uncertainly, and looked back down. “Sorry,” he said. “No Lucy Anns here. I’m Kevin, this is Eddie, and that’s Mike. What’s your name?” “No . . . no” 19 croaked, wagging his head in frustration. “Izyloo . . .” he gagged. “Loozian . . . izyanna . . . is . . . is this Louisiana?” “Oh, heck no,” Eddie piped. “You guys are way off. This is still Los Angeles.” This announcement caused 137 to heave himself to his hands and knees. “God damn it, man! I told you it wasn’t the Gulf of Mexico.” 19 shuddered, coughing and wheezing. He angrily grabbed the water hose’s neck and soaked himself head to foot before hosing down his companion. “Say!” Mike burst out. “I’ll bet you guys are marathoners. Right?” 29

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. “Were . . .” 19 muttered. “Right now we’re a couple of jackasses.” He struggled to his feet and, incredibly, commenced a set of deep kneebends. 137 watched for a few seconds, then reluctantly began a set of pushups. “From where to where?” Kevin asked, becoming exhausted just watching the two men exercise. “Seattle to New Orleans,” 19 puffed. “Only we lost our lead car somewhere back in Arizona.” He ratcheted his aching neck until he was facing his partner. “Only four hundred freaking miles ago!” He dropped his head with a snarl. “It’s okay, though,” he managed after a minute. “We can make it up if we ride double-time.” “You mean you,” 137 gasped, “can make it up.” This didn’t faze 19 a bit. “Discipline,” he panted. “The mind’s will over the body’s denial.” “Did . . . did you guys go through San Francisco?” Eddie asked, throwing a fascinated glance at Kevin. “Yeah. What a mistake. Nothing but hills.” “But what about the people?” Kevin pressed. “I mean, how’s the Revolution coming along up there? Like, is everybody grooving?” This stopped both exercisers. 137 glared at Kevin and Eddie. 19 appeared about to spit on them. Mike, standing behind his companions, shrugged disdainfully to indicate his own lack of involvement while copying 19’s sneering expression. “You mean all that love and peace bullcrap?” 19 demanded. “I thought you guys looked like hippies.” Mike eyed his partners with contempt from behind their backs as 19 and 137 resumed their exercising. “Go on up there with your own kind,” 137 panted, “and wallow in their crap if you want. That place is the commode of the country. Bunch of faggots!” Mike, sneering behind the boys, mouthed the word yeah while looking from one to the other in private triumph. The three moved a few feet away. “Did you hear that?” Eddie said blinking. “That guy talks about the City like it’s a pit.” “Makes me want to puke,” Kevin responded. “He talks just like my dad. Sometimes I get the feeling these pricks don’t even know there’s a revolution going on.” “Fuck ’em,” Mike said, with a sly toss of his head. “Those jocks don’t know what they’re missing. They’re a disgrace to bikes.” “I’m hip,” Kevin said firmly. He fired up the joint he’d been holding, took a hit and passed it to Eddie. “To the Revolution!” He likened 19’s stripped, well-machined twenty-speed racer to his own colorful, Mickey Mouse’d bike. There was simply no comparison. Kevin tenderly ran his hand over the top multicolored bar of his bicycle’s frame. “Fuck ’em,” he echoed under his breath. The two cyclists had completed their aerobics and were straddling their machines, preparing to push off. A stoned Kevin sauntered up to 19 and said, motioning toward the displayed Corvette, “By the way, what do you think of that?” 19 shrugged, said, “It’s a car,” and rode away with his partner struggling alongside. Kevin rejoined his friends, shaking his head. He accepted the joint from Eddie and took the deepest draw he could. “What’d you just say to those jocks?” Mike demanded. Kevin exhaled. “I told ’em to lighten up on the Movement, and to not take the real world seriously.” “Right on,” Eddie said warmly, no less sincere for his intoxication. “Told you I was a good judge of character.” 30

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. “Character,” Mike growled, his jealousy getting the better of him, “hell!” He tore the glowing joint right out of Kevin’s mouth, hit on it repeatedly and flicked the roach away. There came an answering growl from Kevin, but he hadn’t opened his mouth; he was still holding the smoke. His stomach rumbled again, longer this time. Eddie pretended he hadn’t noticed Mike’s hostility. “So let’s get going, you guys! If those clowns can make it from Seattle, I know we can get to Frisco!” “Wait!” Kevin erupted. His stomach was growling and writhing continually, his mouth salivating. “I’ve got the munchies all of a sudden.” Mike immediately spat out: “You’ve always gotta slow us down!” But marijuana can make the smoker extremely suggestible, and it was plain that THC (the active intoxicant, tetrahydrocannabinol) was playing tricks with Mike’s appetite, too. Eddie licked his lips and peered at Kevin from the crimson caves of his eyes. “What’re you gonna get?” Kevin’s stomach roared and gurgled, cursed and beseeched. The imagined taste of strawberry shortcake seeped into his mouth. The tendency of marijuana to exaggerate the symptoms of appetite has an unfortunate twist: the craving—especially in youngsters—is generally for junk food instead of wholesome sustenance. “I don’t know,” he said, chewing his lip, images of tasty snacks jumbling in his mind like the fruit symbols on a slot machine. “Maybe some potato chips and a candy bar or two.” Now Eddie was repeatedly clenching his fingers. His eyes, though still a dull red, were wide and staring. “C’mon you guys,” Mike urged half-heartedly, “if we stop to scarf up we’ll never get under way.” He grabbed Eddie’s shoulder. “We can eat later, Eddie. Maybe get a cheeseburger for lunch.” Eddie winced at the word cheeseburger. His head turned slowly, an inch at a time, like an old door on rusted hinges. He stared unseeing at Mike out of those fixed, haunted eyes, his lax lips joined by strings of saliva. “Cheeseburger,” he muttered. “Come on!” Kevin said. “There’s just gotta be a hamburger stand or something around here.” So they began pedaling earnestly up Sunset Boulevard, searching for a fast food-stop. Now Kevin, riding feverishly in the lead, fancied he could hear Eddie’s stomach growling behind him like a suspicious watchdog. “Nothing!” Mike cried. “Nothing but hotels and motels and motels and hotels!” It was true. The boulevard was increasingly desolate—only small motels and an occasional house tucked between the weltered trees and dry scrub so typical of the great California coastal desert. Kevin pulled another joint from his shirt pocket as they came to a halt. His fingers fumbled for a match. “What we’ve got to do,” he heard himself rattling, “is get higher. We’ve got to get our heads together and figure something out. If I don’t eat something fast I’ll go crazy.” He lit the cigarette and drew on it deeply, passed it to Mike. “Maybe we could sneak around behind one of these hotels and motels and rip ’em off,” Mike suggested, smoke seeping from his nostrils. His eyes were almost closed. “Me and Billy used to do that. They’ve got little rooms behind them where they keep eggs and steaks and stuff.” “Eggs!” Eddie breathed. Kevin and Mike turned to stare at him. “Steaks!” he hissed. Eddie broke, went tearing up the boulevard like a madman, his friends calling and straining after him. Mike had handed the joint back before they mounted, and Kevin puffed on it unthinking as he labored, falling farther and farther behind. “Wait up!” he called, coughing. “Wait up, wait up, wait up!” 31

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. Eddie and Mike disappeared round a bend in the road. Kevin dismounted sloppily and fell on his butt with a jarring of his tailbone, tears squeezing between his eyelids. Every few gasps he automatically and unconsciously took another hit off the joint until it burned his fingertips. Cursing his gnawing stomach and inconsiderate friends, he remounted and forced himself sobbing up the grade. Finally he made out a cluster of buildings a hundred yards distant. At the cluster’s far end was a liquor store with his friends’ bicycles thrown down hurriedly in front. As he rode toward the store he saw Mike and Eddie emerge with their hands and mouths full. He coasted up, braked cleanly, stood his bike on its kickstand with care and pride. Kevin sauntered past his companions without acknowledgment, entered the store with the civility it was due. Once inside he made a dash for the pastries, grabbed a package containing two chocolatefrosted cupcakes and a package of orange-frosted. His eyes fell on a third, untried flavor: wild cherry! Three packages was going way overboard. But Kevin, through Eddie’s New World tutelage, had learned to be disdainful of prejudicial behavior, and could therefore summon the inner strength to avoid favoritism in matters regarding race, creed, or artificial flavor. As he scooped up the wild cherry-frosted, retaining all three flavors, he peripherally noticed something unbelievable: bananafrosted! With freaking sprinkles, for Christ’s sake! Kevin didn’t hesitate. He snatched it in trade for the wild cherry-frosted and made his way crab-wise down the aisle, seizing a package of cheese puffs, a package of corn chips, and a large bag of cashews, piling all the articles in the crook of his left arm. Another customer stood in his way, but Kevin, wholly preoccupied, shuffled right into him. The man, struck from behind, turned and was about to give vent to his indignation when he saw the saliva at the corners of the boy’s mouth, the blood-gorged eyes, the slack face. He meekly stepped aside. “Pardon me.” Kevin looked over the deli section excitedly, picked out a ham and cheese sandwich and a cold Fat Boy sandwich. From the freezer he plucked a drumstick and an ice cream sandwich, tasting each item in his mind. He would need something to wash all this down, so he snapped up, in a munchies mini-seizure, a quart carton of chocolate-flavored milk. For dessert he grabbed a large box of chocolate chip cookies. At last he realized he was getting carried away, and turned back by an effort of will. On his way to the counter he guiltily reclaimed the forsaken package of wild cherry-frosted cupcakes. He laid it all on the counter and stepped to the candies rack, selected six candy bars for quick energy, and returned to the counter, where he obtained two sticks of beef jerky for the stamina he’d need on the road. And suddenly he was riveted, gawking at a jar of plump dill pickles floating in vinegar, like the bloated arms and legs of creatures in the formaldehyde of science class. That took care of his willpower. Kevin ordered three from the clerk. When the man had rung it all up he gave the boy only a few small coins in exchange for a twenty dollar bill. Kevin swiped his sackful of goodies and immediately stalked out, his tongue orgasming, his hand already digging in the bag. Mike and Eddie were involved in a belching contest, sitting happily propped against the store’s wall. Eddie turned his head to belch in Kevin’s ear as Kevin sat, ripping the cellophane cover off the ham and cheese sandwich with his teeth. Eddie’s grinning face was a mass of yellowish whipped cream from the nose down. Kevin very nearly got the entire sandwich in his mouth with one bite, leaving only a corner between fingertips and thumb. He quickly champed the mouthful, his face impossibly contorted. As soon as he could make room he crammed in the neglected corner, then ripped open the milk carton with his right hand while his left tore free the banana-frosted cupcakes. Kevin swallowed with a huge sigh, just as Mike belched in his other ear. Paying no attention, he tilted back his head and poured down a third of the quart carton of chocolate-flavored milk. Kevin set the carton between his knees 32

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. and sat like a feasting king, a banana-frosted cupcake pinched in his poised left paw, a dill pickle gripped obscenely in his right. After a huge gulp of air, he savagely chomped off half the pickle and darted his head cobra-wise to the waiting cupcake. When these were swallowed he shoved in the other half of the pickle, gnashed it dribbling, and tossed back his head to gulp a second third of the chocolate milk. With another great sigh he set the milk down, popped the other cupcake in his mouth, and feverishly tore open the ice cream sandwich wrapper. He got half in one bite, but the damned thing was cold and hurt his teeth, so he set the uneaten half down and grabbed the drumstick. That was cold and hurt his teeth too, but he devoured it gamely and followed with the other half of the ice cream sandwich, the cashews, and the chocolate chip cookies. Heaving another sigh, he started on the chocolate-frosted cupcakes. Mike and Eddie had been watching all this with amazement and cheering camaraderie, and now accompanied his efforts with elongated stereo belches and raspberries. Kevin shoved down the chocolate-frosted cupcakes and began on the Fat Boy sandwich. He was slowing a bit now, and sweat was crawling on his cheeks and forehead. Somehow he got the whole sandwich down. Chest heaving, he started on a second pickle. He wasn’t at all hungry anymore, but the marijuana and his companions continued to urge him on. With difficulty he crammed down a candy bar, the orangefrosted cupcakes, and his last dill pickle. He let his head fall back sluggishly, and with cheers and belches in his ears carefully sipped the last of the milk. “Hoo . . . ray!” Mike’s voice was a spike in his brain. “Well done, Kevin old chump.” “Yea!” Eddie cried. “Well, now that everybody’s done, let’s get going.” “Wait!” Kevin managed. Gimme a break, willya?” “Aw, why do you always gotta slow us down?” “Yeah, Kevin, you got what you wanted, so what’re you griping about now?” Kevin turned his heavy head in Eddie’s direction. “I—I feel kinda sick.” “Serves you right,” Mike sneered, “piggy.” Kevin whirled on him. Before he could rebuke the boy he felt his gut react. In a minute he whispered, “Don’t call me ‘piggy’.” “Okay, fatso. Let’s get going, darn it!” “Right on!” They picked up their bikes. “Wait!” “We waited!” “Let’s smoke—” Kevin blurped, “let’s smoke a—let’s smoke a joint first.” “C’mon, porkface!” Mike said hotly, still trying to provoke Kevin. “How long’s your stash gonna last at this rate?” “Yeah, Kevin. We already smoked three.” “Let him sit there feeling sorry for himself. He can catch up with us later.” “No! Wait!” Too late, they were already riding away. Gasping, Kevin forced himself to his feet, grabbed his bag of goodies and followed. Each inhalation was a sob, each exhalation a moan. He had to walk his bike back to Sunset, but it was quite an improvement coasting down the boulevard. Right away he began to feel better, so he wolfed down a couple of candy bars and the wild cherry-frosted cupcakes to make the bag more manageable. His friends were far ahead, but weren’t riding so hard now, occasionally looking back to make sure he was still behind. Once they were on the highway, Kevin, for some reason feeling almost well again, made steady progress in narrowing the gap. Hating himself, he gobbled down the beef jerky and candy bars he’d planned on saving. The corn chips and cheese puffs quickly followed course, and at long last he was gripping an empty bag. As if cued, thirst descended with a terrible intensity. He shed his heavy 33

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. plaid Pendleton shirt and left his back naked to the sun. Try as he would, he always found himself lagging. Mike and Eddie seemed to be equipped with boundless zeal, and were forever calling back, scoffing at his efforts. Kevin didn’t admire them for their energy; he despised them for it, and wished they could for but a moment share his aching weariness. Time and again they would wait for him to catch up, and just when he thought it was time for a blessed break they would ride off in renewed spurts of joyful abandon. Exhaustion wasn’t Kevin’s only gripe: his stomach was freaking out over the sugary feast. The periods of calm grew less frequent, the discomfort more intense. The pain was very real, and could only be relieved by short, dangerously vehement bursts of posterior wind. On the verge of tears, he threw himself into the Herculean task of barely dragging along. What Kevin wanted now was a roughly straight road with some measure of consistency, but the highway snaked nauseatingly. Veer to the left, veer to the right, veer to the left, veer to the right. The caution signs alongside the highway didn’t help any. ROUGH ROAD. FALLING ROCK. SLIDE AREA. And veer to the left, veer to the right . . . the ordeal through Malibu seemed to take forever. And after Malibu the highway cut inland, with miles and miles of virtually featureless road. He’d lost all track of time and distance. Surely they had covered a hundred miles, in what must have been hours. But there was no appreciable change in the road, and the sun was still high in the breathtaking June sky. He had to struggle back into his shirt when the rays became too painful. At last the highway cut back to the beach. After a few more miles the coastline became ragged, the pretty beaches swiftly giving way to a world of growing desolation. Not far offshore, great mounds of rock rose amid the gentle wavelets like humpbacked whales, colonies of seaweed drifted listlessly. But the haunting beauty only added to his misery. What he wanted was a soft clean beach peppered with deck chairs and restrooms. Perhaps half a mile ahead, Mike and Eddie had stopped to patronize a catering truck serving motorists at a popular scenic turnout. They were thirsty. With a paroxysm of intent, Kevin forced himself to speed to a crawl, realizing the break had at last arrived. When he pulled up his friends were engaged in a light-hearted battle, using the crushed ice from their soft drinks for ammunition. They pelted Kevin as he wobbled up. He cursed feebly and dropped his bike, collapsed on his sunburned back with a shudder. New waves of nausea shook him like a dog. He closed his eyes at a sudden furious stab of intestinal pain, carefully counted to ten, then to a hundred. Gradually the pain diminished. “Hey, Kevin!” Mike called. “Wake up! Whatcha say we smoke a joint?” Kevin sat up slowly, swallowed, felt better. He gave the bag of marijuana to Mike. “Here. You roll one.” “Whatsamatter? I thought you were the one all gung-ho about getting out and roughing it.” “Yeah,” Eddie piped, “we barely get under way and first thing you do is lay down and pass out.” “I wasn’t crashed,” Kevin rejoined sourly, “I was trying to meditate.” And again came the stab of pain, this time really ferocious. His heart skipped a beat, the world went black. When he opened his eyes the pain had vanished quickly as it came, and there was sweat or tears rolling down the sides of his nose. He peeled off his heavy shirt and stuffed it inside his sleeping roll. Mike roared with laughter at Kevin’s pink corpulence, but the stout boy took it with clenched teeth and wincing calm. When he was sleek and tanned he was going to make Mike regret his laughter. Mike swiftly rolled and lit a joint. Kevin held in each draw long as he could, wanting to get as high as possible. When his thoughts were reeling he commended the remedy, feeling an elevation in spirit. But his mouth was dry as the moon. 34

Carnival Good Dogs, Inc. “What’re you guys drinking?” “So-so Soda,” Eddie said with an impish grin, his eyes red and pinched. “Sounds good. Think I’ll get one.” He stood up stiffly. “Don’t eat the truck,” Mike said, “tubby.” He snickered. Mike’s snickering made Eddie titter, and this seemed to touch off a fit of giggling between them. “I don’t think it’s so funny!” Kevin shot back, causing an upsurge of laughter. The storm mounted and mounted until both boys were rolling with uncontrollable mirth. “Fuck you guys!” Kevin spat. “I’m not smoking any more pot with you if you can’t hold it, dig? Only kids get the giggles!” But this only served to redouble their laughter, and Kevin turned away from their roaring, tear-streaked faces with absolute contempt. As he walked to the truck he chuckled, shaking his head. A laugh forced itself up like a belch, but he closed his mouth to contain it. The laugh found its way out his nostrils with a burning explosion. “What’s the joke? Let me in on it.” Kevin looked up to see an Italian couple looking down lugubriously from inside the huge catering truck. His grin dissolved. What joke where? The man sighed. “Can I help you?” “Let me have a So-so Soda,” Kevin mumbled, certain he was the butt of the couple’s private jest. He drew himself erect. “Just,” he said assertively, “just let me have a So-so Soda. Large.” “Sorry. Never heard of it. We carry cola, orange, and root beer only.” Kevin darkened. Okay. If they were going to have fun at his expense, he’d just play along and frustrate their little joke with an air of unflappability. “All right. A large cola then.” “Anything to eat?” A nasty taste welled under his tongue at the mention of food, his stomach lining shimmied. The marijuana muse leaned close to whisper in his ear, and the boy’s eyes went blank. Immediately his salivary glands got to work. His eyes refocused. “How’s . . .” he croaked, trying to sound nonchalant, “how’s the chow here, anyway?” The man shrugged. “So-so.” He yawned, revealing a mouthful of silver-capped ivory posts. “There’s a menu to your left.” Kevin ran his eyes down the list with escalating unrest. He stepped back under the morosely yawning man and his grease-spattered wife. “Let me just get a steak sandwich on rye, with plenty of kraut, onions, dill, and mustard. And an order of chili fries.” His stomach stabbed warningly, but he hushed it with promises of slow ingestion. He threw a glance back at the menu. “And a hot frosted blueberry turnover with cheese, a frozen chocolate banana, and a couple of those sugarberry fruit ‘n’ nut crème-filled twists. Make that three. And a caramel-swirl apple, please, and a double marshmallow malt.” When he’d paid he rejoined his friends with a nagging conscience and pounding heart. Kevin angrily squelched his guilt. This trip was turning out to be a real chore and a drag, and, damn it, he’d might as well dredge what creature comforts he could from it. Closing his mind to it all, he sat down and began to stuff his face.

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Chapter 3 Suffering Synapses “Hang on!” Kevin bleated, doubling over in agony on the toilet seat. “For Pete’s sake, hang on!” His gut was a raging fumarole, heaving violently, swelling with gas. The pressure built up in his lower intestine until he thought he’d die. He gritted his teeth, whined, “Mom!” and let the tears breach his eyelids. The utterance was instinctive; he wouldn’t have wished his mother’s intrusion on his worst enemy. Speaking of whom, he now heard Mike outside, calling, “You’ve always gotta slow us down!” “Hang on,” he whimpered. “Oh, hang on!” The phrase was repeated in a gasping decrescendo, as much to himself as to Mike, as Kevin fought to marshal his stammering consciousness. His rectum swelled and shriveled like a balloon at the lips of a colossus, gas flared in his colon as the pressure skyrocketed, plunged, rose again. With each attack his mind went blank, his eyes rolled, his heart hammered so hard it seemed to be located in his skull. Just when he was sure the awful pressure would claim him, he spurted a long vile stream of stinking lava, which splashed back up to spatter the twin straining moons of his sunken rump. “Oh my God,” he cried, and caught his breath for the next wave. There were giant hands in there, squeezing, punching; punishing his colon with the brutal precision of an enraged masseur. At last came the acme of all possible agonies. Those hands twisted Kevin’s poor gut until he nearly fainted with the strain. Sweat trickled from every pore, the walls of the tiny outhouse approached and receded. For a terrifying instant he was certain his heart had stopped. And then the screaming began. Kevin sat with his head buried between his knees and his hands clasped behind his neck, sobbing as wave after wave of fuming excrement spewed from the mouth of hell. “Would you hurry up!” Mike shrieked. Mike’s only answer was a string of splats and plops and gurgles and squirts, sounds he took as clever lips-repartee. Mike stooped and grabbed a large pebble off the sand, hurled it with accuracy at 36

Carnival Suffering Synapses ear-level on the outhouse. Warming to this activity, he began firing anything he could find—Coke bottles, driftwood, shells—until Eddie asked him to stop. Inside, Kevin sat with head on knees, breathing slowly as his body went about the business of repairs, his mind rolling (little white corpuscle plumbers with hardhats and wrenches speeding to the rescue) in slow fever. He wished, not for the last time, that Mike and Eddie—especially Mike—could share in the rotten breaks. But maybe their numbers were just waiting to come up. Maybe the worm would turn. A tremor rattled his frame and he wondered—but no; the damage was reparable. Yet it felt really bad down there, no getting around it, like he’d been ravished by a hot poker, and the least movement instantly created a wild prominence. So he sat. He moaned over his rashness, and for the first time seriously considered the energy and grit required in covering almost four hundred miles in what looked to be the hottest part of this summer. San Francisco had lost much of its appeal already, and so had the Movement. All these bum trips and bad vibes hadn’t been included in the trek’s master plan; it was supposed to be nothing but fun and games, smooth sailing all the way. Well, it was a lesson learned well. He nodded ruefully and swallowed. No more munchies orgies; it was that simple. He didn’t for a second blame the grass in any way. Right now, as he gazed vacuously at the door’s equestrian Teamsters logo, he was thinking about how a good fat joint would do wonders to numb the pain. And not only the physical pain. If the embarrassment he was suffering here—in a tiny outhouse just south of Camarillo—was indicative of things to come, perhaps it was time to begin downgrading his expectations. These outhouses are not renowned for their fragrance, and with the added pall of Kevin’s performance the little pocket of stench had become unbearable. Kevin groaned and got to his feet, cursing feebly as he dabbed at his bespattered cheeks with the rough industrial tissue. Cleaning between them was a very dainty and agonizing operation, involving a grimacing tap dance with breath held. Sensitivity was so great the tissue felt like the coarsest of sandpapers. When at last the ordeal was over he slouched and listened to his vital processes. He could still breathe, albeit with revulsion in this malodorous cell. He wiped the tears from his face, pulled up his Levis carefully, unlatched the door and moved outside with the tiny feeler-steps of an invalid. His friends recoiled as he approached. “Whew!” Eddie laughed, making a sour face and fanning the air in front of his nose. “You smell like a cesspool.” “What’d you do,” Mike pushed, “wipe with your shirt?” “It’s not funny,” Kevin whispered. “I’ve never been so sick.” “Serves you right, scarfhound,” Mike said nastily. Kevin tried to take the hard words in stride; he was too weak to retaliate. Someday he would give Mike a lesson in manners, but right now it was all he could do to say, “Be cool, man. It was worse than you think. I could’ve died in there.” “Yeah!” Mike said, grinning. “And we could’ve donated your body to science fiction.” Eddie laughed and glanced at his friend’s hindquarters meaningfully. “It doesn’t look like you ran fast enough, Kevin.” “Where?” Kevin tried to turn around far enough to search his pants’ seat for stains. They roared with laughter at his gullibility and ran off whooping. Kevin chased them with clenched fists. “Okay,” he puffed, “okay.” He held up a hand and stood panting, drained. The fat boy grinned, butt of the joke. “You win.” His friends hopped on their bikes like eager little frogs. “So let’s go!” Eddie shouted. “Wait! I mean, really. Gimme a minute, willya? Look at me, man; I’m in no condition to just 37

Carnival Suffering Synapses jump up and take off. How d’you expect me to ride after what I just went through?” “Quit your bitching!” Mike said with venom; the boy on the dark steed. “We’ve waited long enough!” And they were pedaling away just as fast as they could. Kevin followed grudgingly, muttering as he rode, but it was a long while and many a mile before he ventured to make use of his bicycle’s seat. Soon his back and shoulders were smarting with sunburn. He put his shirt on, and the scratchiness was added misery. He took it off and mopped his brow with one of the sleeves. He had to think of other things than his pain or he’d go mad. But the moment he allowed his mind to dwell on the day his thoughts zoomed onto the young woman at Perky’s house, zeroing in on her cleavage like a homing pigeon. He was ashamed to think of her this way, but it couldn’t be helped. He could only visualize her from the neck down, hearing her voice rambling in dreamy, indecipherable tones from just above the image. He figured she was yet at Perky’s, lonely and hurt, perhaps this very moment thinking of him and wishing he would fly to her side. A heavy gloom absorbed him as he relived the sequence of events leading to their meeting on the anteroom couch. Kevin wished to God he could do it all over again, this time with a bit of foresight. And so several fantasies entertained him as the miles passed and the sun dipped to the horizon. In one of these daydreams he coolly and expertly trounced the mustached bully while the raven-haired girl watched limply, at last collapsing into Kevin’s magnificently muscled arms with a sigh of yearning. But when time came for his reward the fantasy stumbled on nerveless feet. He could not visualize taking the girl, for thinking of heaving bodies and lusty breathing somehow only desecrated the fabricated altar. He prayed it wasn’t some personal “sexual failing”, and began to feel this imagined inadequacy was letting down his fantasy and, by extension, letting down the ravenhaired girl. He fought to overcome the flaccidity of his psyche; tried to stir up swashbuckling, libidinous images of her conquest. The images came with a vividness he hadn’t expected. He saw himself sinking with her on the couch, the casually tucked hem of her cheap cotton shirt popping free, the shirt peeling away from her chest to reveal—but no, the reward was simply too boggling: those awesome headlights bursting forth with jack-in-the-box resilience, their firm round peaks, as on a mannequin, mysteriously devoid of nipples, jiggling and oscillating, growing up round his ears and snaring his head to draw it deeper into ecstasy. Kevin’s breathing grew shallower as his entire attention focused inward. His legs pumped harder, and he was soon caught up with his friends. “Hey!” Mike shouted as the heavy boy hurtled by. He and Eddie struggled to catch up. Kevin slowed and looked back with an embarrassed half-smile, his thoughts still damp and sticky. “If you wanted to race,” Eddie said with a grin, “why didn’t you say so?” He poked his skinny haunches high, ready to jackrabbit away. “Betcha I can beatcha round that bend.” “Boy, are you fast,” Mike said sarcastically, meaning: if low man was ready to make his move, then just maybe it was time for top dog to show some teeth. “I guess you’re a lot lighter with all that shit out of you.” “Sometimes,” Kevin said lamely, “I like to really haul-ass.” He abruptly changed the subject, reaching back a hand to tenderly consult his back. It felt like he’d been flogged. “You’ll cool off pretty quick,” Eddie remarked sympathetically. “The sun’s going down.” He peeked at his watch. “Must be around seven o’clock. Gee, look, Point Mugu. Do you guys realize we’ve gone almost fifty miles?” “Wow.” “Wow.” Getting through Ventura meant negotiating miles of freeway-like road that left the ocean cut off from view by hills and alfalfa fields. Whenever possible the boys followed the scenic drives 38

Carnival Suffering Synapses provided for motorists with romance on their minds and time on their hands. In such situations it was Mike who prevented his companions from lagging, and thus falling behind schedule. “C’mon, you pussies!” he would scream. “We’ve got to ride! What are you guys, anyway—people, or tourists?” Kevin and Eddie would gladly have stopped every few miles to admire the beauty of the coastline as the warm summer breeze blew through their hearts, just as it must have stirred the first Franciscan missionaries to discover salt air could be so sweet. They found the San Buenaventura scenic drive particularly enchanting. It’s easy to forget your gripes around such loveliness. After another hour of riding, the velvety beach degenerated to heaped rocks of all sizes, and only occasional dabs of sand. The scene took on a primitive, lost look, like the savage coastline of another planet. The swells writhed with reflected light. Shadows grew solid and grim. The sun, a furious red ball, was truncated, was composed, by the sea. And, from out of nowhere, the fog came rolling in. Like a vast preying fungus it was suddenly everywhere, dampening their clothes and blotting the dying sun. It was incredibly swift and thorough, and it surprised the boys and made them a bit uneasy. One moment they had been following the coast in warm late afternoon sunshine, and all at once the world was a dreary, dismal place, the waves had grown choppy, and a buoy, somewhere out in that soggy blight, was lonesomely clanging its funereal bell. “Kee-rist!” Mike said. “What is this? The end of the world?” “Might as well be,” Kevin mumbled, shivering of a sudden. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not riding in this bullshit.” Mike scowled and thrust forward his torso in the ages-old posture of challenge. “Oh, you were just praying for an excuse to stop, man, so why don’t you just face it and quit blaming it on the weather? You’re just lazy; no wonder you’re so fat.” “Not either!” Kevin retorted, incensed at being called fat and lazy, snarling at the look of vicious delight darkening Mike’s face. “I’m just cold. You would be too, if you had the brains to know better . . . faggot.” “Who’s a faggot!” Mike cried, and slapped Kevin on the sorest part of his sunburn. He rode off laughing, with Kevin in hot cursing pursuit. There was a narrow, longish spit of beach between the piles of rock Mike was making for, laughing over his shoulder. Kevin, who was laughing too by now, forsook the chase when Mike picked up his bicycle and clambered over the rocks to the sand. Kevin waited breathlessly for Eddie. The two picked their way down carefully. “Hey, guys!” Mike called up. “This is a neat place to camp. There’s nobody here!” The fog was now so dense they could hardly see him. “Yeah,” Kevin disagreed, “if the tide doesn’t come in and drown us in our sleep.” “Don’t worry,” Eddie said, “you can see the high tide marks on the sand. If we crash right up next to the rocks we’re cool.” “Well, far out then.” Kevin rubbed his palms together. “Let’s cook up some roast beef hash and some beans and some cocoa.” He shivered again, gingerly pulled on the scratchy shirt. “It’s getting cold anyway. A fire would be right-on.” They split up to find firewood and met back by their bikes in ten minutes. Mike had discovered a salt-eaten apple crate and some not-too-damp newspaper. Kevin and Eddie each contributed armloads of small branches from the stunted bushes on the highway’s other side. And Mike had made an exciting discovery: about sixty yards down, just a darker haze within the fog, an odd-looking man was sitting solo. “He’s just sitting there,” Mike sputtered, “looking out to sea. He’s not dead, ’cause I seen him 39

Carnival Suffering Synapses scratching his self.” “Where’d he come from?” Kevin wondered. “What’s he doing there?” “How should I know?” Mike snapped, looking as though he would spit on Kevin. “Crawled outta the rocks for all I know. Why don’t you go ask him?” Kevin shook his head vigorously. “Uh-uh.” “You, Eddie?” “Not me!” “You’re both a bunch of chickenshits, man! And you guys always talking so rowdy about what great adventurers you are.” “Well then you go ask him,” Eddie retorted, “bigmouth.” “Let’s eat first,” Kevin suggested, desperately. Eddie, who was nearly as apprehensive, said, “I’m hip to that idea.” It was rapidly darkening. All Kevin wanted to do was eat and clear out of here quietly as possible. The stranger—if Mike wasn’t making this all up—was clearly a mental case. And then they were lost in the thrill of starting and feeding the fire, and Mike’s Crazy Man was gradually filtered from their conversation. But Kevin’s eyes, as he ate his cold beans and warmed hash, were ever and again surveying the beach, and now he was sure he could see a skinny man sitting motionlessly on the sand. Kevin felt a chill. In the fog the skinny man looked like a huge famished wharf rat, regarding the boys with sunken eyes and whiskers tensed. Kevin thought he caught one brief, fuzzy impression of the man with his head cocked, as if listening, calculating. He almost choked on his beans when he saw the campfire’s light reflected off the stranger’s questing eye. It seemed the meal lasted but a minute, and already they were talking about him again. “Let’s go rap with that guy. Maybe he’s hungry.” Eddie spread his hands. “We only had the hash and the beans. Remember?” “That’s right,” Kevin groaned, hoping to change the subject. “No breakfast tomorrow.” “Tough shit all around,” Mike said. “Come on, let’s go check out that guy.” He and Eddie stood. “Wait!” Kevin said. Mike sneered. “You really are chicken.” “No, I just wanna get high first. Let’s smoke a joint.” “Yeah,” Eddie said with relief, “that sounds cool to me.” Outvoted again, Mike consented grumblingly. He muttered on about sissies and slowpokes, but sucked deeply on the smoke. Again, it seemed to take only a moment for the joint to pass round thrice. “That was dynamite,” Mike said. “Now . . . let’s . . . go . . . check . . . out . . . that . . . guy!” “Wait!” Kevin said. He was really high now. Sounds were oddly muffled, absorbing. The waves exploded in B flat, were sucked back in F minor; the wind whisked and whoosked; the noise of the occasional passing car was like that of a huge cruising wasp, the headlight beams like systematic searchlights. “Now what?” Mike screamed. “Just one more joint,” Kevin said, his voice sounding, to him, alarmingly like his mother’s. “I already got it rolled.” “That’s an offer I can’t refuse,” Eddie gabbled. “Fire ’er up!” An asinine grin was smeared across his face. His eyes were crimson slits, his hair tousled. He hugged himself and shivered with cold and anticipation. 40

Carnival Suffering Synapses This cigarette took longer, and Kevin had to hang through a lengthy fit of hacking and gasping. When the smoke was finished his eyes were even redder than Eddie’s, and tears covered his cheeks. His mind went blank, the night caved in, and then he was somehow walking dazedly with his friends, and they were approaching the fogbound stranger like travelers from another dimension, materializing out of nothingness onto the haunted coast of a parallel world. They wouldn’t have been surprised to see the long neck of a sea monster appear dripping at water’s edge. “What’s happening?” Mike called in tentative greeting. The sitting figure turned his head and smiled approvingly, as if all four were accustomed to meeting here each night, sipping hot cocoa and throwing morsels of sweet Danish for bashful sea serpents. The rodent features were now in hideous focus: a dark body practically covered with coarse brown hair, thin claw-like hands and feet, large blank eyes, a wiry beard and frayed moustache. The mouth was starved and thin-lipped, the nose long and sharp. He was wearing only cutoff blue jeans, and his body was so wasted, with its chicken breast and distended stomach, that Kevin’s fears vanished immediately. This guy looked like he lived off sea anemones and slow sparrows. So where there was physical repulsion at least there was no threat of physical danger. “Sit down, sit down,” said the stranger, patting the sand to his left. A few rags of clothing were in a pile behind him. The boys sat, feigning relaxation. “You sure we’re not disturbing you?” Kevin asked. “We’re going to Frisco,” Eddie burst out from sheer nervousness. “To Haight-Ashbury. On our bikes. To join the Movement. I mean we’re already in the Movement, but we’re moving. From Santa Monica, I mean. To Frisco.” “There’s only one movement in San Francisco,” the stranger said excitedly. “I’ve seen it on the piers, I’ve seen it downtown, I’ve seen it in the Panhandle. And that’s the movement of Blessed Jesus the Holy Spirit.” The boys froze, staring at one another uncertainly. “Well,” said Mike, “got to get back and keep the fire up. Nice to meet you and so forth.” “Yeah, catch you later,” said Eddie. He sniggered. “Don’t catch cold.” But Kevin said, “I think I’ll stay here a bit and rap.” The Panhandle, as they all knew, was an extension of Golden Gate Park, and here was a chance for first-hand news. His friends gawked at him. Mike smirked with unconcealed hostility. They walked off laughing, the foggy darkness soaking up their retreating forms like a sponge. “God bless you!” the stranger called after them. “Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you!” He whirled on Kevin. “Jesus can save you. Jesus can show you the way.” “Right,” Kevin said quickly. “But I just wanted to ask you about the city. Like, how’s the Movement, you know, the hippie movement, working out?” The stranger shook his head, and for a moment sobered. “Just a word, brother. Don’t be calling the Haight ‘the City’. People up there don’t go in for neology, they go in for theology. And they don’t like being called hippies. That’s like ‘nigger’.” Kevin cocked an eyebrow. “The Haight,” he mumbled. “The Haight.” He was learning fast. “And it’s Utopia,” he prompted, “right?” “Utopia? It’s Heaven, brother, Heaven! God’s kingdom on Earth, the Lord’s—” “But what I mean is,” Kevin broke in, “I mean besides all that religious stuff, how are the people? Everybody’s turned on, right? Everybody gets high?” “Everybody’s turned on to Jesus, brother, to Jesus! To the one and only Son. Everybody gets high on Christ the Lord Jesus. Glory in Christ, and hallelujah! Hallelujah!” “Okay. Okay. But what about dope? What about drugs, I mean.” 41

Carnival Suffering Synapses “Nobody needs narcotics, man. God’s children weren’t placed on the world to put impurities in their bodies. There’s only one drug, and that’s Sweet Jesus Himself. I was like you: I was young and confused and hung up on all my problems, problems too great for me to bear.” “I’m not confused.” “But Sweet Jesus of Nazareth lifted my burden and lightened my heart with Divine Light. The light of God! I said, ‘I can’t go on! I’ve had it!’ and Jesus came down to help me with my load. Praise Jesus! Praise Jesus! Praise Jesus! Man, it was intense. His eyes were blue as the sky, and filled with tears as he looked down on me. Read your Bible: For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. There! What does that tell you? It tells you if you deny the one true God—not the god of the pagans, not the god of craven images, but the one and only Savior Himself—it means you’re a sinner, and it means Almighty Jesus will laugh as your eternal soul fries and rots in Hell!” Kevin frowned at this. It’s no great trick to see through these people; they’re obviously all willing dupes, extras on the ever-evolving set of mankind’s most elaborately contrived fantasy. The point it, as anybody should be able to see: these Jesus freaks, these born-again just-converted amateur holy rollers, are losers from the word GO. Christianity, to those with nowhere left to turn, is irresistible. Free security and direction and society for those too paranoid, aimless, or boring to satisfy these deep human needs any other way. Religion was an issue Kevin religiously avoided, but when it was being stuffed down his throat he couldn’t help taking a stand. So now he squared his shoulders, cocked back his head, and boldly said: “Anybody who would make some guy who’s all cut up carry his shit around for him has no right to tell me I’m a sinner!” The stranger stared, shaking his head incredulously. “Lookit me, man!” He thrust out his wasted arms. “For six years I lived in a scummy tenement with nine other speed freaks, fighting over syringes, sleeping on the trash pile in the boiler room. The Feds were on my ass, my old lady was pregnant, and the both of us had hepatitis, crabs, and the clap. There wasn’t nothing left to live for and no way out of that hole. And then one day, one day when I was slumped across the shitter with my outfit in my hand, man, and trying to get a register from that collapsed old vein, I said one day brother, when it looked like I was heading for the Big Flush—brother, I looked up at that leaky ceiling and I saw God Almighty Himself. God who wasn’t too high and mighty to take the time to try to save a poor burnt-out pissant like me. And He said to me, ‘My child, do you repent of your sins and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior? Do you hold any gods sacred above the one and only True God?’ And I said, ‘Man, I’m freaking out. I gotta be over-amped. This is it!’ Like you, I didn’t believe it at first. I thought I was rushing to the max. And He told me I wasn’t hearing things, and that if I wanted to save myself I’d better get my ass down on the floor PDQ and let Him know I meant it. And brother, that’s just what I did. I got down on my knees at the base of that commode and accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. And I threw away my works right then and there, and Jesus came down and held my hand and told me He loved me. Man, it blew my mind! I changed my whole scene just like that! I went out to spread the Word of Love to all my brothers.” “Love,” Kevin echoed. “That’s what I’m looking for in San Francisco. A different kind of love. A love that has everybody grooving together, stoking their heads on hashish and trying to win the world back from the Government. Y’know, 1984 isn’t so far away. You can’t win a revolution with religious love; it takes passive resistance.” “Oh, man. It makes me so sad to hear that! God is love! God is my sunshine, God is my lifeline. God is my guru and my goaltender. God is my helicopter, man, and God is my teleprompter. All you gotta do is admit you’re a sinner and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your healer.” 42

Carnival Suffering Synapses “I’m not a sinner.” “You’re sinning if you’re living without Christ. We’re all born in sin.” “And you—you’re not a sinner, huh? You’re special?” “Born in sin. Born in sin. I said we’re all born sinners, man, but we can be saved. Look at me. God has lighted my life!” He gave Kevin a used car salesman’s smile full of teeth like stalactites before pounding a gnarly fist on his palm. “I was a sinner in God’s eyes and a loser in my own! Jesus showed me the way! Jesus showed me the way! Jesus gave me His breath, His faith, and His body. He gave me His life, man!” “Super!” Kevin snorted. “That’s all just really bitchen . . . for you. But it’s like I gotta get it on in the real world, you dig? Look—” “No, you look! You think I’m just making idle conversation here? This is first-class wisdom you’re getting, buddy, and you oughta be grateful. You want some real-world advice, is that it? Okay then, man; okay, you got it.” He placed one hand over his eyes and the other over his heart. “Beware of men with moustaches,” he droned. “A moustache is a proof of vanity, and vanity is woman’s province. Therefore, if you’re ever in the same gym showers with a guy wearing a moustache and you happen to drop the soap, never retrieve it in a bent-at-the-waist posture while facing away. You’ve been warned. And,” he said bitterly, “never smile for a photographer! If you’re ever accused of, oh, say . . . ripping off parishioners while posing as a minister, and the newspaper features a picture of you smiling it’ll look like you enjoy bamboozling people. Then again, if you don’t smile people’ll think you’re really a prick, and therefore likely guilty. Always pose beatifically, with your eyes raised heavenward and an expression of grudgeless suffering. Remember, innocence is a word coined by the guilty. What else? Oh yeah, don’t eat stuff out of a dumpster if the seal’s broken on the package. And watch out for that guy who lives in the storm drain over on Seventh and Cranberry. He bites.” The stranger now placed his palms together. “So there you go. Now you got all you need to get through the real world. But what you really need, man, is wisdom. What you need is Christ.” “Listen,” Kevin said patiently, “I mean, no offense or anything, but everybody to his own trip, right? Me, my thing’s the Revolution, and you, your thing’s religion. Okay. All I wanted to know was, like, how are the chicks up in the . . . Haight, and are they into the Movement and Free Love, and are they as friendly as the rumors say they are? What I mean is, you know, do they put out?” “They put out for Jesus, man, for Jesus! I’m not making myself clear? I’m not speaking loud enough? For Jesus. They are Sacred Sisters and are one under Christ.” “That’s not—” “For Jesus, man. Jesus. J-E-S-U-S! Jesus the Son. Jesus the Christ. Jesus! Jesus Christ!” “Well I . . . I guess I’d better be getting back. My partners’ll be wondering.” “Jesus died for you, brother! He died for you.” “Anyway, it’s getting cold.” “Read your Bible: Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? Think about it.” “I,” Kevin said contemptuously, a parting thrust, “don’t need a Bible.” Quick as a flash the stranger whipped out a worn old coverless dog-eared Bible from his pile of clothes. His left hand snatched Kevin’s right wrist. The boy froze. “Look, I really have to get back,” he chattered. The hand was an iron talon. “When you have the warmth of Jesus in you . . . when you have the warmth.” “You know, time to roll up, time to hit the hay.” The stranger dropped the book onto his lap, flipped it open with his free hand. He tore at the leaves until he came to page one of Genesis. “In the beginning,” he quoted, and a wild pride came into his eyes, “God created the heaven and the Earth!” 43

Carnival Suffering Synapses Kevin groaned piteously. By the look of things, he was about to be read the entire Old Testament. But the harder he tried to pull away, the fiercer the stranger’s grip became. “You’re hurting me!” Although it should have been readily within Kevin’s power to break free of this scrawny man, the boy found himself suddenly paralyzed, and unable to think assertively. The steely fingers seemed to be siphoning blood from his brain, down his numbing arm to the relentless bite of those five inflexible leeches. His pulse hammered in protest. Now the stranger slapped shut the book and duplicated the hold on Kevin’s other wrist. “Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your healer and admit you’re a sinner?” He squeezed. “No, I just—owwW! You’re hurting me!” “Do you forgive men their trespasses? Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior?” He squeezed harder. “No!” Kevin howled. “I mean, yes! Yes, yes! But leggo my—yes! Eddie! Mike!” “Are you gonna remember the Sabbath Day? And keep it holy?” “Yes! Mike! Eddie!” Kevin’s hands were half-filled water balloons. He looked around wildly. “Do you beg mercy,” the stranger panted, “of the Lord your God in His infinite wisdom?” He clamped Kevin’s hands together and squeezed with all his strength, his teeth bared in a ferocious snarl, his head lolling feverishly. “Yes!” Kevin screamed. “Oh God, oh God, yes, yes!” “Blessed are the poor in spirit!” the stranger cried, his eyes rolling in their sockets. “Merciful Lord, bathe us in eternal light! Take this poor damned sinner in your heart that he may witness You also! Show him your Son! Show him . . . forgive his sins! Yes! Forgive his sins! Show him . . . show . . . show him—sweet . . . JE-sus!” On the penultimate syllable his head fell forward, his shriek fluttered down to a rasping sigh. After a minute he looked vaguely at Kevin, who was green, and released the boy’s wrists. He stared down at his own hands, then back at Kevin. “This—all this— everything’s cool. What I mean is, like, nothing personal, okay? No offense, man.” He searched through his pile of clothes and dug out a plain white business card with type in thick black italics covering most of its face. “I want you to come to our church. The address is down in the corner.” He scooped up his clothes, rose stiffly, and vanished in the fog. Kevin heard his bare feet slapping on the rocks as he climbed to the road. The boy stood and stumbled across the sand. He stopped and looked back, but all was foggy darkness. For a moment he felt it had all been a dream or hallucination; perhaps an effect produced by the eerily shifting curtains of mist during a particularly poignant pot high. And, if a dream, he must now be passing through the portal separating sleep and wakefulness. But things were getting darker and colder instead of lighter and warmer. Then positively black. After a while his mind cleared and he stood looking back, sluggishly trying to recapture the night. His face was bathed in sweat, he was wobbly at the knees. He grew aware of the soreness in his wrists, massaged them, rubbed his moist palms down his legs. He shuddered and listened. Nothing but the breaking of small waves. He used the sound of surf to find his way back to their campsite. The fire was out. Mike and Eddie lay shivering, asleep in their bags. Kevin sat on his sleeping roll and stared at nothing. Pensively, he pulled his notepad and a pen from an odds-and-ends sack he kept tucked in the roll. He looked out toward the sound of breakers, and after a minute began to write: jime wl hr i am up pas vnchru awn thu bch sumwaer jus groovn awn thu nit 2nit we gawt stond an i had u rap sshn with this gi hoo jus kam awl thu wa down frum sanfrans— 44

Carnival

Suffering Synapses

To hell with it, he thought, and crumpled the page. He climbed in his sleeping bag, tucked in his head, clasped his knees. Into the abyss of slumber he dropped like a stone.

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Chapter 4 Beach Blanket Bozo joon 29 1967 jime im sndn this frum u mlbawx in krpntreu if yoo look awn u map yool c thats olmos 70 milz nawt bad 4 u da an u hafs rid spnt thu nit awn thu bch gawt stond an prtd wut u trip howz thu lag btr i hop don fel 2 bad iv gawt u sunbrn an mix gawt kaf kramps an ed kawt u kold but thats kool iv rele tufnd up u lawt jime an thu sunbrn duznt bawthr me u bit im gunu hav u sooprtan bi thu tim we mak thu h8 did yoo dig that the h8 thats wut we kawl it up her nuthen much 2 rit ubowt rele its jus bin u konstunt prt good ppl good xrsiz good dop an ech pasen da brengz us that much klosr 2 paerudis wish yoo wr her wl thats awl 4 now jime tim 2 go rol unuthr joent trublz trublz tak it ez kevin Kevin opened the mailbox hatch carefully, slowly raised his other hand, released the letter. He let the hatch slam shut and took a deep breath before lowering his rigid arms an inch at a time. For a full minute he stood like a man of stone, eyes closed, sweat trickling down the back of his neck. The label on the salve’s container had promised cooling relief, but this hadn’t been the case for Kevin. He winced when his shirt, sticky with the stuff, clung to his chest and shoulders as he gently 46

Carnival Beach Blanket Bozo turned on his heel. Eddie, sitting slumped against the diner’s wall, called Kevin by name with the gasping decrescendo of delirium. The fat boy slowly opened his eyes. They’d made excellent time this morning, having quickly abandoned their chilly little beach for the warming exertions of the road. The previous day’s sickness left Kevin empty and irresolute, irritable and ill. But he was obsessed by sunburn. All morning he’d been silent and moody, answering Mike’s painfully abbreviated gibes with grunts and monosyllables. Having looked forward to this adventure as a gift from whatever gods watched over ambitious young revolutionaries, Kevin now saw those same gods deriving mischievous delight from rubbing his mortal nose in his enthusiasm. Yet this morning he’d never once allowed himself to lag. His bitterness had provided maleworthy, but very temporary, balls, pushing him all the way to this perpetually summery little community barely ten miles south of Santa Barbara. Eddie’s eyes were swollen, his jaw slack. Every few seconds he would sniffle and moan. Kevin, walking over stiffly, wondered again if Eddie had an allergy unknown to any of them. He was in pretty bad shape for a boy suffering a simple exposure cold. “Bike says your badgakes are ready,” Eddie said miserably, placing a hand over his eyes. When he removed the hand his fingers were wet with tears. “I ca’d ead eddythig righd dow.” Kevin nodded. “Thanks, Eddie. I wrote Jimmy you said Hi.” Eddie dropped his head in acknowledgment, but lacked the strength to haul it back up. “Why don’t you stay out here in the sun for a while, Eddie. It’ll do wonders for your cold.” Eddie, managing to half-raise his head, immediately let it fall backward and roll side to side against the diner’s wall, looking like a man undergoing intense interrogation. His entire body went limp. Kevin walked inside to join Mike at a window booth, asking heartily, “How’s the legs?” while seating himself with care. “Not so hot,” Mike grumbled. “Every time I walk it feels like my calves are tearing apart, and when I sit down they cramp.” An untouched bowl of cornflakes was on his side of the table. On Kevin’s side was a big plate of steaming buttermilk hotcakes with elderberries and chocolate whipped cream, a side dish of bacon and scrambled eggs smothered in tobasco, a plate of hash browns with chopped onion and chives, butter-drenched French toast topped by praline sprinkles and orange-mint marmalade, and a large glass of iced prune juice with lemon slices and maraschinos. “How about you?” Mike asked indifferently. “Ha!” Kevin barked. “A little sunburn. But you don’t see me bitching about it, do you? What’d you guys expect, a pleasure cruise? Figures I’d be stuck with a couple of crybabies.” It felt good to say that. Real good. He rubbed his hands vigorously, elbows held tightly against his ribs. “Well! This outdoor life sure brings out the appetite in a guy!” Mike glared, good and hard. “It sure brings out the bullshitter in a guy, too. Just you wait, hopalong. Next time you’re stuck crapping out your brains somewhere . . . just you wait.” Kevin chuckled lustily, but forced himself to eat slowly. When he’d finished he belched for effect, only half-satisfied. Mike still hadn’t touched his cereal. Kevin smiled tightly. “Don’t pout, sonny boy. Papa’s gonna burn one bad-ass doobie and fix you right up.” Mike wobbled to his feet like a newborn colt. Kevin tipped the waitress lavishly, then paid for both their meals. Mike wasn’t impressed; he knew a fool when he saw one. The boys rejoined Eddie, who hadn’t moved a muscle since Kevin’s departure. Only an occasional moan verified he was alive at all. Kevin’s mock gaiety grew oddly real as he considered the extent of Eddie’s and Mike’s compound misery. 47

Carnival Beach Blanket Bozo “A fine bunch of revolutionaries we are! Only one day gone and we’re all ready to throw in the towel!” He flashed a joint, cried, “To the Movement!” and fired it up with a flourish. “To Love and Peace and Good Dope and Heavy Sounds forever and ever and ever!” He took an enormous draw, handed it to Eddie. Eddie allowed his head to roll in Kevin’s direction. He peered at the reefer doubtfully, his eyes so watery and puffy he had to tilt back his head to see. The flesh around his nostrils was red and inflamed from constant furious sniffling; his lips rubbery and limp. He couldn’t decide whether a toke was worth the effort, so he just sat there; looking gloomily at the rising smoke, and at Kevin frozen in the awkward pose of leaning down with arm extended; eyes growing redder and redder as he held in the hit, comradely grin gradually dissolving to a tortured grimace, smoke escaping from his nostrils in tiny spurts. Finally Eddie poked out a trembling hand, accepted the cigarette and drew on it weakly. He held in the smoke for half a second before going all to pieces, hacking and retching and sneezing and drooling. Kevin simultaneously exhaled with an explosion nearly matching Eddie’s in fury. After a minute, when he’d caught his breath, he realized that the one elongated hit was all he’d need—he was already tripping. He looked at his friends dully, at a loss for words or action. Mike was hitting the joint now, and Kevin suddenly saw Mike as a frustrated enemy masquerading as a revolutionary for cheap thrills and the exploitation of their friendship. The insight passed instantly, and Mike became a scrawny boy getting high with his buddies; a third comrade, albeit an annoying one, on a journey that was to become a turning point in their lives. The background and boy became a cartoon, again became real. Kevin swiveled his gaze to the street. Cars were zipping around like ants. Dolllike humans were dotting a backdrop of cardboard houses painted in watercolors. He felt his eyes throbbing like twin hearts, realized his breath was held. He let it out with a sigh, felt a hundred years old, then forty, then an awkward sixteen again. Kevin found he couldn’t face the clockwork reality of the street, so he turned back to his friends, his eyes finally resting on Eddie simply because they had to rest somewhere. After a moment Eddie seemed to feel Kevin’s eyes on him, and slowly turned his head to return the stare as best he could. Embarrassed, Kevin looked away and mounted his bicycle. Eddie followed suit sniffling, Mike introspectively, still sucking on the joint. They rode on through the morning almost like strangers. By one o’clock the day had peaked at 86 degrees, and their private gripes were being dissolved by the remarkable recuperative powers of sunshine and unrestricted liberty. By three Eddie’s cold or allergic reaction had vanished without a trace. They shot through Santa Barbara, stopping only to drop water balloons on cars from an overpass. A long refreshing swim at Goleta Beach did wonders for Mike’s cramps, and even Kevin’s sunburn was forgotten in the exhilaration of the day. A vendor at Naples provided kraut dogs, pretzels, and tall cups of Fresca. They raced on the open highway and Mike won hands down. At fancy swerves it was Eddie all the way. But at ‘chicken’ Kevin came on like an eighteen-wheeler. They smoked another joint and zinged pebbles at petrified spider crabs on the rocks past El Capitan Beach. And the sun crept down and turned everything lemon, then amber, then tawny gold. And up from the sea came cooling salt breezes, smelling of algae and things submarine. And Kevin was lying flat on his back looking up at Eddie’s tiny face, which seemed miles away, and wishing Eddie would quit calling his name over and over and over. Why couldn’t Eddie see that he was right here, right in front of him, and how many times did Kevin have to tell him that he was right here and could hear him loud and clear? “Right here,” Kevin said thickly, the words ringing in his skull. He forced his eyes open wide. “Right here!” he said, loud and clear. “Wow,” Eddie said. “You okay now, Kevin?” 48

Carnival Beach Blanket Bozo Mike looked in over Eddie’s shoulder. “Told you he was faking.” Kevin sat up. His face was wet with tears. His left shoulder hurt like hell. Now Eddie brought a fuzzy pair of glasses into view, precariously guided the arms to straddle Kevin’s brow. The world swam into focus. Kevin raised his heavy hands and took over from Eddie, setting the crooks of his spectacles in place behind his ears. One of the plastic arms was twisted and gouged. “What happened?” he asked, because it seemed the appropriate thing to say. “Shit,” Mike said. “Crybaby.” “You don’t remember?” goggled Eddie. “We were all just coasting along having a good old time. You said something that didn’t make any sense—something about hairs in the air. I slowed down like you were and said, ‘What?’ and you just kind of looked past me for a second. Then you went face-first over your handlebars and did a nosedive onto the road. I couldn’t figure you out.” “Hairs in his head is more like it,” Mike said. “So I got off my bike and bent down to check you out. I thought you might’ve been hurt. Then I saw: you were having a fit of some kind. Your eyeballs were rolled way up in your head like that Incredible X-ray Man guy, and your mouth was working real funny, and you were squeaking and burping.” “Spastic,” Mike whispered nastily, his eyes gleaming over Eddie’s shoulder. “Spazz-o.” “Then I remembered this film we watched in Miss Phugitall’s class, and they had this guy in it—only he was faking—and he was behaving just like you were.” Eddie said reasonably, “They stuck a wooden spoon in his mouth, so he wouldn’t chew up his tongue, I guess,” and then, with profound frustration, “but I didn’t have a wooden spoon!” He blinked at Kevin and shook his head compassionately. “All I could find to use was the arms on your glasses, which were right next to me on the ground. So I stuck in one of the arms and you really gobbled it up. But I guess it stopped you from biting your tongue; you’re not bleeding.” “Scarfhound,” Mike said. “Eats anything.” Kevin nursed his shoulder with heavy electric fingers. His toes had the same numb-tingle, but the scary feeling passed as he stood and walked around. Eddie had to convince him a dozen times that he and Mike weren’t just pulling his leg and waiting for the right moment to let him in on it—he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember a thing other than riding along feeling splendid in the late afternoon sun. It made no real sense, but even as he paced he began to sense a connection with that chilly wet November night, when he and Eddie had huddled in the Mikolajczyks’ boxlike garage loft and Eddie had gone on and on about the Movement. Kevin had been a fascinated, avid listener, and had pumped Eddie—who had been only too thrilled to provide—for all the juicy details about Free Love, psychedelia, communal living, an under-thirty society, and open nudity. And Eddie had played guru, lighting an enormous marijuana cigarette and passing it to his new friend, and Kevin had taken his first puff. Many people don’t feel the effects of THC the first time; some never do at all. Perhaps they simply refuse to relax and enjoy, fearing they’ll expose their secrets and weaknesses to any persons who just might be checking them out, never suspecting that those persons might also be feigning nonchalance for fear of exposing their own secrets and weaknesses to any persons who just might be checking them out while actually feigning nonchalance. But Kevin wasn’t one of these social combatants, forever inspecting their armor for chinks. His secrets, at that time, weren’t worth shielding, and his weaknesses, he felt, were already exposed for all to see. After three draws he was sucked away from all the silly, self-promoting games continuously played by the insecure when dealing with others. He froze in a gawking stupor, unable to say a word, staring at Eddie. Eddie, who was just as high, had also been rendered mute by the drug, and in their embarrassment they had fought eye contact, turning aside to study either of the two rectangular doors of the loft. The 49

Carnival Beach Blanket Bozo awkward silence, broken only by the forlorn pinging of rainwater hitting the aluminum downspout, had grown and grown, and both boys had continued to look fixedly at a different door as if awaiting a revelation, too self-conscious to even clear their throats. Just when the silence had become deafening, and the pretense of composure too painful to support, both doors had been yanked open to reveal the awesome bulk of Big Joe, filling up all the space like a hairless King Kong, a snarl of simian wrath squinching his sweaty, purpling face. At last Joe had found an outlet for his rage. “You’re sure you’re okay now?” Eddie asked as they rode along. “Yeah, Eddie. Yeah . . . I guess I’m fine. I don’t feel any worse, but it sure is spooky. I think it might have something to do with these little blackouts I’ve been having lately.” “The heat,” Eddie said. “That must have been heatstroke.” “Some kind of stroke.” “We won’t ride so hard tomorrow,” Eddie offered considerately. “We’re really making good time, anyway. Look,” he said, pointing at a cluster of palms sprouting idyllically alongside the flat, flat highway. “There’s Refugio State Beach. We could camp here. Gee, look at the sun go down.” The boys, slowing, gradually coasted to a halt. The sunset was breathtaking, so gorgeous it was painful to watch for long; just another superb example of those wonderful westerly light shows displayed summerlong on the Southern California coast. The boys watched the day shutting down, until the bloody hub of the spectacle succumbed, swallowed by the sea. As twilight deepened, the flat wet sides of certain rocks on the jetty lit up like the facets of crudely cut gems; the creaming waves retreated from the sand to leave brief, everchanging swirls of sapphire-emerald dust. The ocean became a broad highway of shimmering crests, of bobbing patterns growing ever subtler as night drew on. There were still small bands of merrymakers scattered over the sand, and while the boys were wheeling round the parking lot a young man broke from one of these groups to run up waving. “Hey! Any of you guys got a match or a lighter? We’re fixing to get a fire going, and out of half a dozen people not a one of us has a light. I mean, is that unreal, or what?” He had long brown hair and an enormously thick moustache, a round face and a jolly round belly. He seemed genuinely friendly. They stopped. Mike was first to offer a book of matches. “Here you go. What’s cooking?” “Hot dogs and marshmallows. You guys hungry? Come on over. We’ve got some wine we’re gonna pass around.” “Far out,” said Kevin. “And we’ve got some dynamite pot.” “All right!” The young man danced a little jig. The boys dismounted, shouldered their bikes, and followed him over to his group. There were three girls throwing twigs on a teepee of slightly larger branches, two young men strumming battered guitars, a third playing a harmonica, and a fourth clapping his hands in time. Three fat gallon bottles of a cheap red wine were shoved in the sand. The young man with the thick moustache offered his name as Smokey, and introduced the girls as Cathy, Stephanie, and Michelle. Cathy was a vivacious brunette of nineteen, a trim girl forever chatting and gesturing, doing her best to inject inane merriment into the little party. She was full of bubbly cheer and girlish affection, and when she shook hands she smiled at Kevin in a way that made his palms perspire. From the clavicle up there was a disturbing similarity between her and the raven-haired girl; and also in the way she carried herself, and smiled without real humor. She wore indigo slacks and a man’s work shirt, open modestly at the throat. Stephanie was a tense little braided blonde in a faded beige granny dress. She was constantly grinding her teeth and clenching her fingers—the gymnastics of amphetamine tripping. She would listen with undivided attention, passionately, as if sucking energy and spirit from the speaker, 50

Carnival Beach Blanket Bozo nodding constantly and vigorously. She was both leech and radiator; when the speaker had been bled to exhaustion, the leech would turn. Stephanie would speak with rapid-fire, urgent enthusiasm, running her words and sentences together and rarely pausing for breath. The stuff of her conversation was absolutely meaningless to Kevin; simply the downhill prattle of a silly girl in the grasp of stimulants. Michelle was the laconic one; a big, chunky girl in her early twenties. She had short dishwaterblond hair and a pasty, rotund face. Since she didn’t talk all that much, she was perfect prey for the longwinded passages of Stephanie. Kevin fell in love with them all, but ever and again his eyes would fall on dark Cathy with a kind of catatonic angst. It turned out the boys were in illustrious company. Once the fire was leaping and the wine circulating, they discovered that the three musicians had played in a number of L.A. clubs and had hopes of a recording contract. They were named William, Steve, and Koko Joe. They were hitchhikers, as were Smokey and Guy (the young man who had been clapping in time to the trio’s music). They had all been picked up by the three girls in Michelle’s chartreuse and carmine Volkswagen van. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” Smokey informed Kevin when it had grown fully dark and they were comfortably positioned round the fire. He looked around furtively. The beach was practically deserted. “Me and Guy’s,” he said under his breath, “ditching the draft. I think I can trust you, brother; you got an honest face. But it’s like a big, big secret, so just don’t go blurting it all over the place, okay? Nobody likes a blabbermouth.” “Wow,” Kevin said. He’d already rolled three cigarettes from his stash, and was in the process of lighting one. He dropped the match and extended an appreciative hand, repeating, “Wow. I mean, more power to you! But where are you guys gonna hide out? They’ll be after you with cops and trigger-happy soldiers.” Smokey clapped his hands with delight. “Saskatchewan!” Guy looked up sharply. “Jesus Shmesus, Smokey! Tell the fucking world, why don’t you?” Guy was a somber, shapeless fellow, with a bushy brown beard and an electric mane of curly brown hair reaching nearly to the small of his back. He wore rimless spectacles, and was dressed entirely in leather, fancying himself a powerful advocate of the American Indian. The rights of the American Indian, Kevin knew, was a major issue of the Revolution, and he respected Guy’s brave visual participation. Ultra-liberal Guy somehow equated the United States’ involvement in Viet Nam with the grievances of Native Americans who, though miserable enough stuck on shrinking reservations, had better sense than to head up to Canada. Smokey put a hand to his mouth, embarrassed and chagrined by this latest in a long line of indiscretions. “Hey, it’s cool,” said little Eddie, in the fire’s flicker looking half his age. “We’re all revolutionaries nowadays. You guys don’t have to worry about us blowing it for you.” Guy grumbled, uncertain. “That’s right,” Kevin said, supporting his friend. He remembered his lessons. “And when my time comes I’ll be right behind you. Nobody’s gonna make me fight a war that’s none of our business. I mean, the whole thing’s a joke! The fatcats are just keeping it alive because they’re afraid to back out now that they’ve made such a big deal about how high and mighty we are. Well, they shouldn’t have committed us in the first place!” He smiled and winked at Eddie, hefted a jug and began to guzzle. And suddenly, by spontaneous, tacit agreement, everyone around the fire was a full-blown and highly opinionated participant. The guitarists stilled their picking and leaned forward. Cathy’s airy 51

Carnival Beach Blanket Bozo chatter tapered to murmurs and cooing. Michelle turned her morose, dejected eyes to Kevin and Guy. Stephanie sat cross-legged and tense, nodding her head rapidly from Kevin to Guy and back, desperate for one to begin. “That’s just about it, brother,” Guy said at last, apparently satisfied. “Viet Nam’s an embarrassment to the government pigs. This country had to go stick its bully-nose where it didn’t belong, and now the shit’s so deep we can’t step out of it without leaving big holes. So we send more Army Issue children to fill those holes. And what happens—the poor sons of bitches go crazy over there. Who wouldn’t? After you’ve been satisfactorily dehumanized you’re sent out into the jungle with froth on your lips, chanting some vicious doggerel about righteous GIs and rotten gooks. And once you’ve seen a quartered child, or a mother hugging a garbage bag full of hamburger that was her husband . . . once you’ve seen enough of your buddies walking around with some peasant’s ear for a medallion and brainwashed gleams in their wild eyes, well, you just flip out. You got no choice. You can adjust to it and kill your quota, or cringe in the bushes and smoke dope and hope the war’ll go away. It’s no wonder guys are deserting like never before.” “Those poor boys,” Cathy mumbled wistfully, realizing any efforts to stir up a cheerful party would now be in vain. “But what’s going to happen in the long run? If the President and his cronies are out to make trouble, what’s to stop them from spreading the war in Viet Nam until all Asia, and then the whole world, gets sucked into it?” Guy put his palms on his knees and leaned forward pointedly, the fire’s light dancing on the lenses of his spectacles. “Just this: the Movement’s in full swing now. Everybody’s deserting or dodging. Pretty soon there won’t be anybody left but those poor brainwashed bastards overseas, and if they don’t get blown away by the Viet Cong first they’ll shoot each other like dogs. One of these days Uncle Sam’s going to point his Great Greedy Finger and say I . . . Want . . . YOU, and there just won’t be anybody. Everybody’s gonna be in Canada. A new free society north of the border, and nothing but a bunch of sick, malicious old fogies down here. We’ll call Canada ‘New America’, and our children will grow up to be peaceful and strong. No more of this rowdy bullshit.” Kevin nodded and nodded. He lowered the jug and passed it to Smokey, lit all three marijuana cigarettes and passed them round. “Hey, man,” Koko Joe said to the group in general, “we got a song about The War. It’s an original.” Koko Joe was a thin, excitable type, with a long peaked nose and eyebrows that ran together. His face and neck were ravaged by a hardy acne condition which, by the looks of it, extended well below the collar of his blue serge shirt. “Lay it on us,” Mike said happily. “Wail on.” “Okay, okay,” Koko Joe muttered nervously, rubbing his palms together. “I know you’re all gonna dig this. It’s like I wrote the lyrics myself, man; a lot of time and thought went into it. This song . . . this song shows just where our generation’s at.” He looked to William with his harmonica, then to Steve. He held his own guitar in a clumsy embrace. There was an awkward silence as they studied one another, synchronizing their movements. Suddenly Koko Joe nodded. His friends began to play, harmonizing on backing vocals, as he sang in a coarse, wobbly voice: “Oh, baby, baby, what’s comin’ down? Life’s such a bummer, man, I can’t hang around.” (Can’t hang around) “Oh, baby, baby, what does it mean? The War is a drag, man, I can’t dig that scene.” (Can’t dig that scene) 52

Carnival “Don’t wanna fight! Don’t wanna die! Just wanna hang out, get laid and get high.” (Why?) “’Cause baby, baby, The War isn’t cool. I may be a freak, but I’m nobody’s fool. Baby, yeah.” (Yeah!) “Baby, ooh.” (Ow!) “Baby baby baby, ’cause hey man, I dig you.”

Beach Blanket Bozo

Kevin joined loudly in the applause. He’d been steadily imbibing wine for fifteen minutes now, and his movements were sloppy, his voice slurred. “Right on!” he roared repeatedly, long after the applause had died. He lifted the jug again, pouring down his throat and over his chin onto his shirt. Kevin set the jug back down with a lopsided grin, pulled out his baggie of grass. He spilled a lot trying to roll another cigarette. “Let me roll one,” Eddie offered. “You’re losing it, Kevin.” Kevin turned his head and squinted. “Fuck you!” he snarled, his head lolling. “You don’t think I can roll, huh?” He shrieked with indignant laughter and blacked out. Eddie gently disengaged the baggie. “Sorry,” Kevin mumbled. “Go ahead and roll, Mike.” “Sounds good to me, Mike!” Mike called out devilishly, half-hidden by leaping flames. Eddie laughed. “How much you want me to roll, Mike?” Kevin recklessly threw out his arms, accidentally smacking the side of Eddie’s face. “Whoopee! I don’t give a fuck, Mike! Roll up the whole fucking thing for all I fucking care!” He grabbed the jug and chug-a-lugged. On the back of his eyelids swam a radiant image of Cathy, wholly naked and almost dripping with desire, her arms spread in beckoning heat. He lowered the jug, but upon opening his eyes was looking at big morose Michelle. Kevin tried a knowing, sexy smirk. Her expression didn’t change. “Me shell:” he croaked, in perhaps the world’s worst McCartney impression, “Ma Bell.” The laughter and chatter ceased abruptly as the young men and women all turned to stare. Kevin sniggered, hefted the jug and staggered around the fire to plop down with the three girls, his knee resting against Stephanie’s, on his right. He looked to his left at Michelle and grinned hideously, his intention being to win Cathy’s affection by making her jealous. “Hey, what’s happening, Mike?” he said. Michelle stared for a long hard moment, her dejected eyes burning in the campfire’s glare. When the slap came Kevin was so drunk he didn’t see or feel it. He only knew he was now facing Stephanie, and that one side of his face was having a delayed reaction to yesterday’s sunburn. “She’s playing—” he drooled, “she’s playing hard to get.” Stephanie nodded rapidly, urging him on. When he continued to grin stupidly she commenced an endless barrage of undulating chatter, a barrage he was way too frustrated to follow. Kevin offered occasional affirmative grunts in return, quickly becoming depressed by the incessant banter. He took increasingly long swallows from the jug, astonished to find he’d already guzzled well over half the contents. And now Cathy seemed to notice little Eddie for the first time. He had come over to return Kevin’s grass, and Kevin heard her cry out, “Ooh! Isn’t he just darling?” Kevin sluggishly swung his head until he was facing in the direction of her voice, squinting to focus his lazy vision. He saw Eddie standing with his head down and his hands thrust into his pockets, blushing terribly, a silly grin on his elfin face. Cathy was exclaiming melodiously and making a great fuss over him, smoothing 53

Carnival Beach Blanket Bozo his collar and playing with his hair. Eddie took it all like a puppy being scratched behind the ears, eyes half-closed and tail tucked under. Kevin swelled with rage, certain he’d been outmaneuvered. He began chugging wine with furious tension. “He’s so cute. Just look at him!” Kevin simmered, only dimly aware of Stephanie still gibbering at his elbow. He angrily raised the jug and threw back his head. The glass mouth rang hard against his front teeth, but he paid no attention, swallowing with vindictive haste. The alcohol had a nasty warning taste now, but continued to flow down his throat with little resistance. “Look at those adorable freckles! Oh, he’s so sweet!” The blood was roaring in Kevin’s ears, his teeth were grinding together. His fingers clenched with murderous energy, his trembling face flooded with blood. His whole frame grew tense. So he didn’t hear Eddie approach, and wasn’t aware of his close presence until Eddie had repeated himself. “Hey, Mike! I brought you your grass back!” Kevin looked up with a black, ugly snarl. “You fucking son of a bitch.” “What?” “That’s right,” he said, standing and weaving. “You heard me, prick.” He hiccoughed, poured wine down his throat and over his face. He tore the baggie out of Eddie’s hand and stuffed it in his own shirt pocket. “Kevin, you’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying.” “Sure I do, you little bastard.” Eddie’s blurry figure kept disintegrating and reforming, replicating and throbbing back into focus. Kevin addressed all the sneaky little regimented bastard Eddies with vicious sprays of contempt. “I know just what I’m talking about, you little pansies, you traitorous turds.” Eddie was aghast. “What did—what did I do?” Kevin took a slug to steady his vision, the jug much lighter in his hand. It was like drinking diluted kerosene now, but the fact that he’d managed to nearly finish off the jug only bolstered his ego. He swayed, steadied himself, lifted the jug and swallowed. He dropped his arm and belched fire on unstable Eddie, then raised his voice two octaves, mimicking a girl’s. “Oh, what did I do? What did sweetsy-weetsy li’l Eddie-weddie do?” He lowered his voice to a guttural, sputtering rumble, spacing his words out menacingly. “I’m gonna kick . . . your . . . ass, punk.” “Look, Kevin, whatever I did, I’m sorry. But let’s talk about it in the morning, okay? You’re really making a scene, and everybody’s getting uptight. So why don’t you just crash out in your bag here. Everything’s cool.” “Fuck ’em!” Kevin bellowed. “Fuck ’em if they don’t like it!” He took a swallow and pivoted awkwardly, ready to quash all comers. The fire blazed out at him, dazzling, backed by what seemed an army of shadowy gargoyles. “Fuck you all!” he raged, then pivoted in reverse to reconfront that conniving little prissy bastard Eddie. He had trouble finding him, so he took another long swallow. A cataract poured off either side of his chin and at last the jug was empty. He gave a huge manly groan of satiety and carelessly flung the jug away. There was a ringing thud and a sharp cry. Kevin wobbled his head in the direction of the cry. Someone didn’t like him throwing the jug? Well, he would deal with he/she/it/them later. But first of all these little pansies here. He rolled his head back to face Eddie. “Okay, punks. You wanna hassle, we’ll settle this right here and now.” 54

Carnival Beach Blanket Bozo “I’m not hassling you, Kevin. You’re my friend, my blood brother. What about peace, and love? We’re revolutionaries together, Kevin. We’re friends. Let’s talk about it tomorrow when you’re sober.” “Right here and now,” Kevin roared. And the roar kept right on roaring, filling his ears with Fourth of July reverberations, imploding his skull with mad dreams of whirling faces and leaping flames. His pulse shot off in jackhammer rage at the whole conspiring world as he lunged forward, threw a haymaker at Eddie and felt the planet screech to a halt. Kevin plowed vengefully into the sand and was out like a light.

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Chapter 5 All Things Must Piss It was pale morning when Kevin’s crusted eyelids, through no desire of his own, peeled apart to admit the day. His face was half-buried in chill morning sand, his nostrils clogged with the stuff. A flurry of intense sensations woke his silly ass in a hurry. Chief among these was a sense of desperate, soul-shaking thirst. His mouth was so dry it felt glued shut. It was this terrible, all-consuming thirst which had so urgently roused him from his nearcoma. Or was it? Right after the thirst came a knotting of the gut, followed by an overwhelming impression of freefall. The early morning light crashed against his retinae. Kevin’s eyelids slammed shut, and the light’s aftermath went cartwheeling through his brain. He shuddered violently. The shudder preceded a sick, scary pain in his skull. Everything went blood-red. Nausea came hurtling up his spine like a runaway locomotive, broke into his brain with a screaming clang-a-lang-a-lang of alarm, shook him to his knees. He trembled there, on all fours on the sand, absolutely overcome, a half-squashed cock-roach struggling to crawl. His jowls were quaking, his face purpling, his eyes rolled up in their orbits. A sputtering relay on the cerebral control panel caused him to jerk forward his right hand, then to advance his left knee. Arm followed leg as the smashed cockroach made its way to the ocean’s foaming edge. Kevin’s diaphragm reared, hauling up his belly and arching his back, preparing his body for the ejective motion of lurching forward to puke his guts out. But his esophagus remained constricted. Nothing was evacuated, and Kevin was treated to a mad, suffocating vision; seeing, in his imagination, a tiny spark of fight abandoning the control tower in his splitting skull. All was chaos in there, the punch-drunk operator laughing hysterically amid a hellish scene of billowing smoke and pinwheeling jets of flame. 56

Carnival All Things Must Piss The reaction to heaving is to gasp desperately, accompanied by a rocking motion on the supporting arms in the opposite direction of the heave—but air met the same impediment. When Kevin’s ravenous cells received no oxygen his body arched up again, his eyes went sightless. Once more he lurched forward; every aching cell, every agonized, quivering nerve called to arms in a lastditch, all-out attempt to hurl onto an area of a few square inches of sand. Kevin’s black, fluttering face was drawn magnetically, irresistibly to the spot. But the heave was a bust. Nothing was ejected, and no air burst into his lungs as ecstatic shrieking razors. When his body rocked back this time, it was with the sluggish tremor of submission. Red firefly sparks leapt convulsively in his consciousness, while the senseless, rocketing film of his life played over and over, half an inch high on the fuzzy silver screen of his mind. All engines shut down for Kevin, and darkness stormed his brain like warrant-brandishing cops bursting through the door to his soul. It was lights out. Yet he slumped with a horrible croak, gagged, and barfed out mouth and nose for all he was worth. As the gasping reaction drew him back he still received no air. Kevin’s flapping face immediately took on the rictus of unrelieved vomiting. Pulling back from the fifth or sixth heave he did manage to draw some air, maybe a teaspoonful, but his throat at once cruelly seized shut. Kevin hurled once more, his stomach bursting. He went briefly insensible; choking, gagging, swooning. Finally air flooded his lungs. Gradually he got into a broken rhythm of gasping, until the hands got to work in his gut again, twisting and compressing. He vomited twice more, but less forcefully. When he was finished he remained hunched, glutting air with great stabbing hiccoughs. Violet light began to swirl against his retinae, grew red, composed itself. Kevin was a sobbing wreck, trembling head to toe. After a minute he managed to crawl away from the piteous mess he’d made. His arms buckled and he pitched face-first into the sand, where he lay in a rapturous fever of cool, nectarous air. He wanted to lay there and luxuriate in it, to drink it to his heart’s content. He wanted to weep himself dry, but before anything he simply had to get rid of the disgusting taste in his mouth, the burning residue in his nostrils. He pushed himself to his feet, stumbled off to the restroom, pounded despairingly against the locked door until his streaming eyes fell on a water faucet. The boy gargled and spat, ducked his head under the water’s thin arcing column, filled his mouth and swallowed. It was a mistake. He quickly flashed the water, hacked some more. He rinsed his mouth, spat carefully, stood and controlled his breathing, let his thumping heart gradually slow. It was over. Kevin dragged his feet through the sand. Eddie was sitting up in his bag, rubbing his eyes. Mike was still asleep, only the top of his head visible. Eddie grinned when he saw Kevin shambling up. “So you finally came out of it! How’s your head?” “Terrible,” Kevin admitted, slumping. He sat on his tousled sleeping bag and massaged his temples. It felt like there was a big aching bruise in there, lividly etched on the living walls of his cerebrum. “I held onto your glasses for you,” Eddie said, and handed them over. “Thanks, Eddie. You’re really a pal. Did I make a scene last night?” “Boy, did you ever! Don’t you remember?” “I—I guess I drew a blank.” “You don’t remember grabbing the girls and getting all pissed off about something? Or hitting Cathy in the face with your wine bottle? What a shiner she got! Don’t you remember taking a swing at me?” 57

Carnival All Things Must Piss Kevin swallowed. There were vague impressions of just such scenes shuffling in his mind, but he had tried to suppress these thoughts, afraid to dwell on them and possibly form incriminating chains of association, chains which might reveal further ugly misdemeanors lurking like whores in the shadows of his memory. So now he said, “Sort of. But not really. I think I remember taking a swing at you. Gosh, I’m sorry, Eddie. I just didn’t know what I was doing.” “Oh, heck, Kevin, that’s all right. I knew you were wasted. You missed me by ten feet and passed right out.” When he’d gathered the nerve, Kevin asked, “And that was it? I just crashed?” “Yeah, for a while there. But then you woke up about two hours later. We were all still partying away when you came staggering into the middle of our circle and pulled out your dick.” Kevin jerked from the butt up. “I did what?” “Yeah, man, you just stood there holding your pecker for everybody to see. Nobody said a word. It was weird. You were rocking back and forth like one of those plastic punching clowns, and we knew if you let go there’d be a fountain out of control. But nothing came out. I guess you must’ve thought you’d done your thing, though, ’cause you put it back in and zipped up.” Eddie’s face squinched with merriment. “So then you got your pecker caught in the zipper and started howling. By this time we were all cracking up. Finally you zipped up your pants and just stood there swaying. All of a sudden we saw one leg of your Levis turning dark. I couldn’t believe it—you were pissing your pants! I laughed so hard I cried.” “Oh no . . .” Kevin’s head rolled in his hands. “No!” But suddenly he could see it as Eddie had described it, vividly, as if it was happening now before his eyes. The fire and their astonished faces lit like jack-o-lanterns. Their laughter. His brain began to throb anew. “Yeah,” Eddie said, enjoying himself. “And then you started raving.” “Raving?” “You were yelling about how everybody was trying to screw you around, even your friends. That shows how drunk you were. Me and Mike never did nothing to wrong you, Kevin. Anyway, you started calling the girls names—” “Oh, come on!” “Really! Every dirty name in the book. You said they were all full of shit and had these like super-snotty complexes. Then you started calling them a herd of two-bit sluts and cocksucking whores. You kept shouting about what complexes we all had. You were starting to get, I mean, super loud and rowdy, so one of those draft dodgers—I guess he was kind of paranoid—suggested that maybe you should just shut the fuck up and go to sleep. Well, that got you really pissed off. You started yelling that the girls were sluts and bitches again, about how you wouldn’t fuck them with my dick. Then you kicked sand all over the fire and that was pretty much the end of the party. All those people packed their stuff up in their van and split.” “Oh, Jesus,” Kevin groaned. “Oh my God.” “And then you had this big crying jag.” “Crying jag!” “Yeah. You started bawling about how sorry you were, over and over. Mike asked you if we could maybe roll a joint and smoke it with you. We thought some pot might help your head. You looked up and just stared at us for a minute with tears all over your face. Then you took your stash out of your pocket and said, ‘Sure, you cocksuckers. Take my pot, just take it all’, and shook your whole stash in the air, laughing like a lunatic. Then you started hitting the sides of your head with your fists and bawling about how sorry you were again. You got to rapping about killing yourself, and we were getting kinda worried there. Me and Mike never saw anybody freak out on wine before. 58

Carnival All Things Must Piss But finally you just cried yourself to sleep.” Kevin languidly wagged his aching head. “Don’t tell me any more. Please. I can’t take any more.” “There wasn’t any more. Like I said, you did the big boo-hoo scene and crashed right out. There wasn’t anything left to do after that; we three were the only ones left on the beach. So we rolled you up in your bag and went to sleep. I’ll say this much: you wasted a lot of pot, but you sure had a swell time. I should’ve drank more of that wine.” Kevin looked at him then, convinced Eddie wasn’t making this all up. If only his head would quit pounding. But the more he thought about it, the surer he was he could remember most of the scenes almost exactly as Eddie had described them. The raving and name-calling . . . hadn’t he had a dream like that? And the crying—that was plausible; weren’t his eyelids stuck together this morning? No sin in crying when you’re plastered out of your mind. But wetting his pants! Kevin placed his hands on his thighs, as if to wipe his palms. The material on his right leg was dry, but the left side was damp and crusted with sand. He hung his head. Mike squirmed in his bag and sat up sleepy-eyed. He threw out his arms, yawned cavernously, blinked at Kevin. “G’morning, shitface. And how are our complexes today?” Kevin turned away. “Lay off. I already paid for it.” Mike yawned even wider. “Man, do I ever have a hard-on. There’s nothing like sleeping on sand.” “Well, don’t go back to sleep,” Eddie said. “I’m hungry.” Mike scratched his legs while peering irritably at Eddie. “So tell me, boy genius. You just tell me where you plan on eating. From the looks of things this beach is the hot spot of the whole coast, and the only building on it’s the bathroom.” “We won’t get any breakfast just sitting here,” Eddie said, with the practicality of a tramp. Mike nodded sullenly, rolled his neck, stepped out of his bag. As he shook out the sand he stared hard at Kevin. “Well we might have got a ride in that chick’s van if somebody didn’t have to go call her a claphound.” “Shove it,” Kevin whispered, and struggled to his feet. He waited for the pounding in his head to soften with eyes squeezed shut, breath shallow and controlled. “Let’s get going.” He dragged his bike and sleeping bag toward the parking lot with small painful steps. Mike, rolling up his own bag, grunted, “All right, hold your horses! But you better not eat too much, man. I mean it. I don’t wanna spend half the day outside an outhouse again.” “Don’t worry,” Kevin whispered, swallowing a combination of stomach acid and vomit residue diluted with phlegm and saliva, “I’m not hungry.” They rode for half an hour before finding a place to eat, and by then the sun had turned away the stiff morning cold. Kevin sat outside while his friends ate their breakfasts, his mind all in gloom. Even after his pals had eaten and they were again pedaling up the highway he found he couldn’t shake it. His mood continued to darken. Surely there were lessons to be learned on this trip if he were to enjoy it, or even survive it. The lessons should have been obvious. But it seemed he was being attacked almost exclusively by the things he cherished and stood by, and this made the hurt harder to bear. To enjoy eating was to wind up sick as a dog. To drink was not the happy, comradely excursion of the old days, but a nightmare of distrust and distortion. Good old pot didn’t seem to be helping his head at all, and the sun was no longer his friend, but a wicked, searing overlord. 59

Carnival All Things Must Piss Kevin reconsidered the price of morphing his embarrassing girth into dignified golden muscle. The greatest pains were in the expected spots: triceps, calves, thighs; but unexpected aches lurked in the back of his neck when he raised his head, his chest seemed about to rip down the middle whenever he inhaled too deeply. He computed the extent of torture yet to be faced against the impossible distance yet to be covered, and concluded he would one day arrive arthritic and hunched, a hopeless cripple. Nodding as he pedaled, Kevin barely managed to pay attention to the road. An unsuccessfully interred memory came back to haunt him: he as a chubby, graceless child at his uncle’s funeral, boxed in between the wheezing mountain of Joe Mikolajczyk and his squat sniffling wife as they ponderously filed along. Kevin had been ridiculously dressed in knee-length pumpkin-colored stockings and shiny Buster Brown specials, in navy blue shorts, a pink ruffled shirt with lemon-andlime striped tie, and a tiny plum vest that must have originally been worn by an organ grinder’s monkey. And the somberness of the occasion had done a number on the boy’s bowels. Kevin now remembered with horror his pleading, in frantic whispers, to be taken to the restroom, and his mother shushing him at first, and then covertly smacking him on his bottom as he grew insistent. The boy had hopped and danced in wailing agony, and the mourners had turned swollen annoyed eyes on the mother and son. And Joe had swatted him hard on the back of his head and lifted him and shook him. And try as he would the boy had lost all control, crapping wildly on his brand new “special bought” clothes as his father bellowed in his face and shook him and shook him and shook him. “And,” Mike was saying, in a just-loud-enough aside to Eddie, who was now riding between Mike and Kevin, “we could be toking on some pot if it wasn’t for fatso over there. It’s just been one fuckup after another.” Kevin looked at Mike’s sneering, harshly-cut face. What was it about Mike, besides his rude words and hostile manner, that had been eating away at Kevin’s brittle camaraderie for as long as the heavyset boy could remember? There was something rotten, almost evil, about the way Mike always took the negative view; about how he would push you just to the point of a fight and then desist, laughing at your heat. Seeing the wicked twist to Mike’s lips, Kevin was suddenly aware that he’d never once seen the boy wearing a good old, winning, sincere smile. Someday, Kevin thought, his eyes burning directly into Mike’s, whose own eyes narrowed and gleamed at the look, sooner or later, buddy, you and I are gonna get into it, and when we do, motherfucker, I’m gonna kick your ass so bad it’ll take a surgeon to get my boot out of your asshole. Mike’s eyes seemed to shine brighter. His sneer grew broader. “Look, beagle breath,” Kevin said hotly, while his stare still had the advantage over Mike’s, “you wouldn’t have smoked any pot at all if it wasn’t for my generosity, dig? And I’ll do any darn thing I wanna do with my pot, hear? If I wanna throw it away, then I’ll throw it away, whether you like it or not. And I don’t dig being called fatso, man, ’cause it’s not fat, punk, it’s muscle, which you’d know if you weren’t all skin and bones.” Mike’s sneaky, pouncing grin didn’t falter a bit. “Oh, yeah, fatso? Well, fatso, I’ll fucking call you fatso any fat fucking time I want to, fatso!” Kevin saw red, his eyes straining in their sockets. He turned his wheel sharply toward Mike, intending to leap on him as cowboys did when fighting steed-to-steed in spaghetti westerns. But in his unblinking rage he had discounted Eddie’s presence between them, and all three went sprawling in a crazy tangle of arms, legs, and spinning wheels. Kevin found himself on his butt, wearing his bike’s frame like a yoke. When he got to his feet Mike was cussing and spitting from behind Eddie, who was doing his best to hold the little bully back. Then a station wagon was bearing down on them, sounding its horn and swerving wildly. They all sprawled shouting to the side of the road. 60

Carnival All Things Must Piss When Kevin picked himself up this time he was out of breath. Mike began laughing at him, which was worse than name-calling, then remounted his bike and slowly rode away. He chuckled viciously as Kevin feigned pursuit, too exhausted to give chase. “Come back here,” Kevin gasped, “and fight like a man, you chicken.” “Fuck you, fatso!” Mike called back, still laughing. “Fatso, fatso, fatso!” he sang. “Come over here and call me chicken!” Kevin was too worn out to do anything but hang his head. When Mike realized Kevin was not going to play his game he returned gradually to rough formation, not saying anything, but snickering nastily and victoriously. “Why?” Eddie wondered. “Why do you guys keep chipping away at each other? We’re all friends, right? What kind of impression are we making for all the straights? We’ve got to live in peace, you guys. What are they going to think of L.A. in Frisco if we get up there and start brawling?” “Oh, bullshit,” Mike sneered. “When are you gonna grow up?” “No, really,” Eddie said reasonably. “That’s what this trip is all about, Mike. We want to go up to the City and see our people. If we’re fighting between ourselves we don’t really deserve to be there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they wouldn’t have us.” “Oh, Christ! You can’t even have fun any more. Not around you guys.” A knowing look passed between Eddie and Kevin. The look was not lost on Mike, who tensed and considered them rabidly, ready to burst into tears. “So that’s it!” he cried. “Fuck you both then!” Mike put down his head and pedaled hard. He maintained his distance fifty yards ahead, refusing to look back. After an interval of silence Kevin offered, “I agree with you, Eddie. You know that. I think what you said just now was really together, and I guess I looked pretty bad all ready to fight like that, and last night, too, when I got rowdy. But I was drunk last night, so I figger I’ve got an excuse for that bum trip, and believe me, I learned my lesson. But just now . . . I don’t know, Eddie—you saw how he was pushing me. I don’t think Mike’s a real brother at all. I don’t want to fight, but, darn it, I don’t like being pushed! I wish we could’ve come without that guy.” Eddie nodded emphatically, relishing his role as mediator. “I’m not blaming you, Kevin. That was obviously all Mike’s fault, and you reacted like anybody. But now dig this—and I’m not trying to preach to you; I just want to say it before I lose my thread. I’ve been doing a lot of reading; stuff by Leary, Huxley, Kesey, Hesse. And the whole trip is that we can’t let other people’s hangups get to us. So you take a guy like Mike. Okay, I’ve known him forever; ever since we were kids together in Pasadena. Now Mike is a prick with a capital p, right? I don’t know why he’s like that, but he is. He’s got his good side, but the point is he’s the kind of guy who likes to pick fights and start trouble. All right. I’ve learned from my reading that a dude like Mike wants you to retaliate, see? He needs to justify his rowdy nature, so he tries to make someone else throw the first punch, and then he figures he’s defending himself, fighting against the bogeys that’ve been haunting him all his life. That’s his hangup, but we make it ours by getting pissed in return. If you let his attitude get to you, well, then you’ve got two people who’re rowdy. You see? Mike’s so messed up he thinks I’m taking your side, so he’ll need somebody else on his side to even the odds. Then you’ve got four people involved. When this action goes down between whole countries you get the mess we’ve got in Viet Nam. But now we’ve got guys who refuse to get involved, and who just plain won’t fight. That’s the only way to deal with it, and that’s what the Movement’s all about. Like, when Mike gets hot, you just smile and flash him the peace sign. Pretty soon he picks up on the idea that nobody’s out to get him after all, and he starts to groove. It’s that simple.” 61

Carnival All Things Must Piss Kevin grunted and smiled sheepishly. “Yeah. I oughta know better. Thanks for talking me down, Eddie.” “No thanks necessary,” Eddie said, gobbling down Kevin’s gratitude. “It’s not my thought. Like I said, I read it.” “Well, if you look at it like that—you know, like Mike’s sick—then I can’t really hold his crummy attitude against him, can I?” “Right.” Kevin braked and took a deep breath. “You know what I’m gonna do, Eddie? Just to prove I’m hip to the Movement and all, I’m gonna go tell him no hard feelings. Right to his ugly face.” He pushed off, and after a minute had almost caught up. “Hey, Mike!” Mike tensed. He turned his head only partly round, just far enough to keep an eye on Kevin. “Yeah? What do you want?” Kevin drew even, smiled. “I just wanted to say that everything’s cool. No hard feelings.” “Oh yeah? What have you and your good buddy been rapping about all this time? Gonna ditch me, is that it? Well go right fucking ahead, fatso. I can make it without your shit.” Kevin’s smile grew taut. He spoke through his clenched teeth, only his lips moving. “No, really, man. We haven’t been ganging up on you or anything like that. I just want to drop the whole thing and be friends. Let’s keep it cool.” Mike stared suspiciously, unmoved. “Why?” he jabbed. “So you say you just wanna pretend nothing never happened, huh, fatso? Okay, fatso; that’s fine with me. We’ll let it go and stay friends . . . fatso!” Kevin’s eyes blazed. “No offense, see? It’s not your fault when you get nasty or rowdy.” “Oh, yeah? It’s not, huh?” “No, man, it’s like you’re sick and you just can’t freaking help it. That’s why I’m willing to let it drop. I figure you’re going through some bad head trips, is all, and it’s like the duty of us true revolutionaries to keep cool when you get uptight, so that maybe someday you’ll catch on and get your stupid act together like the rest of us.” “Is that so?” Mike spat, mouth twisted out of shape, teeth bared in a ferocious snarl. “Well maybe I don’t want your help, dig? I mean, did you hear anybody asking for your fat help? I didn’t! And if I ever do need help, four-eyes, you can rest assured you’ll be the last fat creep I look up!” “Now look, man. I’m trying to be friendly, right? So don’t blow it! Like I said, you’re sick, punk, and don’t know what you’re saying, so I’m not holding it against you! Why can’t we just be friends, cocksucker, and let the whole thing drop before I lose my fucking temper and kick the holy reaming shit out of you? Can’t you see, God fucking damn you all to hell, that you’re screwing up the whole revolution?” Mike snaked back his head and aimed, lunged and spat a thick gob of snotty saliva directly onto the lens covering Kevin’s furious red eye. He kicked out hard, connecting with Kevin’s thigh. Kevin flew off his bike sideways and went hollering and cartwheeling through the dirt. By the time Eddie pulled up, his best friend was wiping his glasses and cheek with a shirt sleeve. Kevin got to his feet wordlessly, rubbed his scraped rump and looked to his bicycle. One pedal was bent, its carpet sleeve thrashed. The chain was fouled. “I tried,” he told Eddie. “You saw how I tried.” “Don’t lose your head,” Eddie pleaded. “Oh, I won’t. Funny, but I don’t feel mad anymore. Only tired.” He winced. “And hungover.” He looked up the road. Mike stood in the spare shade of an equally scrawny spruce, blinking at them hatefully. “The guy’s sick all right. You saw how he acted when I tried to make up.” 62

Carnival All Things Must Piss Eddie shrugged helplessly. “He’ll come around, eventually. If you show him you’re still not upset he’ll have to see how wrong he is.” “I—I’m not sure I can talk to him. Not right now.” Eddie licked his lips. “I’ll go tell him you’re not mad. You ride back here.” Kevin nodded. “Okay, go ahead and give it a try. Like I said, I’m perfectly willing to meet him halfway. But I’m telling you, Eddie, one of these days I’m gonna kill him.” Eddie grimaced. He pushed off. After counting to ten Kevin followed slowly. He watched them riding ahead, Mike gesticulating heatedly while Eddie tried to get a word in edge-wise. As they pulled close together, the action was transferred one to the other; Eddie making explanatory gestures while Mike glowered. Suddenly Mike pulled back his arm and socked Eddie hard on the ear. Eddie dragged himself to the curb and collapsed. After a minute he forced himself into a sitting position, buried his head in his arms, and began bawling like a broad. Mike sat down on the other side of the road, looking paranoid and bitter. Kevin sighed. His heart went way out to Eddie, who was just too ingenuous, just too innocent to survive a world of bullies, jackals, and perverts. He needed someone like Kevin to protect him from the callous hordes ranging worldwide, their senses perked for gracious prey to trample. Poor little Eddie would die a burn victim—he’d be persuaded and swindled, seduced and abandoned, enlisted and betrayed. He’d wind up penniless, homeless, helpless, friendless—suckered and set up and suckered again. And, having been royally screwed by every person he’d ever trusted, he’d speak eloquently from his deathbed of his unbending faith in the ultimate goodness of humankind. Now Kevin glared at Mike. It would be the last time Eddie was punched. He made sure Mike saw his look of exaggerated spite, then dismounted next to Eddie. Eddie looked up at Kevin, then past him at Mike, who was slowly coasting across the road. “Whatcha doin’?” Mike asked ominously, a hateful sneer on his face, his fists ready to go at the first wrong move. “You guys talking about me behind my back? I thought we all agreed before we left there wasn’t gonna be no secrets.” Eddie looked away. Kevin said, “You can think what you want, man. We were minding our own business, so why don’t you just mind yours?” Mike ground his teeth together, blinking rapidly. Finally he exploded. “Why don’t you mind yours, you fat fucking Polak! Why don’t you crawl back in your hole where you belong! Everything was just bitchen before you showed up and started taking sides. Me and Eddie used to have a real good time until you got him all hot on this ‘Revolution’ bullshit. Love!” he spat, his whole face trembling. “Couple of faggots, that’s what you are!” He avoided looking at Eddie when he made this accusation. He stabbed a forefinger at Kevin’s nose. “And it’s all because of you!” Kevin’s fists rose halfway to jabbing position. But then he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Eddie looking up and watching him intently. It came to Kevin in a flash that this instance was, clearly, a kind of test. Eddie’s words were still fresh in his mind: “But now we’ve got guys who refuse to get involved, and who just plain won’t fight. That’s the only way to deal with it, and that’s what the Movement’s all about.” His ten-speed had been left leaning against his flank, and, in a surprise move, Mike deftly grabbed the handlebars of Kevin’s bike and pushed off before the fat boy could snatch it back. Kevin ran in hot pursuit while Mike roared with malicious hilarity. Mike skillfully steered Kevin’s bicycle for a few hundred feet before allowing it to drop with a crash. He kicked and kicked at the spokes with his heels, then used the front wheel of his own bike to wreak further damage. Kevin screamed out a string of loose obscenities, fell to his knees. Suddenly his eyes were 63

Carnival All Things Must Piss welling with tears. Mike rode off guffawing. There was little damage; only a few bent spokes, an ugly scrape on the leather seat. Kevin straightened the spokes, breaking two, and mounted with the weariness of depleted rage. “Don’t let it bum you,” Eddie said soothingly as they wobbled away together. “I know just how you feel.” He laughed. “Look at us, crying like a couple of kids. Only three days on the road, and here we are, blubbering away like the world’s gonna end.” Kevin looked at him glumly, sniffed away his tears and swallowed. He knew how important this trip was to Eddie, and in gratitude for the friendship he’d done his royal best to keep Eddie’s enthusiasm hyped up over the months. But now he was beginning to treat his serious doubts seriously. At last he made his confession. “You’re right, Eddie. It’s just that I wasn’t ready for all these bad vibes. I thought this was going to be a giant joyride, and everybody would be cool. But ever since we left things’ve been getting worse. For me anyway. It’s been one big disappointment after another. Eddie, I don’t know how to say this . . . but I think we’ve been fooling ourselves. So far everybody I’ve met from Frisco has been a gazillion percent different than what I expected.” He sniffed again, chucked Eddie lightly on the arm. “Well, partner, it’s good to know I’ve got at least one true friend.” Eddie colored. “You can always count on me, Kevin.” Kevin regarded little Eddie affectionately. “But we’ve still got to score us a lid. That was pretty dumb of me to throw it all away last night.” He darkened. “And when I get some more I’m not gonna smoke any with Mike.” Eddie’s delicate brows arched. “Oh, no! We can’t be like that at all. That’s not fair.” “You mean you still feel that way, even after he punched you for no reason?” “Mike’s our brother,” Eddie said with conviction. “We can’t ever forget that, no matter how he acts. Elsewise we’d might as well just turn around right here and head back home.” “Wow. You really are a heavy revolutionary . . . now I feel guilty as all heck, Eddie. How can I ever clean up my act?” “I’m telling you,” Eddie told him, “that things are going to improve naturally. The nearer we get to the City, the cleaner our heads will be. We’ll be like angels, Kevin—everybody who comes within a thirty-mile radius of the City instantly becomes turned-on. These people we’ve run into are on their bum trips because they’re away from the City. ¿Si comprendo? They’re going through Love Withdrawals.” “The Haight,” Kevin corrected him gently. “That lousy Jesus freak told me they don’t like it called ‘the City’ up there. Disrespectful and unhip.” “Really!” Eddie’s eyes lit up and his jaw dropped (Eddie really loved extending his hip vocabulary and adding odd facts to his private storehouse of informational tidbits concerning the Revolution. Back at Santa Monica High he’d been well-known as an authority on the subject. His shy nature had prevented his vaulting to campus prominence, but he was one of the few boys popular with almost everyone. It was Eddie who had introduced Kevin to marijuana that rainy night last November, and Eddie who had fired Kevin’s imagination about San Francisco, and molded their relationship of eager teacher and faithful pupil. Although Kevin was willing to let Eddie tutor him, he really dug the chance to catch him off guard; to pay his friend back with a trippy morsel and look cool in the process). “And they don’t like the word ‘hippie’ up in the Haight,” Kevin added pointedly. “They think it’s a real put-down.” “No kidding!” Kevin could see Eddie tucking the information away. 64

Carnival All Things Must Piss “Thanks, Kevin! ‘Hippie’ does sound sort of plastic, I guess. We’ll just have to call each other ‘freaks’. Nothing plastic about that.” Eddie was silent for a minute. He then looked defiantly into Kevin’s eyes, as though he didn’t expect to be taken seriously. “I—I’ve been thinking, Kevin. You know how important this trip is to me. Look . . . what I’m trying to say is . . . I think this is the biggest thing to ever happen to me. To you too. I didn’t tell you before we left because I sure as heck didn’t want to freak out your head, but, what I’m trying to say is . . . ism . . . uh . . . ism . . . is . . . this is just too heavy! Kevin, this is the Big Ditch. Damn it, it’s the Ultimate Run!” Kevin nodded hiply, knowing he’d really scored some major points here. “I can dig what you’re rapping, man,” he said, “and it’s all like totally groovy. I’m tripping too. My head is, you know, like truly happening.” “No, you don’t know what I mean! Kevin, this trip’s for real! What I mean is . . . is . . . I’m not coming back! There. I’ve said it.” Kevin gawked. Tears came peeking from his eyes. When he could get his mouth together he managed, “Eddie! This is crazy! What a mindblower!” “What is?” “Eddie, I planned to run away, too! I didn’t tell you for the same reason.” Eddie’s whole body locked up. They turned and shared something ineffable. After a few seconds the tears were squeezing between Eddie’s eyelids. He did his best to suppress them, but it was too late. The boys hugged and sobbed and laughed, pounded one another on the back. “Revolutionaries together!” Eddie cried. “All for one, and one for all!” “Forever!” Kevin said. But something was nagging him. A cloud passed over his joy. The Big Ditch? “Eddie . . . you aren’t planning on ditching me up there and sticking me with Mike, are you?” “Of course not,” Eddie said, and sobered considerably. “What ever gave you that idea?” “Oh, I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. I’d just hate to get separated, that’s all. I knew this trip was important to you, Eddie, but I never thought you’d want to leave your mom and dad for good. Me, there’s nothing that could make me happier than to never see my folks again.” “Kevin,” Eddie said with solemn finality, “nothing in the world means more to me than getting to San Francisco and living there for the rest of my life. Nothing! The worst thing anybody could do to me would be to stop me from getting up there. He’d might as well cut out my heart. I’m determined!” Kevin set his jaw. With a whole mouthful of soul he said, “Eddie, you can count on me. As long as I’m with you I guarantee nobody will screw up your plan. I guaran-tee it! We’ll be the heaviest flower children the Haight ever saw.” “And you’ll change your feelings about Mike?” Kevin squeezed his hand brakes. “And I’ll even change my feelings about Mike. But it’s gonna be hard.” “Just you wait,” Eddie promised. “If we’re cool to Mike, constantly, his whole trip’ll change. We’ll be proud of him.” And sure enough, Eddie’s prophecy proved correct. Several hours later, while Kevin and Eddie were shoveling hamburgers at a Gaviota food stand, Mike slunk over and said with an embarrassed smile, “Hey, you guys. I was rapping with this cat who says he knows where we can score some pot.” “Far out,” Kevin spewed. It was the first time they’d spoken since the quarrel. Mike looked over his shoulder and beckoned. A small Filipino boy, with round pleading eyes and glistening coal-black shoulder-length hair fastened at the back, walked over shyly, avoiding their eyes. He looked about sixteen, and wore baggy slacks, rope sandals, a floral-patterned short-sleeved 65

Carnival All Things Must Piss shirt. “Guys,” Mike announced, “this is Mitchell. Mitchell, this is Eddie and . . . that’s Kevin.” The Filipino boy shook hands, coloring deeper. “I can score grass,” he fumbled, speaking quietly, “but have to go ways get. Friend of mine works head shop. Has lids. For sale good pot.” “That’s cool of you,” Kevin said. “And I’ll give you a nice pinch for going to the hassle.” Mitchell blushed again. As they followed him down the sidewalk, Eddie couldn’t resist nudging Kevin. “See?” he whispered. “What’d I tell you? Mike’s sorry, so he’s helping you score. He feels bad about acting tough, and now he’s doing his best to make it up to you.” Kevin grinned awkwardly. “I guess you’re right, Eddie. It’s like everybody’s got love in their hearts. They just gotta be shown they’re not alone.” “Now you’re grooving.” The grin remained on Kevin’s face, but the scene in his mind belied it. Eddie might be right about a lot of things, but he was just too guileless to see beyond the surface. So for now, in Eddie’s company, Mike was okay, Mike was safe. But the clock was running against him. He’d become, in Kevin’s eyes, Pure Evil. Pretty soon, when the time was right, Kevin vowed, in the name of the Revolution, to kick the holy crap out of him.

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Chapter 6 Hooked The head shop was a tiny, parti-colored store sandwiched between a florist’s and a jeweler’s. The shop’s interior was dark, but, thanks to the lighting arrangement, never for too long in any one place. A backlit plastic disk, its clear surface splashed with colors, revolved on a slow arbor above the doorway, scattering brief bursts of colored light about the room, over the boys’ heads, across shelves stacked with hookah pipes and mind toys. A huge surrealistic painting of Alice’s Cheshire Cat grinned mischievously from the far wall, blue smoke spurting from its nostrils in ever-widening rings. A strobe light pulsed over the cat’s head, distorting time and space within the shop, rendering motionless the thick smoke trails of jasmine-scented incense wafting from every corner. Now Mitchell, asking Eddie and Mike to wait outside, led Kevin around a purple velour curtain draping a doorway below the Cheshire Cat’s tail. They emerged in a tiny storeroom. Seated at a card table, a fat, bald little man perspired heavily before the rapidly revolving blades of a small electric fan while nervously watching the goings-on in his establishment via closed-circuit TV. Head shops were Meccas for shoplifters. The store’s owner knew he needed to blend in, and, at the same time, advertise. So for the sake of his business he was dressed exclusively in his own merchandise: a synthetic alpaca greatcoat with copper zodiacal charms dangling from the cuffs, draped by a loud, heavy zarape with braided fringe and the legend LOVE IS WHERE IT’S AT lettered boldly on the back and front; a thick and highly polished nickel swastika medallion hanging almost to his lap; an “Indian” belt of tiny strung yellow beads and fake turquoise, with erratically spaced profiles of a teepee, horse, and the standard bonneted chief in red beads; patriotically striped-and-starred trousers with snaps down the sides and bordering the pockets; Liverpool-style black patent leather ankle-high boots with oversized heels and a replica of Dave Clark’s signature stitched in white on the toes. Kevin felt this man, despite his outlandish appearance, was the straightest and most uptight person he’d ever encountered in a head shop. The man’s bare skull shone like a cue ball, with only a sparse fringe of brown curls about the ears and nape. He was forever squinting worriedly at the monitor, drawing 67

Carnival Hooked deeply on a cigarette, tapping the ashes in the general direction of an amber glass ashtray overflowing with neurotically mashed butts. The only interruptions to the ash-tapping were frequent pauses to roll his neck, and a compulsive tugging at the front of the coat as he pulled it free of his sweaty chest. The room was as thick with tobacco smoke as the shop had been thick with incense fumes. “Yeah, whatcha want, Mitch?” he asked in a tough voice, reluctant to avert his eyes from the screen. Before Mitchell could reply the little man spun in his seat, hollered, “Mark!” and whirled back around, spilling ash on his striped pants, then furiously rubbing that ash into the material with a wide stubby hand. Immediately another curtain was pulled aside and a thin, long-haired man of thirty peered out over the top of blue-tinted, square-rimmed granny glasses. A single streak of his banded brown hair was dyed iridescent green. “Yeah, dad?” The granny glasses swung to Mitchell. The longhair motioned him inside. Kevin was ignorant of store protocol, but he wasn’t about to remain with the edgy little owner. He shoved through the second curtain behind Mitchell. This room was scarcely larger than a medium-sized bathroom, illuminated only by a single dusty bulb dangling from a frayed and twisted cord. Tier upon tier of large cardboard boxes left barely enough room to squeeze in sideways. The three spoke in whispers. The long-haired man’s attire was, in Kevin’s eyes, as inspired as the father’s. This Mark wore a tan leather vest with long strips of beaded fringe, slick black leather trousers, platform shoes spangled with brass buttons. Cheap turquoise jewelry dangled from his wrists and neck. An armband on each skinny bicep had the words OFF THE PIG embroidered in red, white, and blue. Now Mark opened a nondescript cardboard box tucked behind one of the tiers to display at least thirty bagged ounces. Kevin chose the thickest, and, after smoking a joint and fingering the contents, gave the benignly smiling and nodding man a ten dollar bill. The entire transaction had taken a mere five minutes; no fuss, no muss. As promised, Kevin gave the Filipino boy a generous pinch from his stash. Still whispering, he bade adieu to Mark and to the obsequiously smiling Mitchell, who had business to discuss in broken English. Kevin strode through the stockroom, past the nervous little owner now almost hidden in a tobacco fog, and out through the purple curtain. He leaned against the mural. A hat rack stood adjacent to the purple velour curtain. Dozens of different styles of caps, fedoras, derbies—even one rhinestone-studded turban—dangled from pegs on the rack. But Kevin was taken by a floppy brown hillbilly affair, which he pulled low on his ears and admired in a small rectangular mirror affixed to the rack for that purpose. The hat’s crown reined in his wild hair, while the great nether brim created a frizzy shape resembling a broad puffy collar. Suddenly Kevin was too cool for words. He looked around for his friends, saw them, froze. Mike and Eddie—especially Eddie—were being entertained by two bikinied girls in the center aisle, next to a large cylindrical postcard rack. Both girls were bronzed, brunette, and slender. They were such an even match that Kevin first supposed they were twins, but as he approached and hesitated he noticed one girl bore a slightly Oriental cast, while the other was certainly a Jewess. He hesitated because he was high from the grass, and because the two girls and his friends had hit it off so well—giggling and poking and pinching—that he was at a complete loss for action. He certainly didn’t feel like giggling or poking or pinching. He felt like bashing Mike’s and Eddie’s heads together, for his pot-rationale found something selfish and downright unfriendly about his pals enjoying the goodies while he was away on an errand for their mutual benefit. Testosterone worked the fingers of Kevin’s right hand into a fist. The boy took a deep breath and relaxed. He forced a saunter as he approached Eddie, now being teased by the Jewish girl, and asserted 68

Carnival Hooked himself with the robust announcement of his purchase. Eddie either didn’t hear or ignored him completely, responding to the girl’s tickling with nervous, slavering giggles. Kevin had never seen his friend so beside himself. Eddie’s eyes were wild and rolling with agitated bashful lust. His oddly contorted body was hunched in what could only be described as a standing fetal position. He was absolutely electrified by the girl’s probing fingers. Flecks of foamy saliva showed at the corners of his mouth. His giggles were spastic, rattling deep in his throat. Every now and then he would convulsively paw her shoulder or arm, his idiotic giggles ascending in frenzy. Mike slapped the girl hard on her bottom. As she spun round laughing, Eddie grasped her arm and stroked it with rigid, crooked fingers. She backed straight into Kevin, who could only grin vacuously. “Excuse me,” the girl said with complete indifference, and pursued the passionate tickling of Eddie, who continued to wheeze and titter moronically. Now the other girl joined her friend in the exquisite tickling torture. A string of saliva rolled from Eddie’s lower lip. Furious, Kevin ground his teeth, wanting to passionately fondle either rude, shameless girl; showing them how a self-assured man behaved, and revealing what a fool Eddie was making of himself. Then the other girl, swinging around to tickle Eddie from behind, spooned right into Kevin. “Excuse me!” she snapped, with a look of profound distaste. In an instant he was forgotten. She squeezed right back between Eddie and the postcard rack. His cheeks and ears burning, Kevin stepped around the rack, which occasionally clattered counterclockwise from the disturbance on the other side. He stared blindly at a colorful postcard, wanting to slam his fist into anyone, anything. Slowly the blood drained from his face, and he saw that the postcard was a glossy photograph of San Francisco Peninsula, taken from across the bay. He removed the card for a closer inspection. This created a view space, revealing the trespasses on the rack’s other side. Helpless to avert his gaze, he looked on with icy ire. Eddie was pretty far gone. A grimacing grin was frozen on his face, shudders were racking his body. He was bent like an old, old man. His arms and hands were white as death, but his face was so red Kevin fancied he could feel its heat. Little hiccoughing yelps of frantic arousal burst sporadically from Eddie’s nostrils. Now Mike reached around and pinched the Jewish girl on her derriere. She laughed and turned half-around, her bikinied breast thrust almost into flabbergasted Eddie’s bulging, throbbing eyeball. Kevin could just about feel the primitive impulses shrieking through Eddie’s overheated brain, as the boy stared transfixed at this taunting fruit an inch from his nose. With an anguished little cry, Eddie jerked as though he’d been kicked, and his trembling hand worked its way up, out of his control . . . paused hovering an inch over the breast . . . molded itself agonizingly to the curvature . . . squeezed it twice. The girl turned around delightedly and slapped Eddie’s hand with a scolding smile. Eddie squealed and fidgeted like a naughty little gnome, drew the hand spastically to his mouth. Kevin turned away slowly, his breath shallow and rapid. His hands were shaking. Eddie was totally out of line here! If he, Kevin, had not been depleting his energy for the sake of Eddie’s and Mike’s welfare, it would have been a whole different story. He reasoned, unreasonably, that it was he who should have been tickled, and he the one to bring up a nervous hand for the quick double squeeze of that wonderful, teasing protuberance. Eddie had . . . Eddie had no right! Sick, he shuffled off, his right hand softly, painfully cupping and fondling air, his left hand gripping the now creased and sweat-stained postcard. The incense smoke, competing for his air, agitated his distress, so he stopped and leaned against a sales counter. He looked up, directly into the lens of a closed-circuit camera fixed on his trembling face. He could almost see the pudgy little owner’s neurotic eye glaring out at him. 69

Carnival Hooked “You,” came a young woman’s voice. “Hep?” Kevin thought, You bet your dumb whoring ass I am! and tearfully swung to meet the sound. The sales girl slouching behind the counter was a gaping, homely salute to estrogen gone wild. Only a supremely bored God could have produced such an outlandish exaggeration of the female form; a butt like two watermelons supporting an almost skeletal torso. What the sales girl carried upstairs Kevin could only guess, for she wore a tie-dyed peasant’s blouse billowing like a parachute. The girl had no waist to speak of. Her outsize combat trousers were tucked into polished black jackboots, and secured by a tiny belt of entwined asps of anodized steel. Heart-shaped sunglasses with pink lenses took up half her face, exposing only a heavy jaw, lips painted the color of mercurochrome, and a forehead tattooed with the message MOO! written backward for rear-view mirror appraisal. Her hair, long and straight like her brother’s, had been variously sectioned— clipped, banded, pinned, braided—ironed here, frizzed there, bleached in certain spots, dyed in others; loosely ornamented like a Christmas tree with dangling beads, feathers, gewgaws and the like. The whole rowdy mess was crowned by a tiny plastic silver-and-black birthday hat, its wide dayglo orange strap snapped tight under the girl’s Peking Man jaw. The hat’s shiny surface featured holographic grinning cartoon images of a wildly popular teeny-bopper band known as the Monkees. Now Kevin, dazzled by the holograph, blinked and dropped the crumpled postcard on the counter. “Hat? Buy hat too?” He fingered the limp brim dully and grunted. Leaning back, the girl looked him up and down while slowly shaking her trinket-barnacled head. The boy’s eyes shifted side to side in response to the small movements of reflected light. After a minute of this she took him by his shirt’s lapel and dragged him over to the leathers section. She bent down to root through a cluster of opened cardboard boxes. Kevin almost fainted. The contents of the girl’s billowy blouse were now revealed in all their pendulous, braless glory. He clenched his fists, forced a quick look around. Surely everybody in the place was staring at him, absolutely crimson with outrage. No one seemed remotely interested. Then the camera . . . no, no, his back was to the camera. Suddenly clammy in his armpits and crotch, Kevin felt his burning gaze drawn irresistibly to that spectacular dangling duo. The sales girl was wrestling with something heavy in one of the boxes, grunting and panting as she jerked up and down, up and down, up and down. And up and down and side to side and . . . Up . . . and . . . Down. Her long hanging hair formed two sides of a window for Kevin’s bursting eyes alone, and within that window heaven just danced on and on; a performance way superior to the static displays in his girlie magazines, more vital by far than his steamiest fantasies. Kevin caught his breath as she straightened with a gasp, triumphantly holding a mass of fresh-smelling brown suede. Her eyes crossed. “You!” Kevin unclenched his fists and released his long-held breath. He was busted, Caught Ogling! “M-me?” he managed, the sudden center of attention for dozens of umbrageous shoppers, blushing clergymen, gaping schoolchildren, and grim plain-clothes detectives. The apparitions vanished. He tried to refocus. The sales girl pushed the folded vest at him. “You,” she said, frowning now. “You.” Kevin took the vest by its neck, let it fall open. The thing was bulky, with long leather fringing at the hem. 70

Carnival Hooked “You!” the girl said, exasperated. She mimed pulling on an upper body garment for Kevin’s benefit. “You!” Kevin shrugged the vest on. It fit tightly, smelled earthy and masculine. That tightness very agreeably made his chest and shoulders feel powerful and prominent. The vest’s hem reached his waist. Those long strips of leather fringe hung limply almost to his knees. Little colored ceramic beads and roach clips were strung around the pockets. He slowly pivoted and noticed for the first time that a Zig-Zag (®) logo the size of a dinner plate was stitched onto the back. The rugged earthiness of this vest, he felt, gave him a likeness approximating that of a dignified dime store wooden Indian, and since the Movement ravenously sympathized with every Native American cause Hollywood could dream up, Kevin saw the vest as a badge strongly identifying him with people like Guy and with all the Aquarian generation stood for. Again holding him by the lapels, the girl dragged Kevin over to a full-length mirror standing against the wall. She then used her hands to patiently explain the advent of a mysterious third party, tapping a forefinger on his chest while the other hand indicated his reflection. “You.” “How much?” he panted. The sales girl puckered. She spread her arms slowly, then rushed her hands together, halting when the palms were a few inches apart. Kevin, expecting an impact, felt his head jerk back. For a second all was blackness. The shop rematerialized, began to swim about him. The Cheshire Cat, leering from the far wall, morphed into a wolf, bayed in Kevin’s slack mooning face. The girl’s eyes rolled back in her skull. “Dirty night, nitey-nite,” she chanted. But Kevin wasn’t so befuddled he’d buy into witchcraft or gothic verse. Physical art, poetic expression . . . these things were way too cryptic for like a totally plainspoken dude. Besides, that kind of stuff was only for nerds and losers. Kevin’s testosterone level plummeted. She’d blown it. Babes, he acknowledged for the gazillionth time, just don’t get it. Only minutes ago she’d been a funky, titillating goddess, and now she was nothing more than a gawky, pantomiming fool. Kevin exhaled quietly. He tried again. “How much?” The girl snapped. She reached behind him, grabbed the vest’s neck and yanked the garment around so hard she almost broke the boy’s arm. She shoved the handful of vest in his face. The label read: Genuine Suede. Made in Mexico. XXL. Below this had been scrawled in black ink: $39.99. She smacked him across the forehead and stuck the scrawled price almost in his eye. “Dirty night, nitey-nite!” Releasing the vest, she grabbed his shirt’s lapel for the third time and hauled him back to the counter. Kevin timidly pulled out his wallet. The girl extracted three twenties and laid them out as a fan. “Hat,” she said, pointing at a twenty. She yanked twice on the vest while indicating the two remaining twenties. “Vet.” She then extracted a ten dollar bill, slapped the wallet shut, and pulled from behind the counter a gorgeous snakeskin belt with a huge brass buckle. On the buckle’s face were the words DO YOUR OWN THING in raised letters. It was a steal. “Bet.” She released Kevin’s lapel. The boy gingerly picked up his belt and wallet and made his way out. He paused to slip on the belt and check his reflection in the display window’s broad pane. A grin cut his face in half. Who was that together cat? Mike and Eddie were holding their bikes at the curb. The setting sun was tingeing a few 71

Carnival Hooked streaks of cirri with flaming gold. Mike guffawed wickedly when he saw Kevin’s new outfit, then, apparently making an effort to stay on good terms, muttered, “Hey, that looks totally cool, Kevin. Really far out.” Kevin beamed. As they all rode away he sought Eddie’s opinion. Eddie looked at him feverishly. “I squeezed it, Kevin! I squeezed her tittie, I tell you! I squeezed her tittie!” Kevin’s grin collapsed. “Big deal!” Mike barked, with a snappiness indicating this exchange had been going on for a while. “I pinched her ass.” Kevin looked one to the other, snarling. “So what? You guys act like it’s your first feel!” “What do you mean,” Eddie shot back, “my ‘first?’ I’ve squeezed millions of titties! But it was so round and soft! And she liked it, I’m telling you, she liked it!” Kevin sneered and looked to Mike knowingly, saying, “Oh, bull! Anybody knows they don’t like it. Only guys like it.” But Mike, leaning inside as they coasted along, kept one eye on the road and rejoined in a sly undertone, “Yeah? Well, I didn’t wanna tell you guys, but I not only pinched her ass, I rubbed it man. I could even feel her crack! And she liked that, too.” Eddie whipped his head to the side. He stared at Mike fiercely. “You didn’t!” “So what?” Kevin spat. “I don’t give a shit. Why tell me?” “I sure did,” strutted Mike. “Not only that, I slipped my hand inside her bikini and felt ‘down there.’ Boy, did she ever like that!” Eddie blew it. He pedaled so hard Kevin had to strain to catch him. Mike, gloating behind, called out, “Hey, Eddie! You wanna smell my finger?” and burst into vicious laughter. “I’m telling you,” Eddie panted, “Mike never touched her. Never! She didn’t like him, she liked me! She let me squeeze her tittie, Kevin. Twice, I squeezed it twice. No! Four times.” “Well, what do you want me to do about it?” Kevin demanded. “Throw a parade? Break out the champagne?” He took a deep breath. “By the way, Eddie, I scored us a lid.” “It was nice and firm. Firm but soft.” “Eddie—” “She let me squeeze it, Kevin. I could’ve squeezed ‘em both if I wanted, if Mike didn’t have to go and pinch her. No, he never touched her, never. She liked me, not him. I know. She let me squeeze her tittie.” “And I said I don’t give a darn! Listen, Eddie, I hate to say this, but it really sounds like you never did it before. Otherwise you wouldn’t be making such a big thing out of it.” “And I,” Eddie shrieked, “said it wasn’t my first time!” He looked away and refused to say another word. As Kevin rode alongside, mute, his frustration did not abate with the miles. He revisited the episode by the postcard rack; only it was he doing the squeezing, and it was the ravenhaired girl, her wonders concealed only by a strained silky black bikini top, who was the object of his sensitive palm and pudgy questing fingers. In this fantasy, to upstage Eddie, he went farther than ever, brusquely pulling off the bikini top and ravenously suckling a nipple he pictured as a plump, firm strawberry. He swallowed hard and tightened his grip on the handlebars. The twilight deepened. A strand of fringe, flapping into the spokes of his rear wheel, was torn from his vest with a jolt. A few miles north of Gaviota the highway twists inland, and for fifty miles remains inland, at last snaking back to the coast at Pismo Beach. This inland section passes through wild, dry country in hairpin curves. The boys were making for the town of Lompoc, halfway between Gaviota and Pismo Beach. 72

Carnival Hooked But after two hours of negotiating the endless curves they decided to sleep among the twisted trees just off the road. The area was thickly wooded and full of ankle-turning potholes. “I heard a story about this stretch of road up here,” Mike said offhandedly as he unrolled his sleeping bag. He kicked away a few pebbles poking up in his intended spread. “There’s supposed to be a guy living up in these hills who comes down here at night to terrorize people who stop in cars— you know, guys necking with their chicks and people cooking at campfires. Anyhow, this guy’s got only one hand, dig? He lost the other one in The War, and now he’s got one of them hooks on the stump. He keeps it sharp as a razor blade, and every night he comes tiptoeing so nobody can hear him, and when he finds somebody he watches him for a long time, then sneaks up from behind and brings that hook down on the back of the guy’s neck as hard as he can.” “Oh, great!” Kevin said sarcastically. “That’s just what I wanted to hear!” Actually, he just loved a good bedtime story meant to frighten the pants off him, and although he was certain he’d heard this yarn, or one similar, before, he had to appreciate the storyteller’s ability to entertain. So for the time being Mike was okay in Kevin’s book. He lit one of two joints he’d rolled earlier. When he was snug in his sleeping bag he handed it to Mike. “Yeah,” Mike said, taking a deep draw and passing the reefer to Eddie. “He carries this satchel down with him, right? And in this satchel he’s got all kinds of attachments he can screw onto his stump in place of the hook, and each of these attachments is for a special occasion. Like, if he sees a couple balling he’ll knock ’em both out with this chrome-plated bludgeon attachment, and tie ’em up with this screw-on pulley gadget. Then he’ll take this thing like a telescoping eggbeater, with a handle that turns the blades and everything.” Mike demonstrated, turning an imaginary reel on his fist. “He’s got this gizmo filed real sharp like his hook. So he rams it straight up her pussy and starts turning the handle. The blades whirl around and slowly go deeper and deeper until she croaks.” “Gawd!” Kevin said. “Where’d you hear about this guy? It sounds like you’re making it all up.” He hugged himself with delicious anticipation, imagining the stealthy crunch of footsteps just beyond the field of his vision. “Cross my heart and hope to die if it’s a lie,” Mike swore solemnly. “I read this in the paper, man! They’ve seen the guy, ’cause a few people escaped. Only a few. But they’ve never caught him. He’s known as The Hook. Just a couple weeks ago he snuffed some Marine, right about where we are now. He killed the guy by taking this long thingamajig like a knitting needle with a spiral ridge on it, see, and using this stump attachment built like an old hand drill to screw it into the Marine’s eardrum real slow, all the way through his brain and out the other side. Then he chopped the guy’s hand off with his hatchet screw-on and took it with him for his collection. He always cuts off one hand after he does in his victim. His way of getting even with everybody with two hands, I guess. “Anyway, when he catches a couple balling, after the chick cools like I explained, well, then he takes this other attachment out of his bag and, chuckling and talking quietly to the terrified guy tied down butt-ass naked in front of him, he screws it on his stump. This little number he calls his Nutcracker. What it is is a vise which he sticks the guy’s balls in. As he turns the handle the two sides of the Nutcracker slowly get closer, squeezing the poor thrashing guy’s balls, and as he’s screaming The Hook’s still talking to him, and chuckling all the while. And when the guy’s balls are purple and he’s so far gone he’s almost beyond pain, The Hook pushes this button on the Nutcracker. A spring that was tightening all the time is tripped like on a mousetrap, and the two halves smash together and crush the guy’s balls into gonad puree.” Kevin moaned and instinctively curled up his knees. Eddie began to whistle shrilly, and they both quickly looked around at the black, ominously shivering bushes. They laughed nervously, in unison. 73

Carnival Hooked Mike yawned and stretched his arms. “Well, there’s three of us, so we don’t gotta worry.” Kevin blinked owlishly. “Whatta you mean? If we’re all asleep we’ll be sitting ducks. Maybe we should take turns watching.” “Nah. You’ll wake up quick enough if The Hook comes around. I read he’s got something wrong with his throat or his lungs. He breathes real fast and loud. So you’ll know when he’s coming.” He yawned even wider and turned over in his sleeping bag, away from them. Kevin blinked again. “But then why didn’t the Marine hear . . .” Mike raspberried him and yawned warningly. Kevin and Eddie were quiet for a while. A small animal rustled the brush, momentarily hushing the crickets. “You sca-a-a-red, Eddie?” Kevin whispered. “Not rea-a-a-ally,” Eddie whispered back. “I’ve got . . . I’ve got something else on my mind right now.” “What . . . what you got on your mind right now?” Eddie looked at him directly, eyes ablaze. “I was just thinking about that girl’s tittie I squeezed, about how big and soft it was.” Kevin groaned. “Eddie—” “I squeezed it six times, Kevin, over and over and over. It was terrific. I wanted to squeeze ’em both, together, but Mike had to go and pinch her. No . . . no . . . no he didn’t! I don’t care what he says.” “Eddie—” “They were firm and creamy, Kevin, just like big yummy marshmallows. All soft and squeezey.” “Okay already, Eddie! Jesus, now you sound like you wanted to eat ’em, for Pete’s sake!” There was a silence. At last Eddie said, guiltily, “You know what I wanted to do? I . . . I wanted to suck on them.” “Oh, Christ!” Kevin shot. “That’s wild, Eddie; I mean like really, really wild! You know what that is? That’s just plain sick, man. Sick! I mean, what are you, some kind of mama’s boy?” “Heck no! You’re just saying that because you didn’t get to squeeze it like I did. That’s because she liked me. She didn’t like you and she didn’t like Mike. She liked me! She let me squeeze her tittie!” “Okay! Big freaking deal, mama’s-boy retard. I’ve heard all about it, you little sicko. Now why don’t you just shut up and go to sleep.” To Kevin’s surprise Eddie clammed immediately, and was soon snoring softly and rhythmically. This snoring had a lullaby effect on Kevin. His own respiration gradually slowed until his breathing was keeping perfect time with Eddie’s. The monotonous chirring of crickets had the same quieting effect, and he was just about to sink completely under their spell into solid slumber when he was roused by a subtle change in Eddie’s breathing. The soft snoring was gone, replaced by a quickening tempo in the boy’s now-gritty respiration. Kevin unhappily let his eyelids come unglued and turned his head, seeing—poorly because of the darkness, and because his glasses were off—that Eddie was struggling with something in his sleeping bag. “What’s wrong, Eddie?” he mumbled thickly. Eddie froze. “Wrong?” he asked tightly, after a moment of uncertainty. “Nothing . . . nothing’s wrong. I—I have to take a leak, that’s all. Be right back.” He got out of his bag and stole into the bushes. Kevin yawned and prepared to drift off, but a sharp rock directly under his head had to be removed first. He flicked it away, massaged the sore spot on his head with a thumb, shifted in his bag 74

Carnival Hooked . . . and found that now he couldn’t sleep. He fingered the new leather of his vest approvingly for a while, wondered what was taking Eddie so long. He yawned again, cracked his knuckles. Grew worried. Wide awake, he listened intently, but there wasn’t a sound. Even the crickets had ceased. He lay on his back with breath held, seeing indistinctly the immense field of uncountable still white stars, listening. The night was a warm, heavy shroud, and it made Kevin feel the world was holding its breath right along with him. Then Mike snorted loudly in his sleep, smacked his lips. Kevin, stepping silently from his bag, realized they had neglected to bring flashlights. Not bothering to don his glasses, he snatched a box of strike-anywhere matches and slipped between the bushes he’d peripherally witnessed Eddie passing. It was likely that Eddie had up and got himself lost, though Kevin couldn’t imagine why his friend should wander so far from camp to urinate. He struck one of the long stick matches on his Levis and held it sputtering beside his head, hoping Eddie would see it. The light, so near his eyes, blinded him momentarily, so he raised his arm. The flame burned his fingertips. Kevin dropped the match with a whispered curse and crammed the fingers in his mouth. He listened. Total, utter, all-encompassing silence. Then a car passed on the road, its headlight beams swinging through the trees as the car rounded a curve. The brief glimpse chilled him: the area was cemetery-still. But he’d seen a clearing, perhaps a hundred yards away at the top of a rise. He could get his bearings. Kevin struck another match and made for the spot, but, after five more matches, realized that somebody had managed to spirit away the clearing even as he was in the act of hiking to it. That was enough to stop him dead. Kevin struck no more matches. An owl flapped by like a huge clumsy bat, making him jump. He followed with his eyes, turning on his toes, and when he looked back down realized he was hopelessly lost. Immediately he began striking matches in quick succession, turning his head in every direction. He was just opening his mouth to call for help when he heard something that caused his nuts to race right back up their inguinal canals . . . from fifteen yards behind came the sound of loud, excited breathing, hoarse and shallow. Intense. Mike’s words drifted whispering into Kevin’s mind, as if the words, too, were desperately afraid of being discovered: He breathes real fast and loud, so you’ll know when he’s coming. Kevin spun around. You’ll know when he’s coming. The Hook! And there, dressed to appear as an innocent shrub, crouched a wicked, scheming old pervert with one cunning eye and one trembling hand, his face and shoulders cleverly made up to simulate the black, star-speckled sky. His telltale respiration grew more rapid while Kevin gaped, transfixed. The leaves shook all around him, faster and faster, as he gathered himself to spring, and Kevin could now see that The Hook was carrying his notorious satchel, which, from where the boy was standing, presented the illusion of being merely a large rock. Kevin’s left wrist throbbed with an imagined taste of the phantom pain to come. And just as The Hook’s fiendish breathing reached a frenzied peak, Kevin gave vent to a mighty bellow of raw terror. He whirled round to flee and heard, after a second’s pause, an answering shriek and tumultuous clamor as The Hook set after him. Kevin ran blindly, snarling, screaming and waving his arms in front of his face, straight into a thick growth of brambles. The barbs gouged him, tore his arms and face, ripped long rents down his new vest. As he scrambled free he heard The Hook’s demonic, gasping breath closing in. The fiend came crashing through the brush. Even in his panic Kevin could picture the old man dementedly swinging his long, wickedly curved hook like a sickle, cackling, muttering to himself, his one malevolent old eye fixed purposefully on the flushed nape of Kevin’s naked neck. The scrambling boy tripped on a root and pitched face-first into the dirt, rolled onto his back with his arms protecting his face, expecting to feel the gleaming tip of the chromed hook come ripping into his throat. But there was nothing, only a heaving silence. He got to his knees, licked his lips. Not far off he could now hear hoarse, rapid breathing. Kevin sobbed, and the breathing stopped. Paralyzed with dread of this new silence, he felt The Hook’s roving old eye, bulging with bloodlust, 75

Carnival Hooked impatiently scan every leaf, every stone. The stillness was all-suffocating, as that old eyeball sent out an invisible beam of pure malice, passing over Kevin, moving on, and then, with dazzling speed, whipping back to impale him. Kevin croaked out one terrified vowel-thick syllable. Immediately the ghastly respiration sounds began, sobbing with monstrous lust and gore-anticipation. With a soundless shriek Kevin bolted, only to stumble in circles for what seemed hours, getting scratched and scraped to pieces, growing delirious, expecting one of The Hook’s bizarre cleaving devices at any moment. At last he stopped and looked all around. Every shadow appeared to lurk, preparing to pounce. Rasping, exhausted breathing was in his ears. Wheezing painfully, he sank halfway to his knees, supporting himself by leaning on a blackened, scaly tree stump. And there, lifeless on the ground before his raving eyes, lay a limp, blood-smeared hand, palm up, the broken and hapless fingers splayed in dreadful self-commiseration. Kevin tasted vomit, his heart lurched as he tried to rise. With a final gasp he fell into the dismembered arms of the dry, dry shrubbery in a dead, dead faint.

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Chapter 7 Planet Of The Humans When Kevin opened his eyes the sun was already high in the sky, the air sizzling. His breath seared the walls of his nostrils, his mouth tasted of dirt and blood. He sat up slowly, totally disoriented, and gingerly picked his vest free of a thorny shrub. On the ground by his knee was a withered gray workman’s glove, its torn palm and fingers stained with axle grease. Kevin groaned and picked it up, but dropped it immediately as a small green lizard leaped out and vanished in the undergrowth. The boy looked around groggily, his neck taut and sore. Nothing for miles but dry, colorless shrubbery. He stood and squirmed free of the vest, draped it over his shoulder, and began shambling about like a hopeless castaway. There was no real shade to speak of; trees were stunted, branches peppered with blanched, furling, and brittle leaves. He recalled tales of folks trapped in similar hells, wandering in circles, sucking on rocks, staggering aimlessly until the cruel sun pounded them into twisted heaps of scaly red garbage for the carrion birds. A distant voice was calling his name. He called back, his own voice a painful croak. Mike and Eddie began shouting his name in unison, like a chant, until Kevin stumbled up, miserable and exhausted. He sucked Mike’s canteen dry when they reached camp. “Got chased by The Hook,” he gasped. “Right behi . . . he was right behi . . . he was right behind me.” Eddie’s eyes ballooned in their sockets. “You too? He chased me for miles last night.” They blinked back and forth; each boy a mirror image of scrapes and scratches, of dirt and dust, of tangled hair clotted with burrs and twigs and bits of leaves. And Mike was roaring with laughter. Kevin looked his body up and down. His Levis were torn in a dozen new places, his feet leprous with scabs. Puffs of dust accompanied his every movement. He limped over to his sleeping bag and flopped down, rolled a joint, gently stepped into his boots. He lit the joint, slurped smoke up 77

Carnival his silly face, and said, simply: “Let’s go.”

Planet Of The Humans

joon 30 1967 jime thu milz pas lik majik onle 30 mor 2 go an wel b in santu mureu an thn its onle 50 2 san loois obispo wich iz wut we figyr 2 b thu hafwa poent nawt bad 4 3 daz ridn akchoole frum san loois obispo awn its u lawt mor fr an u hek uv u lawt mor rugud but at thu r8 wr goen wel hav u kupl uv daz 2 chek owt thu h8 sen b4 we dig thu big gig as uzooul nuthen but good vibz iv bin metn u lawt uv groov ppl awn thu rod an tripn with thu chix hoo r awl bilt 2 thu hilt an hawt 2 trawt mi bix bin holdn up lik u rel champ jime lik it kood mak it kler ukraws thu kuntre edz iz dooen ok 2 but this mornen aftr we gawt in2 lawmpawk mix bik rele hasld him yoo no that bolt wut keps thu handulbrz std awn u 10spd wl thu nut kam loos awn mix bik wn he wuz ridn an he flipd hdfrst ovr thu frunt wel an praktikle skrapd hiz fac awf but hez ok jus soopr growche wl thats awl 4 now jime hop yr lagz btr an awl that tl awl mi budz i sd hi rit yoo soon kevin “I can’t wait to get back to the coast,” Eddie shivered. “These flyboys are giving me the total creeps.” Another jeep full of enlisted men from Vandenberg Air Force base was slowing down. One of those young men blew Kevin a very wet kiss, another showed the boys a limp wrist and pouting lips. “Hey . . . sweetheart!” the driver called to Eddie. “Why don’t you introduce me to your girlfriend (meaning Kevin) there? Does she like it from the front or the rear?” The others roared with laughter. “Just you try it,” Kevin mumbled, “and I’m gonna kick your asses all over your faces.” “What’s that, honey?” a voice shot. “What’d you say, hot lips?” The jeep stopped at the curb. The driver snarled, “Want some Free Love, butterball? Huh? How about eight inches of hot O’Henry? Think you can handle it all?” And from the rear seat, another voice: “Don’t you trolls ever take a bath?” “Mind your own fucking business,” Mike said, too grumpy to keep his mouth shut for long. His face was scarlet with Mercurochrome in a dozen places. An extra large bandage covered the scrape on his nose. “What was that?” cried one of the men. He made to step out. The boys cowered, but just then another jeep, this one containing a major general driven by his orderly, pulled alongside the first. “You men move along there,” the officer said tersely. The men in the jeep immediately pulled away. The major general, a stocky white-haired man with heavy jowls, looked at the boys curiously through the thick lenses of his severe spectacles. His 78

Carnival Planet Of The Humans stare went on and on, growing darker by the moment. At last he said, “Harumph,” looking as though he’d just swallowed something bitter and indigestible. He spoke sotto voce to his orderly, and together they laughed uproariously. Both stared back at Kevin, who was limply gaping at the twin flash of the general’s stars. The orderly put the jeep in gear and drove away, his passenger craning his head over his shoulder to study the boys as if they were extraterrestrials. “I mean it!” Eddie said. “I want out of here!” They were in the town of Orcutt. It was three in the afternoon. The boys followed the highway grimly, keeping as far into the road’s shoulder as possible. Convoys of jeeps and flatbed trucks from the nearby base were thick on the road, and from nearly all came derisive shouts. By five o’clock they had only covered fifteen miles, as they had to constantly pull over to avoid clouds of dust and flying gravel. Several jeeps deliberately swerved close. Not until seven o’clock did the hellish flow abate somewhat, and by then they were dusty, dehydrated, and dog-tired. Much of the area was given over to depleted farmland, now mostly fields of withered weeds. Several dirt roads led off the highway, winding between ancient sycamores and dry rock gullies. Few of the decrepit houses appeared to be occupied, and, as twilight advanced, the dwellings grew dark and haunted-looking, the windows black and forbidding. The boys took a few of these unfrequented old roads out of curiosity, shattered windows in the deserted, looming houses, battled one another with clods of dirt. It was as they were firing rocks at rusty cans alongside one of these dirt roads that they became aware of a vehicle slowly bouncing their way, its headlights cutting uneven swaths in the crepuscular distance. Eddie, Mike, and Kevin stood stock-still, human scarecrows; one tiny, one scrawny, one fat—something in the low rattle of the engine striking them as ominous and probing. When the vehicle neared they saw it was an Air Force jeep. “Down!” Mike said, too late. The jeep bumped to a stop, not twenty feet opposite where they lay. “Well, well,” drawled a familiar voice, “yes indeedy deedy-do. If it ain’t them same three ripe sweethearts, and just when I’m feeling all hot and horny.” Somebody belched. A beer can dropped from the jeep and rolled away clattering. The boys rose slowly. Eddie was trembling. “Please, sir,” he whimpered, “please don’t hurt us. We don’t want any trouble.” “Shit,” Mike said, looking disgustedly at Eddie’s cowering form. He addressed the six young men in the jeep straightforwardly. “Why don’t you pricks just beat it. Scram.” There was laughter in the jeep. It was fully dark now, and the young men were huge and featureless. The hot engine ticked impatiently. “Why, that’s no way for a presentable young thing to talk,” said a blur on the back seat. “Especially when she’s just about to get her sweet little hippie ass kicked.” Another shape growled, “Why don’t you kids ever get a haircut?” Although the delivery was full of rancor, this was a legitimate question. “Oh, yes sir,” Kevin said quickly. “We’ll get haircuts, all of us. Right away.” “My ass,” Mike spat. He stooped, grabbed a fist-sized rock from their arsenal, and hurled it just as hard as he could at the jeep. In amazing slow motion the windshield cracked, spiderwebbed, and disintegrated. Before the men could recover, the boys had hopped on their bikes and were tearing across the field toward a row of abandoned houses. The jeep’s transmission bit into high gear. A correction in the shifting, and the jeep was in hot pursuit. Kevin felt its headlight beams scorching his back as he desperately drove himself on. On one side Eddie was crying and whining, on the other Mike was shouting instructions they were way too terrified to heed. Just as the jeep was upon them its rear wheels caught in a ditch. A whining roar, and the chase was resumed. 79

Carnival Planet Of The Humans “Over here!” Mike screamed. They followed him to a gully’s edge, over the lip and down. The gully was deeper than it looked; all three lost control of their bicycles and plummeted to the bed. “My elbow!” Eddie cried, staggering to his feet and holding his hurt arm to his side. “My neck!” Mike swore, dragging his bike up the opposite side. “My God!” Kevin gasped: the jeep had come to a halt above them, and at least three of the young men were scrambling down with cries of rage and bloodlust. Kevin pushed his bicycle up the other side after his friends, nearly bowling over bawling Eddie in his haste. It was a close scrape. The young servicemen ran hard, one on each frantically pedaling boy. Eddie’s pursuer turned his ankle. Another stopped to assist, but the one chasing Kevin, as usual in the rear, kept after him, puffing and cursing, managing one solid punch to the right kidney. The boys didn’t even look back for five minutes, straining themselves to the very limit of their endurance, finally pulling their dusty bikes onto the porch of a sprawling, dilapidated two-story in the midst of a dozen drooping willows. “Why,” Kevin moaned, collapsing on the creaking old porch, “why’d you have to guide us down that stupid ditch, anyway?” “Well, it was better than getting caught, wasn’t it?” Mike panted. “Those guys are crazy or drunk or both. Besides, I didn’t hear any better ideas.” He turned on Eddie, still blubbering. “Oh, for Christ’s sake shut up, will you?” He groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. “They woulda . . . they woulda killed us if they woulda caught us.” “I’m not crying,” Eddie sobbed, wiping his eyes. He buried his face in his hands and wept convulsively. “I’m not!” Kevin got to his feet and eyed the old house with a shudder. “Maybe we should get inside under cover.” This was no problem for Mike. The boy kicked on the door until the rusted old nails gave an inch, then tore a thick slat from the rotted porch railing and used this, with Kevin’s assistance, to pry the door open a few more inches. One good solid kick from Kevin’s sturdy boot opened the door another foot. They pushed to make enough space for their bikes. Eddie hesitated, sniffling. “I don’t like the looks of this place, you guys.” “Oh, c’mon, Eddie,” Mike said soothingly. “We can be the Hardy Boys again. Just like we used to play, remember?” But Eddie still lingered. “I’m too old to play Hardy Boys.” Mike sneered. “But you’re not too old to play Flower Child, is that it? Shit. What a pantywaist.” He edged in carefully. Kevin shrugged sympathetically. He dug out another box of matches, pushed Mike’s bicycle in, then his own, and finally Eddie’s. “Hurry up!” Mike hissed, as though afraid of disturbing an unseen occupant. “This—this is Trespassing,” Eddie whispered, holding onto Kevin’s vest as he squeezed in behind. “Worse than that,” Kevin muttered. “It’s Breaking And Entering.” Mike scowled. “Sure beats Staying Outside And Getting The Shit Kicked Out Of You.” He laughed harshly, testing his own courage. The laugh rang through the large front room and echoed faintly off the adjacent dining room walls. Kevin struck a match, revealing blank walls and dusty floorboards. The sputtering light threw long black jittery shadows off the few sticks of furniture. “Spooky,” he whispered. “I’ll bet it’s haunted.” Mike whirled on them, shouted “Boo!” and roared with laughter when they jumped. Eddie 80

Carnival Planet Of The Humans peeked from behind Kevin’s elbow, still tightly gripping the vest. His teeth were chattering, his knees knocking. “Th-that’s not funny, M-Mike,” he whined, eyes wide and fearful. “D-don’t do that again, okay? I’m not scared, j-just a little j-jumpy from that ch-chase.” “Okay, Eddie,” Mike said, his voice rumbling. “I was only goofing around. C’mon.” He led the way into the dining room. The remains of a crystal chandelier caught and scattered the light of another of Kevin’s matches. The windows in this room, as in the front room, were boarded over. “I’ll bet this place is haunted,” Mike said. “It smells like somebody died in here and . . . BOO!” This time Eddie gave a little shriek when he jumped. Now Kevin’s teeth were chattering too. “Really, Mike,” he said. “Don’t be such an asshole.” “Aww . . . you guys are just pussies, that’s all.” Mike threw back his head and guffawed. He kicked a wine bottle across the floor to illustrate his disgust and disappointment. The bottle rolled, clattering loudly, up against a pile of fetid garbage next to an oblong closet. Kevin lit a match in time to reveal a couple of large brown rats scurrying from the pile with agitated squeals. The rats cornered themselves for a moment against the cabinets below the pantry, vanished into the woodwork. Eddie shuddered. “Mice,” he said in an oddly stifled voice. “Big mice.” Following the wall farthest from the pantry, they edged from the dining room into the spacious kitchen. Here it was much lighter, as the boards over a window had been knocked out by a previous explorer. Moonlight shone in sepulchrally, illuminating piles of trash and splintered wood. Kevin, instinctively moving to the window, peered out at the stars for comfort. “Let’s crash here!” Mike suggested, with the air of a decision already made. “It’s warm and cozy and safe.” “Brrr,” said Eddie. “And full of big hungry mice.” “Aw, what are you so darn—” “Shush!” Kevin said. He crouched with his fingertips on the shattered sill, peeking out intently. “What—what’s the matter?” Eddie whispered, all ready to break into tears. “Bats in his belfry,” Mike diagnosed. When Kevin didn’t respond, Mike sobered and cautiously crept up behind him, knelt to look over his shoulder. After a minute Eddie tiptoed over anxiously. “What is it?” Mike hissed. “I dunno,” Kevin’s reply was almost inaudible. “Something . . .” He strained his eyes until they burned with the effort. What was out there? A mountain lion? A stealthily padding ghost? In the coiling silence they all heard it: a throaty rumbling . . . the sound of something heavy rolling slowly . . . the crunching of small pebbles . . . excited whispering. “It’s those flyboys!” Mike sputtered under his breath, solving the mystery with uncanny rapidity. “That’s their jeep rolling up in low gear. They’re driving with the lights off.” “I wanna go home!” Eddie gurgled, the pitch of his voice rising alarmingly. Mike turned quickly and placed a forefinger to his lips. “Me too,” Kevin said. He couldn’t bear to look. “What are they doing now, Mike? Are they gonna pass us by?” Mike had excellent night vision. “Couple of ’em are out on the ground,” he reported. “It looks like they’re following our tire tracks. Now one of ’em’s got a flashlight. He’s shining it on the ground. The light’s swinging . . . toward the porch. Oh my God! Did anybody shut the front door?” “I wanna go home!” Eddie whispered. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. “Now he’s shining the flashlight all around the house. He’s pointing it at the—GET DOWN!” They crouched in a huddle as a beam of light lanced over their heads for an instant, played on the 81

Carnival Planet Of The Humans kitchen wall, vanished. There came a sibilant undercurrent . . . voices were whispering excitedly. The beam swung back to the kitchen window and remained there. The gentle thrumming of the jeep’s engine was abruptly cut off. Mike whispered, “We’re cooked!” They got on their bellies and scurried to a doorway leading to the rear of the house, where they were presented with a choice of three rooms. With wordless consent they split up; Mike wiggling into a bedroom, Eddie choosing the playroom, Kevin making quietly for a jumble of rubbish in the laundry room. A door led outside, and Kevin was thinking of trying the knob when an instinct made him freeze. Listening intently, he made out footsteps crunching outside, quietly rounding the side of the house and proceeding toward the door. Kevin froze on all fours, head cocked, not breathing. A gentle rustling in the playroom as Eddie burrowed beneath a heap of moldy wallpaper, then utter silence. Finally the doorknob rattled slightly and turned a few degrees. But that was all. The lock’s mechanism was rigid with rust. After a moment the footsteps crunched back around the house. Now there were voices at the front door. Kevin crawled to the pile in the corner, wormed behind a leaning infant’s mattress stinking of old urine stains. He quietly pulled more trash over his legs just as the house echoed with an agonizing groan of bending nails: the front door was being forced wider. There was another interval of silence, but the boys could feel someone stepping lightly into the front room. “Yoo-hoo . . .” cooed a voice musically, with a suave and malicious delight. “Anybody home?” More silence. A soft creaking of floorboards. “Why, looky here,” marveled a different voice. “Three ten-speeds, just sitting here. Real nice bikes they are, too. Now I wonder who they might belong to.” The whirring of a gear sprocket. Kevin’s right hand, searching the floor for some kind of weapon, came up with a rusty trowel, its nose bent upward. He tensed. Someone was in the dining room. The first voice called out softly, as though to a child, “Come out, come out, whatever you are.” A crunching of trash underfoot. Then a full minute of absolute silence. Without any warning Kevin’s little mattress was yanked away, revealing a black, towering form. “Ah ha!” Kevin sprang up with all his force, slashed wildly at the black figure’s head, felt the trowel rip into flesh, heard a scream almost in his ear. He stumbled through the doorway into the kitchen. A different man made to grab him. The boy sidestepped and slashed off-balance, missed and leaped out the window straight into the arms of two others. They threw him down and held him down. As he struggled to his knees he was kicked solidly in the ribs. Kevin doubled over. His glasses were torn from his face. One of the young men yanked back his hat and grabbed a handful of hair while the other twisted an arm behind his back. They dragged, kicked, and wrestled him to one of the willows. Each took an arm and pinned him against the tree, surprised at his strength. A scraping sound at the kitchen window was followed by a dark form dropping to the ground, its left cheek sliced open and dripping blood. The shadow removed an Air Force shirt and held a lapel to the cheek. The lapel was instantly sopping. As the wincing form turned, it became recognizable as the jeep’s driver. This man pulled the shirt away, studied the stains, held a sleeve to the wound. After glaring at Kevin he walked over calmly and slapped him across the face as hard as he could. Kevin gasped as he struggled. A hard backhand caught him across the other cheek. The assailant grabbed his hair, yanked his head up viciously, and pressed his face up close. The voice was frighteningly calm, almost understanding. “Pretty quick with the blade, aren’t you, fat boy? Well I can be too!” He turned his head. “Johnny! Where’s those shears?” 82

Carnival Planet Of The Humans Johnny, a tall, gaunt, crew-cut blond, came padding up like a called dog. “Right here, Danny boy. You gonna clip this poodle?” “That’s right.” “Hot damn!” At this Kevin began struggling fiercely, but a hard fist from Johnny caught him in the solar plexus. Kevin hawked and doubled over again, the fight out of him. Johnny was grinning wildly, nursing his fist with his left hand. Danny, still holding Kevin by the hair, yanked his head back up with even greater force. He jerked Kevin’s head left and right, snipping off large clumps on either side of his fist. “Cut off his balls,” suggested one of the men holding Kevin’s arms. “If he’s got any.” He giggled insanely. “You know something, Hank?” Danny commented in that same mellifluous tone, “sometimes that ughly thinker of yours comes up with some right dandy ideas.” Danny grabbed Kevin’s Levis at the waist and tore them open. Kevin screamed. That scream was immediately followed by a delighted shout from the window. Another serviceman came forward, dragging Mike and Eddie by the scruff of their necks, one in either hand. Eddie, wailing hysterically, put up no resistance, the toes of his shoes plowing grooves in the dirt as he was hauled along, limp as a bit of washing. But Mike was flailing his arms and spitting like a cat. “Found these two girlies trying to hide,” puffed the newcomer. “What you want me to do with ’em, Danny boy?” Danny looked regretfully at Kevin and dropped the shears. He casually walked over to check out the latest development. “My, my,” he said. “Well, well.” Mike spat in his face. Danny stepped back and all the young men laughed a nervous laugh. “Feisty son of a bitch, aren’t you? You shouldn’t have done that, little man. No sir, that was not wise at all.” He wiped the saliva from his face, snapped his fingers, and barked, “Johnny! C’m’ere!” His eyes never left Mike, who seemed determined to stare him down. “But since you done it, little wise ass, I’m gonna hand you over to Johnny here. Now, Johnny’s a real weirdo, you dig?” He twirled a finger by his temple. “Something missing upstairs. Don’t know why the Air Force even accepted the guy; guess they’re as crazy as he is. That right, Johnny?” Johnny laughed harshly. “Guess that’s right, Danny boy. Guess so.” He grinned and cracked his knuckles. Mike spat in Danny’s face again. This time Danny didn’t wipe. He said, quietly, “He’s all yours, Johnny.” But as Mike was being transferred he kicked out hard, connected with Johnny’s groin, and broke away. He bounded off like a jackrabbit. The kick only phased the big blond for a moment. “Johnny!” Danny shot. “Get him!” Johnny snarled and began jogging with long, measured strides. Danny watched until Johnny was swallowed by darkness, then turned to face little Eddie, who quailed and sobbed traumatically. “Now, now,” Danny said soothingly, “what’s all the tears for, sweetheart?” Eddie withered beneath the big assailant’s consoling tone, shaking violently from head to toe. Danny placed a gentle hand on top of Eddie’s head, and the boy shrank further, his knees buckling. Eddie turned away, wincing through his tears. “No need to cry, little one,” Danny cooed. “There’s no reason to be afraid. Not if you’re a good boy. You are a good boy, aren’t you? You won’t make the mistake your friend made now, will you?” “No sir,” Eddie sobbed. “Oh no, only please—” “Hush, hush, little one,” Danny breathed. “Shh, shh. Shhhhh.” Eddie fought back his tears. 83

Carnival Planet Of The Humans “There, that’s better; that’s much better. We’re going to be friends, aren’t we, little one? Aren’t we friends?” “Yes sir,” Eddie sniveled. “Real good friends. Real close, special friends. Isn’t that right?” “Yes sir.” Danny caressed and patted Eddie’s head lovingly, then gripped it tightly in his big palm, pulled it toward his crotch. Eddie squirmed with revulsion. Danny laughed explosively and grabbed a fistful of hair. He held Eddie’s head in that same demeaning position, made a motion to the man restraining Eddie, and snapped his fingers. That man now put an arm around the boy’s bent waist. His other hand fumbled with the front of Eddie’s Levis, found the snap and popped it open, roughly yanked the Levis down to Eddie’s feet. Eddie, whimpering hysterically, tried to pull free, but there was no escaping the hold. His underpants were pulled down, exposing his trembling white buttocks to the night. “Oh hush now, hush!” Danny said sternly. “Didn’t you say we were friends? I thought you said we were friends.” He savagely twisted up Eddie’s head. Eddie froze in mortification, gritting his teeth against the pain of what he knew was to come. There was a grunt behind him. “Now, little one, we’re going to show you just how friendly we can be.” But then the distant sound of a racing engine conveniently turned the worm. All the men stopped and looked in the sound’s direction. Almost at the same time Johnny came stumbling around the side of the house, his eyes wild. “That little fucker got away from me,” he puffed. “I couldn’t catch him. There was a cop—” The men sprinted for their jeep. Headlights blazed up the road. Just as the jeep roared to life a police car whipped through the willows in a cloud of dust. The dust washed in like fog, dimming the scene. A spotlight played over the area, found Kevin on his hands and knees. The jeep made a skillful turn around the police car and tore off across the field with its lights off. The solitary policeman jumped out, and Mike, Boy Wonder, scampered out the passenger side. The officer looked from the boys to the fleeing airmen with indecision. He pulled out his microphone, but before he made a call shouted, “Are you all right?” Kevin nodded weakly. The officer made his decision, a very poor one. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll call for help.” He jumped back in his car and, absurdly, flicked on his flashing lights and siren and took off in hot pursuit. The boys watched the car slowly bucking and crashing across the field, headlamp beams slashing the night in all directions as the car lurched and bounced on tortured springs. “Let’s get out of here!” Eddie cried, zipping up his Levis. “They may come back!” Kevin found his feet and rubbed his sore stomach. After pawing around in the dirt for a while he chanced upon his glasses, wiped the lenses with his shirt and peered through. Both lenses were intact, but his left eye was now peering through glass that was scratched and chipped. That didn’t matter. He could see again. Eddie came flipping head over heels across the porch like a tumbleweed in a gale. He picked himself out of the dirt hastily. “Let’s go, Kevin,” he panted, wringing his hands. “Let’s hurry!” He darted back to the porch, caught his toe and skidded face-first over the wood. Half a minute later Mike thumped off the foot-high porch on his bike, commanding, “Let’s go, Kevin!” He cocked his head, said, “Hey, you’re okay, aren’t you?” Kevin, holding his arms in front of his face, was surveying the damage to his hair with rigid fingers. He pulled the hat’s brim low on his forehead and ears. “Yeah, yeah, I guess I’m okay.” He couldn’t mask the misery in his voice. 84

Carnival Planet Of The Humans They heard Eddie before they saw him, calling, “Let’s go, Kevin!” He flew off the porch on his bike, landing poorly. He and the bike bounced off in different directions. Eddie picked himself up slowly this time, his face almost obscured by dust. “Let’s go!” The police car was now about halfway across the field, still swaying and heaving. The jeep was long gone. The car’s siren was off, so they could hear its frame rattling and crashing as it lurched along. Kevin trotted into the house and walked his bike out, breathing a sigh of relief when he found his sleeping roll intact. He wasn’t worried about the Air Force men returning; they couldn’t possibly be that foolish. But he didn’t like the idea of the police arriving and poking their snorting noses into the affair. Although quite unlikely, it was still possible they would go through his property and discover his contraband. That would bring this particularly unhappy adventure to a very nasty end. The boys rode away hastily, diving into a ditch when a vehicle with whipping lights on its cab came roaring their way. But it was only a tow truck on its way to free the police car, stranded in the field with a busted motor mount and twisted tie rod. “Man, that was neat riding in that cop car!” Mike exulted as they rode on. “Who woulda thunk it! A cop smoking dope in the middle of nowhere! We musta been doing a thousand miles an hour! Guess you guys oughta be pretty thankful old Mike came to the rescue, huh?” “Yeah, thanks Mike,” Eddie said with all his heart. Then he was sobbing again. “They . . . they were gonna punk me, you guys! I just can’t believe it. Why—why were they like that? Why?” “I’m not surprised,” Kevin said. “Brainwashed by the military. But I got that Danny dude a good one with that garden spoon. And I know it was rusty. I hope he dies.” “Yes sir,” Mike sighed. “Good old Mike saved everybody’s ass. That guy thought he was fast, but let me tell you, you gotta get up pretty dang early to beat me in a fair race.” “Why?” Eddie wanted to know. “Why’d they do that to me? It was sick.” “You got off lucky,” Kevin said bitterly. “I got scalped.” He lifted his hat. Mike laughed so hard he almost lost control of his bike. “Why?” You’d expect even a prick to at least feign sympathy, but Mike was impossible. And the nasty, triumphant grin on Mike’s face was the very last thing Kevin saw that night. The next thing he knew, the morning sun was shining blindingly in his face.

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Chapter 8 Sacrilege! Kevin’s equilibrium was so unstable he almost passed out in the act of sitting up. He spat dirt from his mouth. Mike, who had turned to glower at the sound, looked away when he was sure Kevin had caught the look of contempt on his face. He waited. When he heard Kevin call his name he walked away pointedly, halting beside their standing bikes. “Mike,” Kevin repeated. He shook his groggy head, rested it in his sweaty, filthy hands. There was a crash. Kevin looked up. Mike was poised with his fists at his sides, an expression of unbearable rage on his face. Kevin’s ten-speed lay on its side. “I’m sick of this crap!” Mike screamed. He pointed a trembling, accusing finger at Kevin, kicked the fallen bike’s front wheel and sent it spinning. “Every time we try to get going you pull this stunt and I’m sick of it!” “What stunt?” “You know what I’m talking about and don’t pretend you don’t!” He did a rude pantomime of an epileptic seizure, kicked Kevin’s bike again. “Well, I’m sick of it, fatso! Y’hear me? Sick of it!” He kicked the dirt to help emphasize his words. “I’m fed up with your fucking games, man, and I’m sick of your ugly face!” He grew so distraught he began to weep, still kicking, alternating between the dirt and Kevin’s bucking bicycle. “And after I saved your crummy life, too! You and your buddybuddy friend,” he charged, “have been planning this from the beginning. You’re ruining this whole trip and I’m fucking sick of it!” He gave one last hard kick at Kevin’s bicycle, hurt his ankle and hopped away, heaving with sobs. Mike disappeared down the bank of a gully lined with wiltedlooking willows. Kevin shook his head languidly. Flies droned round his shoulders monotonously, lit on his throat and face. He let them be. Eddie came scrambling up the gully’s bank to Kevin’s left, around the bend from where Mike was fuming. He trotted up to Kevin, showed him a scrabbling inch-long crawfish on either palm. 86

Carnival Sacrilege! “Look, Kevin. Crawdaddies! There’s a culvert around the bend. I found ’em half-in the runoff.” Kevin murmured dull approval. “What happened to me, Eddie?” Eddie sat cross-legged in front of him and played with his crawfish for a minute. He said, quietly, “You pulled another one of those freaky numbers, Kevin. Like a couple days ago, remember? Only worse. I tried to do the bit with your glasses again, but you were shaking your head so hard I couldn’t do it. And you bit my thumb.” He showed Kevin his right thumb, still red and swollen. “But it’s cool. It wasn’t your fault. Anyways, after bouncing around for a few minutes you just froze up like you were dead. I’ll be honest; I was scared. Then you flipped over on your stomach and started crawling away, making these spooky gargling noises. You kept crawling, right out into this field, but after a while you weren’t going anywhere, just making the motions. Then you passed out, and we couldn’t wake you up no way. So we had to crash here.” He was quiet for a moment, moving the crawfish back and forth like cars on a highway. “Maybe you ought to see a doctor, Kevin,” he said finally, helpfully. Kevin hung his head. “D’you remember that first night we met, Eddie? When my old man busted us getting high?” Eddie shuddered. “I try to not think about it.” “Well, I get the feeling that’s when it all started. But it seems funny it should take so long before it started turning hairy like this.” “You never had these fits before . . . before that night?” Eddie asked, still avoiding Kevin’s eyes. He scooped out a clamber-trough for his crawfish, pushing dirt back into the trough when the little crustaceans reached the top, causing them to topple down and start back up. “Not before we left. At least I don’t think so. It’s strange, though. I get the feeling I’ve been having these creepy blackouts for a while. You know, suddenly you find yourself thinking: ‘Wow, man, did I just flash off, or am I imagining things?’ You know what I mean.” Eddie shook his head. “Nope. Never happened to me. Um . . . you been taking downers, Kevin?” ‘Downers’ is a slang term for barbiturates, which are notorious for causing, among other things, loss of motor control and lapses in memory. It was Kevin’s turn to shake his head. “Uh-uh. You remember we agreed that downers aren’t good for a true revolutionary’s head? Only lowriders and rowdies fool around with that hard stuff.” Eddie was silent. He was thinking of that cold wet night last November, when he had smoked a fat initiatory joint with Kevin, and the two had grown painfully embarrassed while sitting cramped in the little wooden cubicle of the garage’s loft. The atmosphere had grown electric, the silence echoing around them and making the walls seem even closer. There had been a thousand things to talk about, a whole burgeoning philosophy to discuss, and Eddie had been, already, toying with the idea of asking Kevin to accompany him up the coast during the summer. Still, that awful silence had grown and grown. The marijuana had made clumsy, unwieldy things of their tongues, made wounds of their minds. And that silence became heavy as water, clogging their mouths and ears, seeming to dim the single yellow bulb hanging like a hot scrotum between them from the loft’s ceiling, which was so low Kevin had to slump forward as he sat. This thrust-forward posture made him appear about to deliver a sapient observation, when actually his head was as dense with that paralyzing silence as a filled goldfish bowl. And, like a goldfish circumnavigating its prison, Kevin’s attention swam round and round, looking hopelessly for an object to focus on so he wouldn’t have to meet Eddie’s eyes. Belatedly, he remembered he’d planned on bringing a radio into the loft. At least, with a radio present, he could go through the spasmodic motions of pretending to be absorbed in some raucous rock and roll. And he knew Eddie was going through the same struggle, looking furtively 87

Carnival Sacrilege! about to avoid Kevin’s eyes. Yet their eyes seemed almost to have a magnetic attraction, and, in their effort to break this influence, each boy had swiveled his neck, Eddie to the right and Kevin to the left, so that both were facing the thin rectangular doors of the loft. The symmetry, a door for each boy, had actually enhanced the trip rather than refocus it, and then, to make matters worse, rainwater had begun to tap and ping monotonously on the aluminum downspout. The embarrassment had wound up maddeningly, intensifying until it bore the imminence of a volcano on the brink of eruption. And suddenly both doors had been wrenched open to reveal giant Joe Mikolajczyk, his perspiration-soaked face insane with rage, his expression more like that of a voracious, prehuman predator than a contemporary man. The damning aroma of the marijuana smoke had burst out, and for several seconds no one had moved or breathed. Then, with a primeval roar, Big Joe had reached in, grabbed Kevin by the hair, and torn him bodily from the loft. Following through on the motion, he hurled the boy clear across the garage, doorless since Kevin’s mother’s one and only experiment with driving. Kevin’s head had cracked hard on the cement floor. Now, this had been a very violent move, and had certainly done serious physical harm to Kevin, but the immediate psychological damage to Eddie had been greater. Eddie had gone colorless with shock, certain he was next to be attacked by this enormous, bellowing madman. He had screamed and screamed and screamed, and Joe had turned blind bulging eyes on him. But, even as Eddie’s short life was passing before him, Big Joe had turned like some berserk, jumbo automaton, gasping and sputtering, and his eyes had centered on the whimpering target of his son as the boy weakly crawled away. With his fingers splayed, Joe’s hands had become great mauling machines. Completely out of his mind, he’d cross-haired the laboring target and advanced thunderously. “Maybe I should see a doctor,” Kevin said hollowly, snipping the ribbon of Eddie’s recollection. Eddie nodded. “Ummm . . . Eddie,” Kevin appended, “I’ve got to get something together in my head . . . or I think I’m gonna lose it. Like, I know you do a whole lot of thinking, Eddie—no offense—so I figure you might be able to clue me in on something that’s really bugging me way down deep. I guess it’s maybe the biggest question there is.” “Sure, Kevin,” Eddie said quietly. He smiled. “And no offense taken. You know I’ll always help you out any way I can. We’re brothers.” “Tight as they come,” Kevin declared. “Eddie . . . I . . . I really don’t understand what’s going on in life; like why some people are so uncool when they don’t have to be. Or why I’ve got to be having these stupid blackouts in the first place. I mean, what did I do so wrong that I should have to be punished? It would make more sense if it happened to, like, Mike for instance. Eddie, nothing, I mean nothing in life is right, or I’ve got it all upside-down. You’re the only guy I ever met who even cared about whether things are right or not. The rest of just pretend we’ve got it together. So Eddie, I mean, like man-to-man now . . . in all this crazy crying out loud shit and more shit, I mean, Eddie, like, is there really a God?” Eddie gave a short whistle in imitation of a falling bomb. “Just like that?” he asked. “All you want’s a simple yes or no?” “Actually,” Kevin said, looking away, “I don’t think yes or no would answer anything. I need to know what’s going on, Eddie. Do I listen to that Jesus freak we ran into on the beach? Look what God made out of him. I don’t wanna be some holy motormouth. And if you say there isn’t a God that’s okay too; it’s not gonna do me in or anything. At least things might make some sense if I can look at it as all being out of control. But I can’t go through life in the dark like this. Not any more. So . . . um . . . is there a God, Eddie?” 88

Carnival Sacrilege! Eddie exhaled noisily. He looked down at the mindless labor of the crawfish as they struggled to overcome the lip of their trough, then at the way the fingers of his own hands were able to smoothly perform motions independently or in concert. He took a deep breath. “Yes and no, Kevin. There is and there isn’t. It’s pretty complex, and it really hangs on how able you are to be objective, because all the answers to the universe—subjectively speaking—are negative ones. You ask the question: Is there a God? But that’s subjective. Built into the question is a kind of spiritual plea. Honestly translated it would come out more like: Is there a bigger reality than all this; a reality that’ll make me feel better, so that if I sense my life is going nowhere maybe I can still hope it’s really just going somewhere I can’t see? What it comes down to is that you’re vocalizing a feeling, not a thought. I guess a good comparison, Kevin, would be love. Now, you take some guy or some chick who’s in love. That feeling’s as real as all get-out, right? And there isn’t a whole bunch you can say that’ll convince that guy or that chick that what’s being experienced isn’t rational. As a matter of fact, you’re gonna find that that somebody knows the object of his or her affection is light years more attractive, in both subtle and obvious ways, than any of the other suddenly half-assed specimens he or she used to dig—even though this new loved one may have never rated a second glance before. And it’ll be a waste of time trying to be objective with either lover. The lover ‘knows,’ and feels he or she can see qualities which you, in your objective ignorance, are blind to. You see where I’m coming from? Love isn’t reasonable, it isn’t objective, and it isn’t honest. It’s a process, a response, a reaction. The brain has been saturated with hormones, and the lover is operating according to a program that’ll make the guy or chick feel good when behavior is conducive to procreation, and feel bad when the behavior frustrates the process. Faith is also a part of this process; only it’s self-preservation instead of procreation that’s running the program. The big difference here is that the brain has developed to the point where we’re conscious of our mortality and our insignificance, and so we’ve got this, like, new and unique horror of our impending demise—something separate from the brain’s basic job, which is to get us to survive the physical environment. It’s abstract consciousness—the newly acquired ability to be aware of nonconcrete things like justice, order and impermanence—that gave birth to ideas like a deity and a devil, and to concepts like good and evil. So faith is a reaction to a threatening situation; only the threat is abstract, not concrete. God only exists when necessary. Put his focus back on the real world, and the most religious of men has a brain working like anyone else’s. So you see, faith isn’t objective at all. It’s a response to hormones, just like love is, and it’s just as important, and just as foolish, as love is.” Eddie spread his hands. “I hope you won’t want to shoot the messenger, Kevin, but . . . God just doesn’t exist. The supernatural is a product of imagination.” Then he went on eagerly: “Nothing really exists, Kevin, even though we use words, like nothing, for instance, implying the existence of a thing. But there isn’t. I don’t exist and you don’t exist, despite the impressions. Every ‘thing’ is a process, or actually an aspect of countless processes, all taking place far too rapidly for anyone to discern. The bottom line is that you have to deal with reality in verbs instead of nouns, and that’s flatout impossible, given the fact that organisms react with the environment at the sensory level. Abstract consciousness is something relatively new in nature, Kevin, and people will learn to deal with it in good time. I mean, try to imagine a spider with a conscience. Or a lizard. Or a barracuda. They don’t murder or rape; they just kill and screw. And they sure as heck don’t dwell on penetrating questions concerning morality, ethics, or some kind of Great Lizard in the sky. So you’re not gonna find any crazy or despondent spiders. But to answer the question truthfully: ‘God’ is a concept. Yet it’s a concept that’s as viable as the neediness of the question.” “But Eddie, how can you say nothing exists, when a blind man can see all the things that do exist? Or at least he can feel them. I’m not saying you should be able to see or feel God, but I know 89

Carnival Sacrilege! I’m sitting on something solid; and that that’s my boot there, and that inside my boot is my foot, and so on. And I can see you, right in front of me. Or are you trying to tell me you’re a ghost?” “Pretty much,” Eddie said eerily. “An instantaneous ghost, or a series of instantaneous ghosts, that is, each a microsecond removed from the last. But are you really so sure our ghosts are ‘sitting on something solid,’ as you said? Let’s take it logically, Kevin. A rock, for instance. You see a ‘thing,’ right? But you break it down and you’ve got a whole bunch of pebbles. More ‘things.’ Let’s keep going. Take one of those pebbles, and you break it down to a whole bunch of grains. Break a grain down and you get dust. Break down a speck of dust in your head, Kevin. Keep going. You’ll get down to the molecular level. Then what? What’s a molecule, Kevin? It’s a process, a bonding of atoms. And an atom isn’t a ‘thing’ at all; it’s also a process, a force. So all you really have is an accretion of processes and subprocesses masquerading as matter.” “But if I can’t see or feel an atom, how come I can see and feel ’em when a whole bunch are stuck together?” “You can’t, Kevin. You keep forgetting an atom isn’t a thing. Any more than a billion atoms equals a thing. Try to see an atom as a verb. What’s happening is this: the attraction between atoms is resistant to any force less energetic than the bond. It’s this resistance that seems to be substance. Matter is really energy. But you’ve got to go a long way to get to a speck of dust.” “I’m not trying to argue with you, Eddie,” Kevin said bravely. “But none of that proves anything. Why can’t we just say, y’know, that God decided to put everything together with atoms?” Eddie’s eyes twinkled. “Kind of a cosmic erector set? Neat! But a whole lot easier to just breathe life into nostrils and refabricate a rib. We all do love a good magic show every now and then.” “Then who did start it, Eddie, and when?” “Nobody started it. Because it didn’t start. And it doesn’t end. That’s, in a nutshell, the whole trip where this business of trying to figure out how everything got this way gets freaked out. People instinctively start out with a model of a void, you dig? And then they in effect say, ‘Okay, now how does everything come from nothing?’ So they’ve gotta throw in this deity, y’see, and—never mind the fact that the same problem about the deity’s origin remains—and let the deity do all the work, then say it’s beyond our ability to comprehend further and just rely on faith. Oh yeah, groovy man, and hallelujah. Problem solved. The brain is so dependent on sensory input that it barfs up any idea it can’t put in a box. What people can’t deal with, and don’t want to deal with, is that the whole analytical process is off to a false start when it starts. ‘Quit picking your nose, dear reader, and check this out: inactivity is a physical impossibility. Peace, ‘nothingness,’ void, ‘absolute zero’ cannot occur!’ That’s what I’d say if I was, like, writing a book and there was a cheese-eater out there who really wanted to know what’s going on instead of picking one of the tunnels in this ant farm we call enlightenment. Biology, chemistry, physics . . . they’re all the same subject. “And this junk about finding a start point. Sure, maybe there was a ‘Big Bang.’ But that’s not a start. It’s a hiccough. So we’re prey to this premise that the cosmos somehow had to ‘start’ at a certain ‘time,’ and I guess infer it has to ‘end’ at a certain ‘time.’ And that this ‘start’ took effect at a specific ‘place.’ And now a drum roll . . . a-a-a-a-and . . . trip: ‘when’ is just another convention, like ‘where,’ which we’ve come up with to orient ourselves! Time, Kevin, is also a concept; but it’s just as useful as, say, drawing a line on a map to create a border, or saying the sun rises when it’s really the world that’s turning, or claiming what’s above us is up, when the Australians would swear it’s down. But . . . there was no ‘Prime Mover,’ Kevin. That’s part of the problem. People are mortals, and mortals just can’t imagine things without a birth and a death, a beginning and an end, a cause and an effect. Like I said, the brain’s job is to deal with the plain environment. It freaks out when it comes 90

Carnival Sacrilege! down to paradoxes.” “Too trippy;” Kevin said, slowly shaking his head, “much too trippy. I mean, like, how can you say there’s no time? There was a yesterday, wasn’t there?” “And what came before yesterday?” “The day before yesterday.” “And the day before that? And the day before that? And so where does it all ‘begin?’ On a first day? Well, what came ‘before’ this first day? Yesterfirstday? And do you think atoms respect our calendars? Or how about space? Pick an end or a beginning and you’re stuck with the same problem. What’s beyond these hypothetical points? Obviously ‘end’ and ‘begin’ are concepts, just like in and out and up and down and over and under and on and on and on. Everything’s relative to the subjective observer.” “Um . . .” Kevin said. “So then, Eddie, I mean what are we here for? What’s it all about? There’s gotta be, like, some kinda purpose for everything. There’s just gotta be, Eddie. Eddie . . . Eddie, what’s the meaning of life?” “Same deal,” Eddie said. “Concepts again. Why, Kevin, why does there gotta be a meaning, and a purpose, and all that? Some kind of security blanket for your self-preservation instinct? Like I said, the brain will have to adjust to abstract consciousness eventually. All that rap about predestination and chosen people and good and evil is just a bunch of garbanzo beans. You’re here because your mom and dad got horny, just like all the moms and dads before them, and all the moms and dads to come. But just because there’s no high-falutin’ purpose and grand design or whatever, it doesn’t mean we can’t organize our lives around inspired ideas of our own. “The great challenge of existence, Kevin, is for all of us to be quality human beings who embrace deep, positive values. In other words, to live exactly as if there really is a God. We can still make a commitment to behave decently, without having to bow and scrape and genuflect and supplicate. We don’t have to trash our brains; we don’t have to turn into a bunch of hands-wriggling dildos shouting hosanna, as if the universe had ears or something. We’ve got a real obligation to be humane and wise and self-restraining, simply because it’s beneath our dignity, collectively and individually, to let our appetites lead us around on a leash. And not because we think it’s gonna get us a ticket into some happy hereafter. That attitude makes religion into a sort of holy bribery. “What’s rough is that honoring principle means saying no! to some very strong and very basic drives, throughout your lifetime. Do you resist the instinct to exploit because it’s profitable to? Of course not. The thief gains, the liar outmaneuvers, the weasel scores. The man of principle gets zilch. So why not be smart like the thief? Why not grab whatever you can get your hands on? Well, when the opportunity’s there it can be tough to stand tall, but the trip is you’ve got to say: ‘because I’m not a thief, because I’m not a liar, and because I’m sure as hell no motherfucking weasel! I’m better than that.’ But wait! I know there’s no God. There’s nothing to punish me for living contrary to the Bible’s teaching: Far out! I can get away with all kinds of shit! But no . . . oh no . . . I can’t be a common pig and live with myself. I’ve got to be my own god and guardian; respect myself, respect my mind, and believe that all the brutal instincts urging me on are not in mandatory control. My mind must drive my body, not the other way around. Y’see, Kevin, everybody knows what’s right and what’s wrong. They know! It doesn’t take a genius or some fuzzy sage to define morality, or correct ethical behavior, or proper comportment in any sense. It takes guts, and it takes honesty, and it takes sacrifice. It means admitting the truth, but it doesn’t mean the truth is something you’re supposed to feel good about. Is that digable? It means, like, you know, ‘I want this.’ Okay? But that’s not my mind, that’s my hormones. Just because I feel that want, that doesn’t mean I have to be, like, mesmerized. I appreciate that want. Or that want might be an urge against somebody else. It’s just as 91

Carnival Sacrilege! selfish. And so I might feel, ‘I hate him,’ or ‘I’m wounded by her,’ or ‘they are inferior.’ These are instincts, and the instincts are there because, way down at the genetic level, nature is leading me to respond aggressively or passionately to preserve my tribe, or to perpetuate certain sexual qualities, or to claim my stake. And I don’t gotta give up that claim, or spurn that cute little chick who turns me on, or, for that matter, love and respect that creep who gets on my nerves, just because I happen to know that what I suppose is a thought is really a feeling. I’ve gotta ride that beast, and tame it so I’ll never end up regretting being carried along by some momentary impulse. I don’t want anybody to be hurt by my actions, even if he’s got it coming. And I don’t want to be in possession of anything I don’t deserve, no matter how much it may appeal to me. So, like it or not, for the most part I’m gonna have to go without. And that makes me a loser. Take my word for it, Kevin, it’s no fun being a determined, self-made have-not in a world of greedy grubbing gophers. “And I’m not just talking about not being a criminal, or about not being immoral. There has to be something higher in your outlook than the real world. Check out Mr. Suit-and-tie, for instance, in all his little cocktail party gobbledygook bullshit, with his neat and clean façade and his pretty car, his home and his credit cards; all the plastic crap he wraps himself up in to let his boot-licking competitors know how smarmy-ass successful he is. But who is he? Nobody knows. He doesn’t even know! All his adult life he’s been busting his ass to turn himself into a grinning mannequin out of some J.C. Penney catalogue. He’s done a good job of it, too; at least as good as his buddies. Not a hair’s out of place, and his car’s so clean you won’t find a bird turd on it. And he smiles at just the right time, and goes ‘Har har har’ when he’s supposed to. Good little mannequin. And then this prissy puppet will see some real person, who’s got his head into something deeper than appearances, and go, ‘Jesus! What a jerk! Lock the doors, honey, he might be after our best china.’ What would Mr. Suit-and-tie think of Socrates, or Ghandi, or Jesus of Nazareth for that matter? Buncha bums, that’s what. And can’t that Jesus guy afford a haircut? Sheesh! Creeps and losers; not like him—not like Mr. Suit-and-tie on his way to drop off Johnny and Marge at the P.T.A. meeting before he grovels up to J.B. for the big Moneysucker contract. Life by the book. I tell you, Kevin, I’d rather die than put on a suit and a tie! Serious as all shit. And that’s not only the Movement’s philosophy, it’s my personal vow. And . . . when I die, if some mortician even tries to suit me up . . . I swear to your God I’ll reach outta my coffin and stuff the phony fucker in there in my place!” “Ah-ah-ah,” Kevin said, wagging a finger. “What happened to all our groovy dignity, Eddie?” Eddie blushed and looked down at his tightly locked hands. “You’re right, Kevin. I shouldn’t let it get to me. It’s just, y’know, when I see all these Mr. Suit-and-tie clones coming off the conveyor belt, with their little briefcases and wristwatches, it makes me want to puke. It’s like they’re all giving the finger to human potential.” Kevin nodded sagely. “I’m hip. Sometimes when I see ’em filing in and out of the bank building I think I’m having a flashback; like I’m seeing trails. They’ve all got newspapers under their arms and sticks up their assholes. But then I think, ‘at least they’re going into the bank. They must be doing something right’.” “They sure are, Kevin. They’re doing everything exactly right. They’ve got phoniness down to a science and butt-kissing down to a fine art form. I mean, it’s their fucking careers for Pete’s sake! They know, from checking out their peers, that if they march in time it’ll pay off.” “Sorta like your dog story, huh, Eddie? The one about it’s the dogs who do the tricks who get the goodies.” “Same animal,” Eddie nodded. “But we got off track somewhere. What were we talking about before Mr. Suit-and-tie?” “You were saying, like, there really isn’t a God, but that’s no reason to behave bad.” 92

Carnival Sacrilege! “Right,” Eddie said. “Right. But it goes deeper than that. I mean, it’s accepted that there’s a God, see, and that’s the reason we shouldn’t behave like pigs . . . because we’ll be punished later on. There’s no proposition implying we should behave with dignity simply because it’s unconscionable not to. There’s gotta be a threat or a promise thrown into the equation to make it work. And, since the whole idea behind religion is to better people against their basic drives, I always get bent out of shape denying the physical side of the issue while defending the ethical side of it. If it wasn’t for the simple fact that I don’t believe in God I’d have to say I’m a heck of a lot more religious than most of these Bible Thumpers I’ve run across. Anyways, when I’m trying to separate these aspects—the physical and the ethical—it’s so difficult,” Eddie said uncomfortably, “to put it in words that won’t be taken offensively, or to get the point across in context. Look . . . The issue really isn’t: ‘Is there a God?’, or: ‘Is faith good or bad?’, or: ‘Well, then just how the heck did we get here?’, or anything about who’s right and who’s wrong and why. As simply as I can put it, the real question is this: Why do people automatically accept the notion of a supreme being? Or even waver between faith and doubt? Why isn’t the idea of a conscious universe laughed at outright? You’d expect a retarded sixyear-old to wonder if you were nuts or just putting him on with rap like that, yet the concept is universally accepted. Why? It’s absolutely silly, but that doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference.” “Okay,” Kevin said. “Then why?” “I really have to guess at it,” Eddie returned, almost apologetically. “I’ve never read anything about it from that end. It’s like there’s some built-in taboo, like you strike a really deep nerve. It’s like . . . uh . . . y’know how it is when you question the virtue of somebody’s girlfriend, or his mother, or his country? Or, if the bond’s strong enough, it could even be his school, or the crowd he hangs with. Maybe just a friend of his, or his pet goldfish, or sometimes it can be anything at all that he feels strongly about. And I don’t mean insulting whatever he loves, I mean asking an honest, legitimate question, or just pointing out some little flaw. It’s like . . . BAM: ‘that’s my mama you’re talking about!’ or, ‘hey buddy, if you don’t dig this country then why don’t you just get the hell out!’ You know what I mean? You hit that nerve. And God’s a big part of that nerve.” “Well?” Kevin said. “What do you expect? You want somebody saying things about your mother?” “Of course I don’t, Kevin. But if what he’s telling me’s logical I’m gonna wanna know the facts. And the way you put it: ‘saying things,’ is just what I’m trying to get at here.” “Like what?” “Like hitting that nerve, like crossing that line. It’s all: ‘I love my mother and my family and my country and I stick up for my friends and I have faith in my God and I fucking refuse to hear anything about them that doesn’t jibe with my feelings.’ It’s taboo to objectively analyze your bonds. And . . .” Eddie sighed, “why not? Will the truth make your love stronger, or make you more patriotic?” “Truth,” Kevin interjected, “is what everybody agrees on. And people have all agreed there’s a God for . . . for . . . forever. And people have always stuck up for their friends and fought for their country. Eddie, you can’t say everybody’s always been wrong about everything until you came along. The whole trip wouldn’t have been around as long as it has if it was half as dumb as you say it is. It’s gotta be based on something real.” “That’s the bummer,” Eddie said. “What’s it based on? It’s practically a law of life that if you, like, accept a given premise as fact, then anything that follows in support of that premise must be fact, too. The premise is everything, Kevin. If something’s established by society as truth, or as being good, and it just keeps getting hammered home, eventually it’ll be taken for granted. Let me throw 93

Carnival Sacrilege! another analogy at you. Let’s suppose, for example, that it was just a given that human beings were put on this planet by some Martian super-race, millions of years ago. Okay? As silly as that sounds, just so’s I can make my point, we’ll pretend that you and I and everybody else grew up in a world where our money says, ‘In Martians We Trust’ on it, where principle is a matter of ‘Martians, mother, and country,’ and where things Martian creep into our everyday language, such as, ‘For the love of Mars!’ or ‘Good Martian, man, what’s got into you?’ and so forth. We can even throw in some Son of Mars sent to Earth to die for our sins, and maybe make Pluto into Hell. Whatever. The point is, if this premise is simply taken for granted as the truth by everybody, without serious inquiry, then for all practical purposes, it becomes the truth. And if you or I or anybody else say, ‘But wait a minute! What Martians? I don’t see any Martians,’ well, then you and I and everybody else who demanded some evidential accountability are either crazy, evil, or blind. ‘But you must believe,’ the Martiavangelists will tell us. ‘You must have faith!’ And so here we are, gone astray, faithless and damned, sick sinners who’ll never go to Mars after we die. And it just freaks people out. What’s wrong with us? Why do we fight the ‘truth?’ Do we want to go to Pluto when we die, or something? ‘But look,’ we answer, ‘Mars is a dead planet. There are no Martians. What gives you the right to pronounce all this specious crap our natural history when it runs contrary to scientific evidence and to plain sense?’ And what can a Martianist do but smile sadly and sigh and try to get it through our thick skulls . . . ‘Look,’ he’ll say, ‘of course you can’t see any Martians, you silly fool. Martians are invisible! They’re not like you and me, for Deimos-sake—they’re Martians! And they’re not just on Mars. They’re everywhere, at all times, and they know what we’re thinking; so you’d better get all those nasty unMartian thoughts out of your head right away, boy, or you’re gonna end up a popsicle on Pluto for sure.’ Eventually you become cynical to the max, and you realize an argument for sanity in Bellevue is just treading water, and that there’s nothing you can say that’ll effectively counter what society’s been blathering for centuries. What I’m trying to say here, Kevin, is that society has done a great job of programming. And it’s positive programming. I guess if a white lie brings favorable results then all lying ain’t necessarily a bad thing. But the lie itself, like laws and rules, shouldn’t be exalted. Honest men and women are above all that. In other words, my friend, people who ‘believe’ in God are weenies: they’re good pets. Here’s your choice, Fido: There is a God, or there isn’t a God. ‘Believing’ there’s a God is just bursting with bennies. Immortality, redemption for all your sick behavior, being on the ‘right’ side, et cetera. But not having a God means a negation of all the above. Fido likes the taste of the former, therefore there ‘is’ a God. Munch munch. Only a really dumb pet would turn down a goodie like that. So people who ‘believe’ in God are smart and good, and people who don’t are stupid and evil. What could be more obvious? But don’t you dare ask the good dog to analyze the goodie! Don’t you ever ask one of these white knights to describe their God, or define Him in any sensible way. They ‘know,’ and that’s all there is to it. They’ll stick their fingers in their ears and just start parroting the Gospel if you dare ask them to even consider the preposterousness of what they’re jabbering. A universe that thinks? Man oh man, that’s so asinine it’s downright scary! Thinking, Kevin, is a process; a process that originates in a specific organ, the brain. Like the heart’s an organ for pumping blood, and the lung is an organ for respiration. The cosmos can no more think than pump blood or breathe. ‘God’ is a product of the brain, not the other way around.” “But, Eddie,” Kevin said, “I mean, how do you know? Maybe, just maybe, like . . . what if the universe can think, after all? What if there’s another way of thinking you don’t know about? Who can say how God’s Head works, or what His whole trip is? Maybe He’s invisible and put together in all kinds of different ways so that He doesn’t need a brain to think. Maybe He doesn’t breathe or have blood or anything like us. I mean, you don’t know, Eddie. No offense, but can’t you see how 94

Carnival Sacrilege! stupid it is to judge God when you don’t know the first thing about Him?” Eddie shook his head slowly. “You’re right, Kevin. I’m stupid; and again, no offense taken. But all the maybes, what ifs, and just supposes you can dream up are just evasions. They’re not answers. But I’ll bite anyway. Fancy away.” “Huh?” “I told you what I know, and you deserve your turn. So tell me, Kevin; tell me the first thing about God.” “What do you mean?” “Well . . . what He looks like, for instance.” “He looks like God, Eddie. He’s real big; I mean really, really big. And He’s all white, with a big white beard, and muscles like Hercules.” “Pretty impressive Guy,” Eddie said. “So where does He live, Kevin? What’s His address?” “God doesn’t have an address, Eddie! Now you’re being just plain dumb. God’s everywhere.” He looked up, furtively. “Up there.” But Eddie’s eyes remained firm. “If He’s everywhere, Kevin, why do you say He’s ‘up there?’ Doesn’t everywhere include ‘down here’?” “Uh-uh,” Kevin said. “The Devil lives down here, underneath us, in Hell.” “The Bad Place.” “Real bad. I mean really, really bad.” “So God’s everywhere but here. God takes up the whole universe, which is infinite, except for this flyspeck in the middle of nowhere. Why can’t God get in here, Kevin?” “Because the Devil won’t let Him in, Eddie. The Devil’s evil. He hates everybody and everything. But most of all he just hates God to pieces, because God wouldn’t let him wear wings. So when he fell out of Heaven he couldn’t fly and ended up falling and falling and falling until he landed here, where he turned into a snake who lived in an apple tree. Then, after God made Adam and Eve, well, the Devil talked Eve into eating an apple, which sort of made Adam go from holy to horny. And that got God super-pissed. But He was mad at the Devil, Eddie, not at Adam and Eve. That’s ’cause God loves His children, no matter how many apples they eat. So to let Adam and Eve know He still loved them He decided to show ’em it wasn’t cool to be all naked in the garden like that, and told Adam to put on a fig leaf. And ever since then the Devil’s been causing trouble, on account of God outfoxed him with the fig leaf trick. Now the Devil lives down in Hell, and he spends all his time barbecuing people who couldn’t get into Heaven, and trying to figure out trickier ways to get back at God.” “And you believe that?” “Well . . . you gotta admit it makes a whole lot more sense than what you were talking about; what with a whole bunch of little atoms being stuck together and all that. Besides,” Kevin said defensively, “I’m not saying it’s like I believe it all the way. It’s what my Sunday School teacher told me, and I don’t thing they’d hire her just to lie to everybody.” “I wouldn’t lie to you either, Kevin.” “Oh heck, I know you wouldn’t, Eddie.” “So you don’t have to worry about me handing you a line here. I only want you to accept my input because you’re my friend—and because you asked me the question in the first place. You can believe me. I’m giving you the unadulterated upshot.” “Yeah, but . . . but there you go again, Eddie! It’s that same attitude that gets people all pissed off in the first place. You can’t say your opinion is right and everybody else’s is wrong . . . and expect anyone’s gonna respect your opinion. ’Cause all you’re saying is you’re so smart and we’re so 95

Carnival Sacrilege! stupid. It’s like, y’see, you don’t know what it’s all about after you die, Eddie, on accounta you ain’t died yet! Can’t you dig that? So when you say we don’t go to Heaven, or that there’s no ghosts or reincarburetion or any of that stuff, well, it’s like that’s your trip. That’s your thing, and it’s your opinion, and I don’t wanna take it away from you. But you got no better idea than anybody else.” “You’ll notice,” Eddie said wryly, “that I’m not letting frustration get the better of me. Maybe this is just too simple for clarity, Kevin. Look, I’m not giving you my opinion, okay? Anybody can form any opinion he wants about art, or politics, or food—but not about the physical universe. Consciousness exists because we’re alive; it’s not some mystical entity your body plays host to, that just happily flits away after your body dies. It’s part of your metabolism. What’s after life? What’s death like? Ask yourself: ‘what was it like before I was born?’ and you’ll have your answer. You weren’t alive before you were born, and you won’t be alive after you’re dead. Therefore you won’t be conscious after you’re dead. It’s like this ‘out-of-body experience’ stuff. You know what I’m rapping about here? You get all these traumatized geeks saying they were at death’s door, see, and then suddenly they’re looking down at their bodies and feeling all toasty-warm and being aware of this white light. This phenomenon is ‘proof’ of a soul or whatever. What seems to elude everybody is the fact that they’re talking about it. They never died! What they went through is a subconscious experience; very much an ‘in-body’ thing. It’s not my ‘opinion’ there’s no God; it’s your opinion there is. What’s really happening is the nitty-gritty of nature: all the processes taking place whether consciousness is introduced into the picture or not. The rest is mysticism, animism, wishful thinking. Personification of the elements. It’s all, like, a really profound and touching attempt to take the bare bones of reality and slap on some spiritual meat. But it’s not honest. It’s self-defensive, and deliberately illogical. Science, Kevin, isn’t around to try to make anybody believe anything. Everything has to be proven one hundred per cent, over and over again. Science is fact. Religion is fancy. But science is spiritually unpalatable. Swallowing religion is easy, ’cause it feels good to believe things are good. Yet it’s all a bunch of primitive, superstitious bullshit. We’ve got to develop spines if we’re ever to get the spiritual side of our thought processes out of the Dark Ages, or some airhead’s gonna start World War Three because his silly ‘god’ told him to. Kevin, I’m convinced that mankind’s true evolution will commence when this whole aboriginal God trip is junked! It took guts to accept the fact that Earth isn’t the center of the universe, and it took guts to reason our way through ghosts and black magic and all the other nonsense which used to be the only was we could explain things. People are gonna have to take the humongous step of their own accountability . . . they’re gonna have to stop thanking gods and blaming devils for their ups and downs, and accept life as the brief phenomenon it really is. Then they’ve gotta see life as all the more precious for its brevity, and build on their assets and overcome their flaws. As long as we’ve got beliefs and prejudices and good guys and bad guys we’re savages!” Eddie found he was breathing hard: anyone attempting to reason graphically soon finds just how taxing it can be when the second party, while perhaps earnest enough, is still essentially interested in something that SOUNDS GOOD to him, something that portends favorably. It can be as stressful as gridlock. (Expressed with great, with difficult, with heartfelt poignancy: I wonder if our poor dead, oh-so-very human Jesus was just, oh-so-very humanly, indulging, to the point of addiction, in audience manipulation.) Here’s a simple trick you can try at home: First, take a handful of twenty-dollar bills, crush ’em into a ball and wrap the ball in a funky old piece of newspaper. Then take a piece of shit and cover it with the prettiest, fanciest gift wrapping you can find. Now go up to your oh-so-very earnest friend, with specimen one in your left hand and specimen two in your right, and say, “Pick.” “So,” Eddie continued, after sufficient time had elapsed to make it plain the author had just 96

Carnival Sacrilege! called the reader an asshole, “it always comes down to the bottom line. And the bottom line here is . . . interest. Meaning: what’s in it for you? It’s like the guy who goes ‘searching for the truth.’ He’s not concerned with the truth; he wants to satisfy his conscience and his spiritual needs. He wants what he wants. Truth is seven minus four equals three. Truth is a given amount of water will boil at a specific temperature. Truth is photosynthesis. Nobody’ll argue with any of that, but there’re darned few people who’ll be satisfied, because it doesn’t make you feel anything. So why should I be an ‘atheist,’ Kevin? What’s in it for me? Why in the world would anybody pick ‘atheism,’ or want to get old, die, and have that be that? What’s my interest? And the answer is: there isn’t any! I don’t accept what I accept because I like what I accept. I accept what I accept because it just so happens those are the facts, whether I like ’em or not. And I don’t like the facts. I wish there was a God, dammit, and I wish I could go to a Paradise after I die. But there isn’t, and I can’t, and that’s just tough fucking tamales for me. So somebody can swear seven minus four equals five if he wants. That’s his right. But it won’t make him right, and it won’t make seven minus four equals three just an opinion. “And then all these noble weenies will glorify their illogic by saying, ‘my belief requires a leap of faith.’ What a load of sanctimonious bullshit! The only ‘requirement’ is that you be a pussy; that you don’t have the balls to be honest with yourself. This so-called ‘leap of faith’ is really just an intellectual belly flop. And it’s the biggest cop-out there is. Because all they’re saying is they know what they’re saying is crap. They know it, Kevin! Every ‘believer,’ from the lowliest pew warmer to the Pope, knows there isn’t a God. The fucking village idiot knows there isn’t a God! I don’t want to get upset with people, or interfere with their right to be jackasses, but when I hear somebody braying he believes there really is a God, I mean, as if he’s making an intellectual statement or something, I . . . I feel like spitting in his filthy fibbing face. And when you get it from all sides; from school, from the press, from your family . . . all you’re left with is contempt for your species. You know they’ll lie about anything, and they’ll do anything, to serve their self-interest. So don’t be surprised when you get burned by the friendliest of strangers, Kevin, and don’t exalt popularity too greatly; all truly honest people are, by definition, misanthropes. But . . . gotta be cool, Eddie. Gotta hang tough. If I lower myself to the level of a ‘believer’ in God—by ‘believing’ my feelings are objective—then I’ve lost my war against my own subjectivity. Truth can be anything I want it to be. “And so, Kevin, and so I’m going to San Francisco, and I’m going to mingle with people who care more about love and peace and harmony than about self-serving hypocrisy. And if I run into people who spout God crap I’ll know they’re doing it because their motivation is love and peace and harmony, and that their rap’s a device for bringing people together, a stratagem. And I’ll offer those people a toke off my joint. And they’ll wink and smile and we’ll flash each other the peace sign and be on our separate ways together. “Because I understand, Kevin. Because I understand that ethical values originate with abstract consciousness. The so-called ‘meaning of life’ begins with man’s capacity to overpower his animal drives. It doesn’t start somewhere out in space in some deity, and it doesn’t start in animal nature, and it ain’t got nothin’ to do with reward and punishment. It’s where the baby stands up and walks on his own. And it’s just busting loose now, Kevin, and we’re on our way to meet it!” Eddie paused, once again breathing hard. The boys stared at one another. Eddie coughed. Kevin stirred the dirt with a forefinger, feeling the subject wasn’t closed. Like all nonthinking persons, he was totally thrown out of whack by the notion of an unconscious universe, was just selfcentered enough to instinctively dread a system that could proceed without a specific and meaningful role for him. A mammal saddled with a conscience, he’d been bitten by the me bug, found it incomprehensible that the stream of consciousness that was his could just be diddling along without some transcendent “purpose.” Such persons, however, eventually “mature” when they are bitten by 97

Carnival Sacrilege! the us (vs. Them) bug; that is, once they can no longer feign significance on a personal level. Snap out of it, people! You and I are merely energy packets; like all “things” simply dissolving components of the elemental carousel, steadily and unconsciously disseminating the sliver of sunlight this pretty little rock captures, redistributing it as some other organism’s breakfast. Beat the system; opt for cremation. No, no, No, No, NO! This is all a breaking down, not a building up! Kevin, having ceased stirring the dirt, saw that the resultant spiral was reminiscent of a nebular swirl he’d seen in a science class photograph. Defiantly, he jabbed in two eyes and drew a smile on the swirl. He looked back up. “And that’s it?” he countered. “You want everybody to just look at everything like it’s some kind of a dumb machine, with no feelings or love or hope?” He spread his arms just as wide as he could, trying to adequately convey the sterility of Eddie’s outlook. “Go ahead and trip around you some time, Eddie. Haven’t you ever seen a rainbow, or tasted good food, or played with a puppy? That’s where you and all the scientist guys are out to lunch. Machines don’t make nice things that make you happy. The world can’t be so beautiful out of dumb luck.” Eddie clasped his knees in his hands and gently rocked back and forth, staring at nothing. “Right,” he muttered sourly. “The Great Thinkers’ argument: ‘Only intelligence could devise something so marvelous.’ Aw, get fucking real! Only intelligence could perceive something as marvelous! Or, of course, ‘Gaze ye upon yon automobile. Intelligence constructed this contraption, ergo it stands to reason that intelligence constructed the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and everything else that functions.’ O priceless sillygisms!” He looked back at his friend. “Y’know, Kevin, one thing that really gores me is the way people always say, ‘how can all this just be?’ Well, why the heck shouldn’t things be the way they are? How else could it be? Fish should have feet, maybe? We should all eat with our rear ends? Then they’ll all go: ‘Oooh, look at the pretty sunset! How can you look at that and say there isn’t a God?’ And I’ll go, ‘Nothin’ to it!’ and I’ll look at the sunset and say, ‘There isn’t a God.’ And believe it or not, Kevin, I haven’t been struck by lightning yet, not once. And why shouldn’t a sunset be stirring? It’s a very sensory experience, not an intellectual one. I mean, it’s like your retinae are being bombarded, for Pete’s sake. But people always let their senses do their thinking for them, and then associate their feelings with some kind of rationale. And, to be honest, scientists don’t help matters either, when they explain something as physically determinate as the processes in nature with words like ‘accident’ and ‘chance.’ Fido gets stuck with a choice: like, is all this a miracle, or just an accident? Gee, I wonder which one he’s gonna find more appealing? And then I guess it’s all only chance that life just happened to appear here, under ideal circumstances, instead of on some hellhole like Mercury. Just good luck on our part. They gotta replace all these misleading words with something like inevitable. Anywhere like can appear, it will, eventually. Just look at this planet: it’s filthy with life, in every nook and cranny it can possibly cram itself into, until it reaches a place where it’s too cold or too dry for life to be supported. That’s why you can bet your bottom there’s life on other planets, and all over the universe where conditions aren’t too extreme. It won’t be exactly like it is here, ’cause there are no carbon copies in nature, but you can be sure that, whatever it’s like, it’ll fit whatever the planet it’s on is like. And even though their sunsets will be just as pretty as ours, we’ll be ready to fight to the death any smart-ass who isn’t democratic enough to admit our sunset is the prettiest in the whole damned, everlovin’ universe.” “Um,” Kevin said. He looked up, at the dumb parade of puffy cloud masses seemingly inching across the no-less-lovely field of bottomless blue. There was one clump that looked a whole lot like an angel’s head, sadly staring down on these oh-so mortal proceedings. But the angel began distorting, taffy-like, even as he watched her. “So there’s no God, no meaning, no beginning . . . no 98

Carnival Sacrilege! such thing as time or space. I don’t really even exist; just a lot of ghosts what seem to be me. I’m gonna get old and die, and a bunch of worms are gonna chow down on my corpse. But it’s no big thing, ’cause the worms don’t really exist either. And there’s no good or evil or right or wrong or up or down or in or out. It all comes from some whoremoans; from some relative of some observer, who only thinks he thinks; but even that’s cool, on accounta thought don’t exist neither.” He looked back down. “Thanks for cheering me up, Eddie.” “No problem,” Eddie said softly. “But you said you wanted to know what’s going on, Kevin; not cheering up. If you want something positive you can still go back to the Bible. That’s what it’s there for. Then you can have your Heaven and your immortality, your heroes and villains, your reward and punishment. The good guys will be vindicated and the heavies will get theirs. Y’see, even though it’s full of agony and passion, the Bible offers a light at the end of the tunnel, and a proposition for good behavior coming out ahead in the long run. People who follow the ethical guidelines will behave better, even if—especially if—they’re of a rotten disposition to begin with. Personally, though, for my daily dose of Western ethical input, I prefer the Adventures of Superboy; although the Lone Ranger can really get my adrenaline going.” “Are you trying to say the Bible’s a lie, Eddie?” “Oh no, Kevin,” Eddie said hurriedly, “I’m not saying it’s a lie. It’s a history. And it’s the finest, wisest book I’ve ever come across. Pure poetry. The Lone Ranger isn’t a lie either, but you see, you have to use metaphors and heroization to get people to feel that good behavior is correct. Thanks to the apostles the suffering of common people doesn’t have to be in vain, and thanks to Jay Silverheels we can stop being convinced that Indians are a bunch of bloodthirsty savages. All of this is positive propaganda, Kevin. Like our own American history. How much patriotism’s gonna be mustered by relating a history of some treasonous foreigners coming over here and ripping off land, using other people as beasts of burden, and aggrandizing it all with a lot of pompous rhetoric about it being the will of your God? So you’ve got to paint a pretty picture full of righteous reasons for your actions, and make people believe they’ve got cause to be proud. Otherwise they’ll just go on their angry, horny, frightened little ways and we’ll have anarchy all over again. That’s why we’ve got laws and taboos; not to intimidate decent people, but to stop the natural predators from overextending themselves. And God’s really a kind of big invisible policeman; He’s walking a beat along the avenue of your darkest thoughts. Instead of jail, though, you may be looking at Hell without possibility of parole. No . . . you can’t give somebody a single good reason to not give in to his animal appetites, except that if he gets caught there’s a more powerful authority that’ll punish him. “So there it is. You invent good and bad characters to dramatize your message, and hope you can influence folks positively without resorting to locking ’em up. Or else you try using entertainment as the vehicle for your message, knowing people have attention spans rivaling that of a baboon’s unless they’re focused on something that makes them feel good. It’s like the guy who’s writing this novel, for instance. What’s he doing but playing God by using us to communicate something to an audience that couldn’t care less? He’s the one who’s making you have these seizures, Kevin. But he’s not doing it just to be mean. You’re a hero, my friend, whether you like it or not, and all your suffering is just to soften you up for your redemption at the end of the story. So don’t worry about the ‘here’ and ‘now.’ You’ll never meet your maker, but salvation’s waiting for you with open arms.” Kevin looked up sharply. “Huh?” He’d been on the verge of nodding off, hypnotized by the sun’s warmth, the droning of flies, and Eddie’s softly tapering monologue. “What’s that you said about suffering scissors in the Salvation Army?” Eddie grinned. “Caught you nappin’, didn’t I? Now you see why this kind of rap doesn’t get 99

Carnival Sacrilege! much action. I was just joshin’ you, Kevin. This really isn’t a story, and old terra couldn’t get much firma.” He patted the ground between them. “And yes, of course there’s a God and a Devil, and a darned good reason for us being here. So pick your opinion. Collect ’em all.” He juxtaposed his crawfish, then scooted them along by brushing at the dirt behind them. “Now, this one’s a Jaguar, and this one’s a Maserati. Vroom, vroom.” Kevin looked away, just as Mike came shuffling back, hands deep in pockets, avoiding his friends’ eyes. “I guess it’s really none of my business,” he said bitterly, “but do you think you two comrades might be willing to go now?” Eddie was caught off guard. Mike’s tone implied a real rift in their friendship; a friendship Eddie had always believed was unshakable. “What do you mean, Mike? Of course it’s your business. We’re ready to go whenever you are. I was wondering where you were.” He scooped up his crawfish and displayed them with the same enthusiasm he’d shown Kevin. “Look, Mike! Crawdaddies! There’s a culvert around the bend. I found ’em half—” Mike swatted them off Eddie’s palm with a vicious swipe. “I don’t care!” he cried, and stamped on the fleeing creatures. “Don’t act all friendly with me, Eddie! I know just what you and your kiss-ass buddy are up to!” Eddie’s honest face went through a gamut of emotions, from gaping astonishment to an impotent rage. He looked down at the smashed crawfish, then back up at Mike with a crestfallen grimace. Tears were coursing down Mike’s face. “We used to be friends, Eddie! We had good times together, all the time. Everything was great until this fat faggot showed up.” He looked at Kevin and his face shook with emotion. “That’s not true, Mike,” Eddie said. “We’re still friends. We’ll always be friends. I don’t know where you got this idea we’re against you. You’re wrong.” Mike ignored him. He showed Kevin a bony, threatening fist. “I swear to God, Polak,” he said viciously, “sooner or later I’m gonna kill you. I mean it! Don’t you ever turn your back on me or you’re dead!” He kicked Kevin’s felled bicycle, hurt his ankle again, and, after hopping around wailing on one foot, jumped on his own bike and jammed. Eddie said quickly, “I don’t think we’d better ride together anymore, Kevin.” Without another word he mounted and took off after Mike. Kevin rose wearily, picked up his bike. He rode well to the rear; feeling awful—filthy and smelly and hungry and tired—but content with the new single-file arrangement. Although he really needed to think things through, his thoughts were aimless and meandering. Trying to think constructively can be as futile as trying to sleep; the very effort causes the mind to revolt, to wander and to peck compulsively at nonsense. All the stimuli—traffic, the glare of sun, his companions, his own exertion—served only to distract his mind from the cogitative process. By far his most substantial mental inclination—the one thing he was really aware of—was his fear. Kevin was scared silly. And not of anything he could identify and grapple with, discern and resolve. He felt himself the helpless victim of some whimsical internal bogey, whose outbursts, in the form of blackouts followed by convulsions, were extremely potent and entirely unpredictable. Not until the highway had returned to the beaches did the boys begin to ride together again, and approximate their Santa Monica chumminess. The mighty ocean dwarfed their puny differences. The impermanence of their arguments was made plain by time and freedom in plentiful supply. All was forgiven in the exhilaration of being young and full of energy in a familiar world of sand and suntan oil and splashing brown bodies. Kevin, Mike, and Eddie stopped at the north end of Pismo Beach. Farther up the highway 100

Carnival Sacrilege! began the sprawling community of San Luis Obispo, their designated halfway point. The beach was swarming with tanned vacationers in all stages of undress, so packed there was hardly room to walk, much less recline. Footballs and Frisbees described their trajectories smoothly, while sea gulls screeched and fluttered between blankets, fighting for leftover goodies. “Halfway!” Eddie cried exuberantly. “We’re almost halfway in four days! We oughta make it with time to spare.” “Yeah,” Mike said. “Now I feel really good, despite everything. We just gots to celebrate. How much grass you got left, Four-eyes?” Caught up in the moment, Kevin produced his stash gleefully, only to hesitate, wary of the prying eyes of pedestrians. “Still over half a lid. You guys form a screen while I roll one up.” Mike and Eddie stood nonchalantly on either side while he sat and rolled an exceptionally fat celebration doobie. The boys burned it true. “That was good!” Mike exclaimed. “So good I feel like I could smoke a dozen more.” “I sure do have the munchies all of a sudden,” Eddie moaned. Kevin echoed the moan. “I wish you wouldn’t have said that, Eddie. I’m so hungry I could eat a fatcat.” The aroma of barbecuing hamburgers came to him. His stomach growled. A little way down the beach he made out a small bunker-style snack bar. “Over there!” His friends’ eyes followed his finger. They walked their bikes along the strand until they stood just opposite the little building. Mike blurted, “Wait a minute!” just as Kevin and Eddie were picking up their bikes. “I wanna smoke another joint first.” Eddie stared. “You actually have zero self-control?” “Let me just get a little higher first.” Kevin’s stomach voiced its demands again. He handed the baggie of marijuana and a book of cherry rolling papers to Mike. “Okay then. Go ahead and roll up a couple small ones and watch our bikes for us. What do you want to eat?” Mike appeared simultaneously confused and affronted; an odd kid. His eyes flashed back at Kevin. “Uh, just get me a fat dog and a choke. I’ll pain you when you fat back.” Kevin and Eddie raced through the crowd, laughing and kicking sand. The lines at the snack bar were way-long. Kevin’s appetite rose incrementally with each slow-ass motherfucking customer who didn’t have the common courtesy to just pay and get the hell out of the way. For Mike, he ordered a hot dog and a large cola, and for himself a bacon chili cheese dog, French fries with tartar and cream, two slices of double-anchovies pepperoni pizza, cinnamon sand dabs, a lemon-lime turnover, and a large root beer float with neopolitan. Eddie purchased a double cheeseburger and a pint of milk. With their arms and nostrils thus laden they made their way back. Once they’d devoured their lunches on a strand bench, the boys broke into a delightful belching contest which Kevin won by virtue of his bovine powers of projection. Enormously pleased, he leaned back with his hands on his belly. “This victory, comrades,” he groaned happily, “calls for another joint of my most excellent herb, don’t you agree?” “Indubitably,” Eddie giggled. Acting the part of an awards master of ceremonies, Kevin casually flipped out his palm. “Michael. The reefer please.” Mike was slow on the uptake for his part. “Er . . . yeah,” he said. “Here you go, man,” and handed Kevin a rather thin, poorly rolled cigarette. Kevin fired up the joint, held in the smoke for a long moment, let it out with an exaggerated 101

Carnival Sacrilege! “Ah-h-h-h . . .” He smiled angelically, passed the joint to Eddie, closed his eyes and again held out his hand. “Now,” he said, continuing his performance, “the envelope, please.” Mike handed over the baggie wordlessly, just as Eddie was handing back the glowing joint; so for a space Kevin’s mind was distracted. He was taking another deep hit when something compelled him to survey the baggie in his hand. It felt unaccountably lighter. “Hey!” he said, astounded. “What happened to all my pot?” There was surely more than the equivalence of two joints missing. More like eight or nine. “What do you mean?” Mike shot back quickly; too quickly. “What are you talking about, man?” Kevin turned his head to darkly examine Mike’s burning face. “I mean, where’s all my pot?” he spat. “I only see one joint.” Mike stood. On his palm was another thin and poorly rolled cigarette. “Right here! You said to roll two, and I did!” Now Kevin stood also, his gray suspicion gelling to black certainty. “Two skinny joints,” he said slowly, “wouldn’t make my stash so much lighter.” “I—I spilled some,” Mike sputtered. He looked up sharply. “Hey, man,” he growled, staring into Kevin’s eyes aggressively, “are you trying to say I ripped you off, man? ’Cause you better not be, man. You know I don’t dig that kind of rap, man.” Eddie broke in quickly. “Come on, you guys. Let’s figure this out cool. Don’t jump to conclusions.” Both boys ignored him completely. “Yeah?” Kevin said. He tore off his glasses and handed them to Eddie. “Well I don’t dig ripoffs, man. Especially when they’re supposed to be my friends, man. So I’m telling you right now, man, you better hand over my fucking dope before I lose my fucking temper!” Kevin didn’t really believe Mike would ever seriously attempt engaging in fisticuffs a boy as huge as he. The bloody consequences made even entertaining the idea absurd. So he was totally unprepared when Mike reared back and socked him in the eye just as hard as he could. Kevin was so startled that he didn’t at first retaliate, but went down with little Mike on top of him; Mike’s hands alternately kidney-punching and tearing out his hair. With an ursine roar, Kevin threw his massive arms around his opponent in a death-dealing bear hug. But Mike’s wiry body slipped out of the embrace. Mike managed to get behind him, where his tight little bony fists could rain down on Kevin’s ears and cheeks. Blindly reaching back, Kevin was able to grasp Mike’s shirt, and then, in a burst of blind rage, to pull him over his shoulder and onto the ground. Kevin got in two good solid punches to Mike’s ugly little face, and then the smaller boy was scrabbling at Kevin’s eyes with his fingernails. Kevin backed off, still surprised at Mike’s ferocity. He punched him once more in the face, and then Mike was all over him, kicking and biting and spitting, which was downright dirty fighting. Kevin saw his opening and lunged, got his hands on Mike’s scrawny throat and wrung it like a wet towel. He heard Mike gasping, felt his hot cursing breath in his face. Somehow Mike found the wind for a final lunge, and with all his strength delivered a thrust of the knee squarely into Kevin’s groin. Kevin hissed and drew back, releasing his stranglehold. As he wove to his feet he was seized at each bicep by an intervening bystander. He flung them aside as if they were children and took a step toward Mike, who was just making his feet. The one step was all he could manage before that excruciating pain only males can experience dropped him to his knees. He groaned, toppled over, curled up his legs. With his hands tucked between his thighs he lay on the verge of vomiting, deaf to the commotion around him. When at last he could get to his hands and knees the crowd had dispersed. Mike offered a hand up, but Kevin refused it with a warning growl. 102

Carnival Sacrilege! He slumped on the bench, getting his wind back. One of his eyes was swelling shut, but with his good eye he could see that he’d scored with a number of punches. The bottom half of Mike’s face was red with drying blood, especially around the nostrils, and one of his premolars was missing. Kevin felt drained of heat. As the boys stared steadfastly at one another, panting, that peculiar postcombat truce passed between them. Kevin stuck out his bloodguilty paw. Mike grinned wryly and shook hands. “Black eye, some bruises, sore balls,” Kevin wheezed. “You?” “Two teeth, at least,” Mike said. “Almost broke my frigging nose.” Eddie heaved a sigh. “That’s better! What came over you guys?” “Beats me,” Mike said. “I just don’t like being called a ripoff, that’s all. But everything’s cool.” “Well,” Kevin said, “something happened to my pot. I mean, I trusted you with it.” “And I said I didn’t rip you off!” Kevin found he was back on his feet, fists all ready to go. He blinked and realized that, revolution or no revolution, Mike was an enemy to the bitter end. And Mike had ripped his off; it was written on his face. Eddie was back up between them. “Come on, you guys! I thought you made up. Just drop it, will you?” Kevin glared at Mike before quietly turning away to find a restroom. Something told him his lunch was about to make a detour. He was wrong. In the little brick restroom, assailed by standing urine and the ghosts of a thousand bare feet, all he lost was another load of soul. The truth was all over this trip; it was every man for himself. But his heart told him he could still trust little Eddie, who had clearly demonstrated his honesty that dreadful night of the beach party, when a lesser individual would certainly have taken advantage of Kevin’s intoxication by glomming his weed. His mind made up, Kevin lumbered back to the strand and drew Eddie aside. “Eddie, I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t trust Mike any farther than I can throw him. I’ve been thinking he might swipe my lid when I’m not looking, or when I’m asleep. We’ve been partners, Eddie, you and me, forever. I know I can trust you. So maybe you can do me a favor and hold onto my pot for me. Okay? Mike won’t ever think you’ve got it, and if he does try to rip me off again he’ll just think I’m all out.” Eddie looked up nervously. It was a responsibility he didn’t want to bear, and besides, it made him feel like a collaborator. But if it would help keep the peace he would do it. He nodded assent. “Thanks, Eddie,” Kevin said glowingly. Eddie nodded again, and no more was said on the matter. When Mike was looking elsewhere, Eddie obediently tucked the contraband into the rolled sleeping bag strapped to his bike’s rack. Eddie’s mood was grave. He was pretty sure the fight had destroyed all chances of his friends reconciling, and was wary of speaking with either boy separately. They set off in gloomy silence. At the outskirts of San Luis Obispo, the highway describes a gentle crescent away from the coast. Presented with an option to more beach, they elected to follow the highway into the heart of town. This was due to a mutual, instinctive feeling of discontent with the sea. Wide open spaces were beginning to make them feel uneasy. They were just boys. What they needed was the funhouse of hell-raising only an unwary city could provide; a fairgrounds of refuse cans to kick over, pedestrians to insult, fire alarms to trigger. This course they followed jubilantly, and less than a mile into the city they were bosom buddies again, and in their wake lay a trail of garbage and outraged citizenry. On Washington Avenue Mike made the mistake of swerving in front 103

Carnival Sacrilege! of a battered old pickup truck, forcing it to a squealing stop. There were three Spanish-American men in the cab; an old man and his adult sons. The old man shook his fist out the cab window dramatically. “¡Degenerados!” he cried. “You kids should drive more careful!” “Aw, we’re just kidding around,” Mike said. “So don’t go getting your mariachis all rattled.” “Es no comico . . .” the old man responded, struggling. “Is not a funny! ¡Es malo chiste! Es . . . is . . . is bad jest!” “Bad jest?” Eddie said delightedly. “Bad jest?” He screwed up his face into a countenance of burning outrage. “We don’t need no stinking bad jest!” But Mike came right to the point. “Up your burrito, you old bean fucker!“ He spat at the truck, just catching the grille. The old man threw the truck in reverse. As they took off he backed into a driveway, straightened out, and screeched in hot pursuit. There were two things the boys hadn’t reckoned on. One was that the old man knew this part of town like the back of his hand. The other was that he was a mechanic who took loving care of his old truck, which, despite its battered appearance, tore after them like a lusty rhinoceros. Whether they fled down little alleys or seldom-used side streets, the driver seemed to anticipate their moves, and the truck’s mighty shifting roar was always just at their backs. The boys ran their bikes over a dirt lot pocked with holes two feet deep, up a steep incline, and over railroad tracks. They thought this obstacle course would stop the truck, but it didn’t even slow it. They rode hollering and yelping down the opposite side, over another dirt lot, and into a supermarket’s parking lot. Kevin, dragging the rear, was terrified. He was too naïve to know the men in the truck were merely enjoying a game of cat and mouse, and too disoriented to realize they’d been chased halfway across town. He only knew that his heart was hammering between his ears, and that his second wind was history. He zigzagged recklessly between parked cars as he followed his shouting friends, bruising his shins and elbows on bumpers and side-view mirrors. The truck rapidly lost ground while the boys row-hopped. Kevin saw Eddie frantically sideswipe a shopper attempting to unlock his car while balancing four full shopping bags. Jerking his handlebars to avoid the man, Kevin found himself careening off the pavement. He was only able to maintain control by running staggeringly while straddling the eunuch-maker, bouncing painfully against the cleverly-situated bar until he pitched headfirst into a narrow ditch. Mike and Eddie, who were already cowering in the ditch, hissed at him to be quiet. Kevin swallowed his pain, immensely relieved to find his panting friends so near. It was well he kept quiet, for very soon they heard the pickup slowly cruising by. It stopped directly opposite the narrow ditch. Kevin held his breath until his chest felt about to burst, not realizing the lazily revolving front wheel of his bike was sticking up in plain sight. The boys heard laughter and rapid, incomprehensible Spanish, the sound of tabs popping on beer cans. More laughter. The truck’s rear wheels spun for a few seconds. It roared off with a squeal and lurch. Mike and Eddie poked up their heads in a choking cloud of dust and drizzling gravel. Kevin pulled himself from the ditch looking like a beached whale. Eddie was an emotional mess. “Let’s split, you guys!” he cried. “Fast, man, fast! Before they come back!” “Yeah. Let’s go, Kevin!” But Kevin was out of it. His mind took him on a delirious rerun of all the Combat shows he’d watched religiously at home. “You guys go on without me,” he croaked, pawing the dirt. “God damn you!” he heard Mike shout. “You got us into this”—which wasn’t true—“now you get us out of it!” 104

Carnival Sacrilege! “Let’s drag him, Mike!” “You drag him. That fat fucker weighs a ton.” This cruel exaggeration of his girth drove Kevin to his feet. He was going to kill Mike, right here and now, literally. Exterminate him, erase him, delete him. Pop him like a zit. But, even as he rose, Mike and Eddie mounted and took off. The fight drained right out of Kevin. It was all he could do to keep up. “Wait!” he cried. “Aw, for the luvva Christ, wait up!” “Wait, hell!” Mike shot back. And soon they had reached the far, residential side of town. Their common peril breached the feud. They all kept their eyes peeled for the pickup truck. “Don’t look now,” Mike hissed suddenly, “but the pigs are following us.” Eddie jerked his head around, eyes wide. Kevin quickly looked back. “Jesus!” Mike snapped. “I said don’t look! You want ’em to think you got something to hide?” “I’ll look if I want to,” Eddie whimpered. “How do you know they’re following us?” Kevin asked. In his mind he could still see the car, still see the lights on the roof, still see the siren. They were so close he could have seen their faces, had he the courage. “I don’t know,” Mike said testily. “Turn the corner.” They turned off the main road onto a tree-lined avenue. The police car nosed around the corner like a curious shark. An amplified voice said: “PULL OVER TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.” “This is it!” Mike cried. The car pulled beside them. Kevin and Eddie stopped and clumsily dismounted, but Mike zoomed to the middle of the road and pedaled frantically to the street’s other side. Both of the car’s front doors flew open and the driver sprang out yelling, “Hey! Hold it!” But Mike was dodging back and forth on his bike, as though he expected the officer to take a shot at him. He disappeared behind a gas station on the corner, reappeared hurtling across the main road, vanished again behind a restaurant. The passenger cop whipped out his nightstick and cornered the boys. “Don’t nobody move,” he said. They cringed in terror. The driver reached for his radio microphone, thought better of it, and walked around the front of the car to join his partner. “Hey now,” he said smoothly, “what’s the hurry?” He smiled slyly at his partner. “Wouldn’t be surprised if a couple weirdos like these had warrants out for ’em.” Kevin and Eddie were mortified. The policemen were giant, evil Batmen in their black uniforms, badges catching the sun. The car’s radio crackled. “Okay,” said the passenger cop, “let’s see some I.D.” Kevin shakily reached into his hip pocket. All he had in the wallet was his library card and the Free Press clipping . . . and he still had plenty of cash. A terrible thought struck him: the cops might steal it! Then came an even worse thought: for sure they’d think he stole it. “C’mon, fat boy,” said the passenger cop. “Give.” The driver watched the proceedings with a detached amusement. He was older than his partner, more used to this kind of little comedy. “My, my,” he said breezily. “The carnival’s in town.” But the other cop was tougher. He snatched Kevin’s wallet and indicated with his nightstick that the boy should move up against the car. “Okay, frogface;” he said when Kevin was beside him, “hands apart on the hood, legs spread wide . . . I said spread ’em!” He looked at Eddie, who was bent in fear, eyes wide and liquid. “All right, now you, gimme your I.D., nice and easylike, and get over 105

Carnival Sacrilege! next to four-eyes here.” “It’s . . . it’s in my sleeping bag,” Eddie said. A look of horror crossed his face: that’s where he’d stashed Kevin’s grass! The older cop grasped the seat of Eddie’s bike. “Keep ’em covered,” he said to his friend. He unfastened Eddie’s sleeping bag from the rack. “No!” Eddie cried. “You can’t do that! You don’t have the right!” His eyes appealed wildly to the other officer. “You keep your mouth shut, punk.” Kevin, spread out painfully against the hood like an obese starfish, all at once realized why Eddie was so terrified. He very carefully turned his head and watched the senior cop unroll Eddie’s sleeping bag on the sidewalk. Eddie’s shirts and private effects rolled nicely on top of the bag. The only article that fell out onto the sidewalk was a half-sealed sandwich bag. The officer picked it up. His eyes gleamed. “Well, well. And what have we here?” Eddie croaked out something unintelligible. “You been asked a question,” said the younger cop, threateningly. Eddie shuddered violently. “It’s his!” he cried, pointing at Kevin. “It’s not mine!” Both officers looked at Kevin’s gaping face. The driver looked back at Eddie. “Hmmmn . . .” he said judicially. “You were riding this bike and assume a responsibility for what you were carrying. I’m sorry, son, but—

we’re going to have to have you booked for possession of marijuana.” Eddie reeled, gasping for air. “Move it, kid!” snapped the other cop. “Up against the car next to your girlfriend.” Eddie moved over next to Kevin unsteadily, copied his position. Quick tears came to his eyes. “This is all your fault,” he whispered. Now the young cop patted them down, neatly and completely. “They’re clean,” he said. “Okay, move back—away from the car! No funny business.” Kevin tottered as he stood upright. His shoulders and legs ached from the strain. The senior officer began speaking some code words into the radio’s microphone, words which, Eddie knew, amounted to his death warrant. The cop replaced the microphone and stepped to the back of the car, unlocked the trunk and opened it high. Eddie hung his head as the other officer put the boy’s hands behind his back and cuffed them together. “You and us . . .” said the cop in a vicious saccharine undertone, “. . . we’re taking us a little ri-i-i-i-i-de.” Kevin stared incredulously as the older policeman stuffed Eddie’s bicycle into the car’s gaping trunk. He was beginning to realize he was still free, that he was not going to the big house after all. Eddie was made to sit on the rear seat with his hands locked painfully behind him. Kevin saw Eddie turn and look back miserably; then the officer had returned Kevin’s wallet, shut the rear door, and climbed in front. The driver looked over the roof at Kevin and frowned avuncularly. “Some advice,” he said. “When you find your buddy, you guys stick to the coast route. Kids who look like you are always getting in trouble in the city.” Then the head was gone and the car, amazingly, was being driven away. Barely visible, the back of Eddie’s neck seemed to await a guillotine blade. Kevin shuddered. He was free. 106

Carnival Sacrilege! Free! He looked around, aware for the first time that people, free people, were everywhere; staring out windows, pointing from porches and driveways. An adolescent brother and sister stuck out their tongues and wiggled their fingers behind their ears. Kevin mounted and rode to the corner, looking for Mike. With a start he realized the cops had never even searched his sleeping bag, and that made him laugh nervously. But when he thought of poor, doomed Eddie a wave of shame swept over him. And how long had it been since he had guaran-teed Eddie’s eventual arrival in San Francisco? Was it really only the day before yesterday? And he, Kevin, had been the useless instrument of honest Eddie’s crushing demise. Kevin pounded his fist on the stem of his handlebars until it was raw and bleeding. He waited for the light to change, then gingerly walked his bike to the back of the restaurant— paranoid, absolutely certain an old lady in one of the phone booths was reporting his every move to a squad of detectives intently positioning pushpins on a grid of the area. “Mike!” he whispered. No answer. So he rode around the restaurant and began calling. Still not finding his companion, he pedaled down the main street, trying to figure which way he would have gone if he were Mike. His search took him down side streets and alleys, and at long last, when the sun was beginning to set, the road he’d been following came to an abrupt end. An infinite highway stretched north and south, and just beyond a cliff dropped off into oblivion. Kevin heard the pounding of surf. A single sign poked up next to him and the boy looked at it stupidly. State Highway 1 said the sign. All at once Kevin understood he’d been searching in vain, and that the community of San Luis Obispo lay behind him, unfriendly and darkling. He knew in his gut that he had lost Mike, been separated from Eddie, and was, most likely, finally and irrecoverably alone. He looked north up the lonely stretch of highway. Somewhere, far away at the end of this road, lay the magical, utopian city of his dreams. Colorful people adorned the happy streets in that enchanted city, flowers in their hair. Dope was free there, the people were free, love was free. Soft young girls walked about in sheer white robes, begging you to do them the favor of accepting their free love. The boy looked south toward his home. Big Joe notwithstanding, he’d be safe there. A nice warm bed and his record player were in that direction. And no more toil, he reasoned. Shit, the way it looked he could probably coast all the way home. Then, to sweeten the pot, the tender, supplicating vision of the raven-haired girl returned. Kevin licked his dry lips. An old bus appeared lumbering toward him, the only traffic on the road. Sounds of rock music and laughter, of singing voices. Since it was a warm summer evening, most of the remaining panes were down, and Kevin could see that the bus was crammed full of joyous people with long, unruly hair. As the bus approached, he noticed words sloppily and exuberantly splashed on the side with fluorescent paint. He strained to make out their message: SAN FRANCISCO OR BUST(ed). Now the bus passed him and a freaky-looking character leaned out a window, flashed Kevin the peace sign with his left hand, waved a joint in his right. The bus continued lumbering up the road, seemingly dwindling in size. The laughter and singing grew fainter. The bus rounded a bend and vanished. The boy looked down the highway. It was deserted. He looked north, saw the bus appear as a tiny moving toy before vanishing again. He looked behind him, and the road to town was being swallowed by a malevolent shadow. Night was coming fast. 107

Carnival Sacrilege! Kevin changed gears and, wearily at first, began pedaling north in the wake of the bus.

108

PART TWO

WEASELS AND PEACOCKS AND WHORES, OH MY!

Chapter 9 Save The Cockroaches Kevin’s loneliness was brief. He didn’t have far to ride before he came upon merry lights in the gloaming. He had a pastry, a candy bar, and a candied apple for dinner, and spent the night with a troll under a pier. Here’s how it came about. The pier was a quaint place of gift shops, of pinball machines, of stolid fishermen rolling mirthlessly with the sea. Kevin approached it almost unknowing, still mourning the loss of his friends. There was nothing he could do about Eddie, who would get one phone call home and catch hell from his parents. It was Kevin’s contraband, and Eddie would certainly tell his own parents this, and they would of course inform the Mikolajczyks. But in a way, Kevin thought, Eddie might actually come out ahead in the long run. After all, being busted for possession was an honor—it meant gaining the reputation of a rebel and dreamer, sharing your views with other heads and heavies, and becoming a veteran of prison life. Kevin would spend the rest of his days eluding Joe, who would refuse to die before he had caught his son and tromped the life from him, while Eddie, with a few breaks and a lift from a liberal probation system, might end up a hero next semester. Kevin winced and quit this line of thinking immediately. When he owned up to it—that he was directly responsible for the destruction of Eddie’s dream—he almost wished Big Joe would find him and give him the thrashing he deserved. As far as Mike was concerned, Kevin was at a loss. Even the scrawny boy’s pugnacious company was better than being lost and lonely. He was sure Mike was still in town, a fugitive; stealthily haunting the sewer system or doing the rooftop route. Kevin, with a sense of fatality brought on by soul-fatigue and remorse, was also certain this severance was permanent—that if he went back into town looking for Mike, Mike would simultaneously leave town by a different road to search the coast. So Kevin was very miserable indeed when he parked outside the coffee shoprestaurant-fish market on the little pier, and somehow the passing of strolling window-shoppers and 109

Carnival Save The Cockroaches skateboarding pinballers was just what he needed. The restaurant was constructed as a truncated hemisphere; the upper portion all glass panes cut hexagonally, the lower section paneled laterally with salt-pitted redwood slats. The dome’s flat top was capped by the plaster figure of a smiling sea bass wolfing down a steaming cup of java. All this glass bared the shop’s innards to passersby, making it difficult to miss tier upon tier of hot fresh pastries displayed within. Kevin chose a little table by the entrance, where he could keep a close eye on his bike. There he sat and pouted over his hot coffee and sweet cinnamon roll. He was dining alone . . . . . . when . . . . . . without a sound the table’s other chair had been occupied by a repulsive creature wearing a hideous hat of mangled felt, almost identical to Kevin’s own. Kevin became aware of a particularly offensive odor, an absolutely vulgar stench that triggered feelings of anxiety and loathing. His reaction wasn’t just a healthy individual’s natural aversion to a foul-smelling presence; it was something deeper. He was being bombarded by pheromones. The intruder’s age was impossible to gauge, as his face was streaked with grease and grime and other, unrecognizable patches of filth. Under the tiny yellow eyes projected a long crooked nose, a thin slice of mouth, a transparent shock of goatee. He was wearing a torn old coat stained so badly its original color was anybody’s guess, and a pair of obscenely eroded cutoff trousers which must have originally belonged to a child. Kevin saw with pity and with revulsion that the stranger’s skeletal legs were peppered with scabs, and pocked with what looked like the craters of old boil scars. He wore tennis shoes coated with a rank, bile-colored slime, and corroded, collapsed socks of the same nauseating extract. He laid a wormy upturned hand on the table, saying, “You got some change, friend? It’s an emergency. It’s like my car ran out of gas and I lost my wallet in the cab. I can’t apply for a new credit card until the bank opens in the morning . . . all my bags, man . . . all of ’em, lost, lost forever . . . airport snafu, terrible thing.” His fingernails dug into the tabletop. “Terrorists, man. But what you gonna do . . . free country.” He inhaled until it looked like his head would pop. “Hotels, man, socked in for the holidays . . . muggers . . . appointments . . . cops with attitudes . . . missing ID.” Scale by scale, the tiny eyes sank back into his skull. “Man, I gotta call my wife, I just gotta let her know the kids are all okay. Suzie . . . Mitch . . . Cupcake . . . Corndog.” His stomach growled through a bottomless decrescendo, finally petering out in a wrenching gastric death rattle. “Long distance,” he gasped. Kevin nodded with compassion. This guy’s situation made his own troubles seem a lark. Also he needed company, anybody’s company, badly. “Sure, man;” he said, “let me get you something to eat.” Kevin rose and studied the menu. Feeling strangely pleased with himself, he ordered steak and lobster, corn on the cob, and a glass of milk. When the meal arrived his beneficiary devoured it without a word of thanks. The tab had come to, surprisingly, over twenty-one dollars. Once the meal had been consumed with an atrocious lack of manners, Kevin asked, “Feel better?” “You got a cigarette?” “Sorry. I don’t smoke.” “Christ. Now I gotta have a smoke.” The wretch rose on wobbly legs, standing barely five feet tall while stooped at a curious angle. He seized the arm of a customer waiting at the cash register. “Hey man, you got a smoke? It’s like I left all my shit in the van, man, and I just know this chick ran off with it. Women, man. But what you gonna do?” The customer looked at the filthy claw on his arm, peeled it off with disgust. He was tempted to take the little troublemaker outside and whip the pants off him for being so rude, but it was clear nature had already worked him over. 110

Carnival Save The Cockroaches “Beat it,” he said mildly. The little guy threw his arms in the air. “Christ!” he said, turning and limping back to the table. “Some people just blow me away! I mean! Here I been working this joint for five years, and he tells me to beat it. Christ!” “Come on,” Kevin said. “I’ll buy you a pack.” He stepped up next to the customer and said under his breath, “Sorry about . . . him.” The man stared sourly, jangling the change in his pocket, and thought, Jesus. Another one. After paying, Kevin walked outside to join his new companion, who was mouthing obscenities at the passersby. He walked his bike slowly, trying to not wind his limping partner. They came to a little stand which sold newspapers, candied apples, and tepid beer. A very comely teenage girl sat behind the makeshift counter, polishing her nails. “Gimme packa smokes.” “Which brand do you want?” she asked, not smiling. “Christ . . . Gimme Pall Malls.” She handed him a pack and a book of matches. Kevin paid as the little viper hobbled to a rail overlooking the ocean. “Friend of yours?” the girl asked, her wholesome face twisting with distaste. “Just a stray cat,” Kevin said absently. It was a fresh scene for him. For a crazy moment he thought that, contrasted with that guy, he might actually look good. He squared his shoulders and half-turned to display the famous logo on the vest’s rear. “But he’s a heavy dude. We’re like talking about maybe starting a band.” “Ugh. He gives me the creeps. He’s out here panhandling every day, swearing at people, scaring off business. I wish he’d just fall in the water and never come up.” Kevin’s shoulders sagged. He bought a candy bar and a candied apple for his own dinner before walking over to rejoin his sorry new sidekick. He would really have to start watching his money. “You live around here?” he asked. “Yeah. I sleep under the pier at night and hustle up here during the day. It’s not great, but I do okay. Sometimes, if you’re fast, you can skip into one of the restaurants and swipe the tips off the tables before the waitress can get to ’em. Just last week I rolled some old man for six bucks, and people are always dropping change. Hang on a second.” He leaned farther over the rail and casually vomited the entire dinner. Kevin’s stomach wrenched at the diarrheic sound of undigested steak and lobster spattering the waves. Twenty-one bucks down the drain. “Yeah, I do okay,” he continued, snuffling residue up his nose. He lit another cigarette. Kevin turned away. He was weary with the day, aching and depressed. “Where’s a good place to crash around here?” he asked unwisely. “Only one place, under the pier. Sleep on the beach in the open and the cops’ll bust you, or the drifters’ll mug you. You can sleep downstairs if you want, I don’t give a fuck; God knows there’s room enough.” “Thanks,” Kevin said prematurely. The wretch shrugged. “My name’s Kevin; what’s yours?” The little cripple shrugged again, and from then on Kevin thought of him only as the troll. Although trolls traditionally inhabit caves and foothills and the like, Kevin saw no reason one couldn’t master the underbelly of a pier. 111

Carnival Save The Cockroaches After a few minutes of ignored small talk on Kevin’s part and foul muttering by the troll, they walked back off the pier and onto the beach. Kevin had a spooky feeling as he carried his bike over the sand, and this feeling intensified as they ducked under the pier’s sodden timber framework. Underneath it was inky dark, but the surf reflected colored light from above, and this light, playing games with the eyes, seemed to dance around the pillars, sculpting otherworldly Things out of shadow. The only sound was the distinct crash and suck of breaking waves. “Over here’s a dry place,” the troll whispered. Why did he whisper? The troll lit another cigarette, and in the brief sputtering glare of the match Kevin saw salt-softened beams gently rocking and groaning with the ocean. Trash and foul-smelling seaweed lay heaped on the sand, along with small, indefinably gruesome blotches. Kevin shivered. The troll stopped and perched on a beam, so Kevin carefully wedged his bicycle in a crotch of timbers. He took his sleeping bag off the bike’s rack and used it for a cushion. “You sure the tide won’t come this high?” he asked in a voice which seemed unnecessarily loud. “Would I of said it’s a good place if the fucking tide came this high? Christ, I slept here I don’t know how long, haven’t got wet yet.” “You—you actually live down here?” “What of it?” “Nothing . . . I just, well—how long?” The troll looked away. By now Kevin’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he could see that the troll’s expression was bitter. “Seems long as I can remember. Maybe six, seven years. I use to bum in the parks and railroad stations, but there was too much competition. Before I come down the coast I use to hang out at Golden Gate Park, and then at Big Sur. Too much fucking competition.” Kevin started. “Did you say Golden Gate? That’s where I’m going.” He asked eagerly, “What’s it like up there?” The troll doubled over with a humongous fit of coughing. Kevin waited impatiently. Recovering, the troll flicked away what was left of his cigarette and lit another. “Too much fucking competition,” he said at last. “No, I mean what are the vibes like? How are the people?” He was still eager to compare the descriptions of others, to build an accurate visual. If only Eddie were here now. “People are fucked,” said the troll. “Too fucking poor to bum any money off, always spouting crap about love and religion. Christ, I couldn’t live around freaks like that.” He began to idly pick his nose, lazily eyeing the results rolled between forefinger and thumb. Kevin had a disturbing feeling the troll could see well in the dark, having survived so long in this chilly shadow-world. He grunted, figured the subject was a touchy one, and better left closed. “Well, I’m tired. I’m gonna crash.” The troll turned and looked at him with frightening speed. His eyes glinted. “You wanna let me use your bag, man? Christ, I been sick lately, real sick. You seen.” “What about me?” Kevin demanded. “Oh, it’s not cold here, you’ll see. You don’t need the bag, and the sand’s soft. But man, I been so fucking sick, you dig? Hey, I’m letting you use my place to crash; you can be cool too.” Again the glint of eyes. Kevin composed himself. At last he said quietly, “Go ahead then.” “Hey, that’s groovy, man. This’ll all come back to you someday. It all evens out.” The troll snatched and unrolled the sleeping bag. Without even removing his shoes he climbed in and zipped it 112

Carnival Save The Cockroaches up. Kevin watched silently before moving back a few yards to sit against a barnacled pillar. He shivered and half-closed his eyes. Somewhere out of his line of vision a buoy clanged its doomsday bell, and a small boat tooted its horn twice. The piles stood about him like the ribcage of a longdisintegrated dragon, calcifying while tiny things scurried and sucked, picking its bones clean. The faintly phosphorescent waves broke stinking, monotonously and mournfully, and ghostly shadow people darted about in the darkness, playing a deadly hide-and-seek, waiting for him to close his eyes completely. He continued to monitor his surroundings, determined to remain alert. The night wore on. It was head-to-toe discomfort which at last tugged him from the depths of a peculiarly heavy sleep. He felt drugged and stiff and sore. His back and shoulders ached arthritically. He had dreamt of grisly many-pincered crustaceans clambering over his legs, and of a horrible thing like a tentacled lamprey with a firm suckerhold on his heart. A subconscious fear of waking to find these horrors a reality had kept him under during the long night. Now it was another hot beautiful morning, but under the pier it was still dreary and foul. Kevin froze. Something was crawling on his backside, tugging very gently. Perspiration broke out on the boy’s forehead . . . he hadn’t been dreaming after all! The instinct to survive caused him to hold his breath while he tried to imagine just what disgusting, smelly, obscene creature was assailing him. Was it a primitive, spiny, fierce-eyed crab? Or maybe a blind, hideously deformed, radioactive rat; one of the hapless few washed up along the coast after escaping the Government’s sadistic experiments in hippie behavior control. Or maybe it was— “Hey!” Kevin cried. He turned just as the troll was leaning over him. The troll jumped back, trembling. “You!” Kevin gasped. He shoved his wallet all the way back in. “You were trying to pick my pocket! You—” “Hey, man,” the troll spluttered, “what’re you talking about, man?” His mouth worked convulsively. Kevin got to his feet. The troll looked around wildly. Kevin was standing between him and a cul-de-sac of crisscrossing timbers. The troll dropped to his knees. “Would I do that?” he whined. “I mean, would I? After you bought me dinner and everything? Christ, man, gimme a break, willya? I got a family to look after, man; a wife and kids . . . Seka and Oprah . . . Rover and Babs. Look, I’m still on probation, man! Christ! How in the fuck does doing time make a better man of anybody? You tell me, pal—yeah, you tell me; it’s not like anyone gives a good long crap about what I have to say anyway. Public defenders, man. But what you gonna do? They gotcha coming and going.” “Well, how do you explain it then?” Kevin demanded. “It was . . . it was falling out of your pocket,” the troll said. “Yeah, that’s it, man; swear to God. I was afraid you might lose it, so I was trying to push it back in before it slid all the way out. You shouldn’t be pissed at me, man. You should be thanking me.” As Kevin’s mind, still sleep-bedraggled, tried to deal with the troll’s lame explanation, he became increasingly disoriented. Either he’d blinked or the sun had just been swallowed by a black hole and just as suddenly regurgitated. Kevin tensed. Air. He needed air. “Thanks,” he mumbled, and stumbled toward the pulsing squares of daylight. He lurched into sunshine. Kevin sat on the clean sand for five minutes, recovering. At last he looked back at the pier. He missed his bicycle. 113

Carnival Save The Cockroaches Underneath was all vile, impenetrable darkness. The idea made him shudder, but he had to retrieve his bike and sleeping bag. Then he was clearing out, no doubt about it. He rose, shook himself, and grimly made his way back in. The troll was asleep in Kevin’s bag. The boy angrily unzipped it and rolled him out. The troll didn’t waken, but coughed feebly and curled into a fetal ball. Kevin rolled and tied the bag, strapped it to his bike’s rack. He was about to leave when his heart took a turn. Nodding, he pulled a five dollar bill from his wallet and stuffed it in the troll’s front pocket. He carried his bike out quietly, shaking his head and aching all over. He would have to make a note to scout out his sleeping spots before dark in the future, and from now on he’d have to think ahead before getting involved with strangers. And he really had to start watching his money.

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Chapter 10 Homo Erectus jooli 2 1967 jime thengz hav gawtn awl scrood up fas mik haz gawn undrgrown an edz bhin brz thu man bustd us ystrda in san loois obispo an took ed an mi pawt but it wuzn mi fawlt ed wuz holden it 4 me az u favr an thu pigz kawt him with it i don no wut hapund 2 mik he split az soon az thu pigz pold us ovr an iv bin siten her awl da awn thu hiwa in kas he kumz bi but if he duznt iv dsidud 2 kep goen newa bcuz im nawt thu kin uv dood 2 kawp owt wn thu shit gts thik ukordn 2 mi map its ruf stuf frum her awn no mor big sitz until mawntra frs theng iv gawt 2 doo iz gt u hold uv sum mor pawt but thu wa it loox thaer won b much chans uv skoren 4 u yl so il hav 2 w8 an c wut wrx owt kevin And now Kevin, in the shade of a rare palm, slipped the letter into his last envelope and dropped it in the mailbox. All morning and much of the afternoon he’d loitered here in Morro Bay, watching the highway on the off chance Mike should come pedaling his way. Kevin wasn’t holding his breath. Odds were Mike was on his way back to Santa Monica. And even if the little punk were to continue north, he’d surely be too paranoid to travel in plain sight. No, whichever direction Mike chose, he’d move by night, and by the most circuitous route available. Morro Bay is one of the loveliest stops the coast highway has to offer, but Kevin wasn’t moved. The hauntingly picturesque windmills and sun-buttered marinas seemed incredibly alien, and the enormous hump of rock rising majestically from the bay only brought to mind Big Joe, who 115

Carnival Homo Erectus loomed in his thoughts at every turn. Kevin found a small, clean, family-run café. He wasn’t all that hungry, but the café’s windows offered a superb highway view and, beyond, the gentle crescent of the sailboat-dotted bay. The café’s outer wall was painted in washed blue and marine green, with infantile illustrations of sea life; seahorses, lobsters, crabs, a many-tentacled blemish meant to represent an octopus. Kevin parked his bike and stepped inside, took a chair at the table nearest the door. The dining area was deserted, but there were active voices in the kitchen, arguing in rapid Greek. The menu contained a lot of unfamiliar and unpronounceable dishes. When at last a squat, swarthy man in janitorial white came to take his order, his dark eyes beaming with false hospitality, Kevin tentatively ordered falafel, which turned out to be some mildly spiced deep-fried vegetable mush, and a large Pepsi. While eating he heard a vehicle pull into the lot. A classic powder-blue Ferrari 250 GT parked in front of the café, and a youthful man of thirty-five, after spending a few minutes fussing with his wavy blond hair in the rear view-mirror, stepped out with a neat sashay and proceeded cheerfully up the walk. At the door he stopped to study his overall reflection in the glass, whipped out a fancy comb and spent at least another minute on details around his mane’s part. Kevin saw that this man’s complexion was very smooth and fair. An exaggerated grace imparted an unpleasant suggestion of effeminacy. There was something of this, too, in the eyes, which were slightly strabismic and of a twinkling and distant blue, like aquamarine rhinestones. He was dressed as a pseudo-hippie. Kevin imagined he’d told his tailor, “Dress me for the New Generation. You know, like all these young rebels go about nowadays.” But the attempt to mix was simply too obvious. The brightly colored Nehru shirt and alabaster peace medallion were excessively “mod.” The suspiciously soft Levis, though bleached and patched, in no way exemplified the proud, hardy dropped-out set. And the ropesoled sandals were so unworn they appeared virtually brand new. There was a familiar look to his hair . . . that look of being long enough to be non-conservative, yet too well-tended. Kevin, gloomily munching his vegetable mush, couldn’t help taking all this in. A window should never be used as a mirror. It really didn’t make any sense, unless the man was some kind of a . . . Kevin guilty looked into his drink. There was a puff of hot air. The blond man waltzed in and stationed himself by the cash register while studying Kevin with an unwavering merry stare. After a bit the boy grew uncomfortable; he turned his head in the man’s direction and nodded curtly. The stranger continued to eye him twinklingly. The squat proprietor came back out and made much of this newcomer, apparently a regular and favored customer. The proprietor wrung his hands with grotesque servility and lavishly flattered the Ferrari. But the blond man’s eyes never left Kevin. He shooed away the proprietor and, without preamble, joined Kevin at his table. Kevin looked away. After an interminable span the stranger said in a wheedling voice, “You’re certainly an intent road-watcher. Waiting for somebody? Hmm?” Kevin shrugged a shoulder—the shoulder farthest from his unbidden guest. “Sort of. I got separated from a friend of mine back in San Luis Obispo. I’m hoping he’ll come riding by. Sort of.” The stranger folded his arms on the tabletop, still smiling. “So you’re new in town, is that it? You live in San Luis Obispo, do you? What brings you up to our sunny little resort?” Kevin grinned lopsidedly. His resolution concerning strangers was easy prey to lonesomeness. “No, I live down near Los Angeles. A city called Santa Monica; maybe you’ve heard of it. Me and a couple partners were riding our bikes up to the Haight to catch the Big Jam at the Park.” The blond man was delighted. “That’s marvelous! Riding your bicycles up you say? That’s thrilling. How very, very camp. Are you carrying the banner of the Movement? Flying your freak flag? Participants in the Summer of Love?” 116

Carnival Homo Erectus Kevin looked at him narrowly, wondering if he was being put on. But the answering twinkle was candid. After a moment he felt satisfied the stranger’s enthusiasm was genuine. “More or less,” he admitted proudly. “A guy would have to be a fool to miss this big a happening.” He looked up, trying to jog his memory. “—‘The world has too long saved itself from becoming meaningfully involved’,” he mumbled, “—‘and now to become meaningfully involved is to save the world from itself’.” “What lovely thoughts you have in your head.” “Not really,” Kevin said quietly. He looked back into his glass and let the ghosts coalesce. “A good friend once told me that. My . . . best friend.” “Still, it’s the conviction that really matters, especially in these turbulent times. But what about your little friends? I’m quite sure you said you were traveling en masse. Where are they?” Kevin shook his head. “That’s the real bummer. Yesterday the man stopped us and busted Eddie with my pot—” He raised a hand halfway to his mouth. The blond man placed a thin hand lightly on Kevin’s arm and squeezed. “You don’t have to worry about being discreet with me. You can rest assured I’m no pro-establishment straight. Believe me, I turn on with the best of them.” There was something really ugly and leading about the way the phrase “turn on” was used here. Kevin squinted. The moment was gone. “Really?” he asked, curious and skeptical. “You get high?” “Oh, assuredly. Pot, hash, acid, some of the best pharmaceuticals money can buy. And let me tell you, none of the lovelies passing through my system are cut, mixed, or tampered with in any way. There is no high like a clean high.” Kevin used the straw to stir the ice in his glass. At last he said, trying to not appear too eager, “You think you can maybe score me a lid? Like I said, I’m all out of pot.” The little stars dancing in the irises of the stranger’s light blue eyes now blazed with some inner secret transcending merriment. “Can I score you a lid?” he asked with mock indignation. “Why, do you realize (and you’ll keep this to yourself, please) that you are speaking to the individual solely responsible for stoking the heads of ninety percent of this quaint resort? That is, of the gross turned-on populace. I don’t think more than sixty percent, all totaled, of the men, women, and children of Morro Bay turn on. But, believe me, the time will come, and it won’t be long, when there won’t be a living soul on the face of the globe who doesn’t use pot, acid, and pharmaceuticals. Why, did you know that the Chief of Police in this town has been known to turn on before coming to work? The Chief of Police! Of course you didn’t know. How could you? How could you even guess? But—and I’m not fabricating a word of this, mind you—you wouldn’t believe the number of prominent and ascending socialites who turn on in this cheery little community. It’s the in thing to do. But I don’t have to tell you all this; I can see by that clever look in your eyes that you turn on too, hmmm?” But Kevin, strange to say, was just too dumb to be subliminally influenced. “Well,” he said, “of course I couldn’t have know those numbers. Things are a lot tighter where I come from. But really,” he said, trying to look the smiling blond man in the eye, “I had you figured for a head as soon as I first saw you. I was just fooling, you know, so you wouldn’t be worried about me being a nark or anything. I mean, really, I believe what you say.” There was a weighty silence. Again Kevin looked away, totally disgusted by this flashy sweet peacock. For, dumb as Kevin was, he wasn’t so dumb he couldn’t recognize a lousy sticky-lipped, bottom-feeding, heinie-humping rectum reamer when he saw one. Yet the stout boy wasn’t afraid of any physical advances. He’d heard that homosexuals were easily put off, and he knew that, if the 117

Carnival Homo Erectus situation should arise, it would be no problem to overpower this frail little man. Besides, Kevin held his own appeal in such low esteem that it seemed ludicrous to imagine a member of either sex seriously propositioning him. So he could pursue the matter. “Well, do you have the pot on you? I mean, is it here, or do you have to go get it?” “Oh no,” the stranger said dreamily. “I never carry quantities with me. We can just skip over to my place and pick it up.” “But my bike,” Kevin objected. “I can’t leave it here. It might get ripped off. Can’t you just go get the stash and meet me back here?” The stranger waved a limp hand, stood and picked up Kevin’s tab. “Nonsense, nonsense. I’ve got a way around that. You just leave it to me.” When they had exited he showed Kevin a gleaming chromed bicycle rack on the Ferrari’s trunk. He laughed. “What did I tell you—no problem!” He gracefully lifted Kevin’s bike onto the rack, saying, “Upsy-daisy now!” Kevin awkwardly climbed into the sleek little car. As the blond man put the Ferrari in gear and started away, a cassette tape featuring Rod McKuen began immediately. The driver pulled a neatly rolled joint—rolled in paper the same powder-blue as the car—from above the sun visor and lit it with a delicately embossed gold-plate lighter. He handed the joint to Kevin, who knew immediately from the smell and taste that this was foreign grass of high potency. He took two draws and began coughing. When the fit was over his mind was bobbing. “Wow!” he fumbled. “This is—this is really dynamite. I mean . . . wow!” The blond man looked at him with his widest smile yet, extremely pleased. “What did I tell you? Nothing but the best.” Kevin hit it again. Wow. There was a gustatory undercurrent, whatever that meant, giving the weed a slightly off taste, as though it had been cut with a Plutonian synthetic, perhaps, or maybe even an opiate-based multiabracathumbafarcture. Kevin’s balls scrunched up his butt. Meth? He turned to face his benefactor. Lance’s smile was an enamel cartoon. “Goo-oo-oood?” He cupped Kevin’s knee playfully. “So glad to have turned you on.” They motored along. Kevin shook his hard and grinned. As they were humped at an intersection he offered his hind in appreciation. “My name’s Kevin.” The blond man took his hand without the slightest pressure. Kevin had a fleeting impression of an indecipherable change in the man’s smile, but he put it down as a strange effect of this powerful marijuana. “And I’m Lance.” This statement was made in a velvety undertone. He removed his hand as though Kevin’s body were a thing diseased and unclean. They drove on. Kevin looked at the beautiful car dazedly. “Wow,” he said, “I just can’t get over this. What . . . what do you do for a loving, Lance?” He blinked, adding quickly, “If I’m not being too purseonal, that is.” Lance laughed. “Me? Oh, I bugger the mayor for a living, and any of his friends who’re feeling generous. I’ll bet you didn’t know the mayor was gay, did you?” He laughed again, and gave Kevin’s thigh a generous squeeze with his free hand. “I’m kidding, of course. Now this Ferrari is a real jewel. Mint condition. Original paint, would you believe it? Not a ding or a dent when I picked him up; never had a bit of trouble with the motor, runs like a dream. And feel these seats. Original interior; not a rip, not a stain.” He caressed and stroked the leather of the seat, reached up to lovingly pat the dashboard. “Oh, he’s a real beauty, all right.” Lance pulled to a stop before a rather ordinary-looking apartment complex with an outstanding view of the bay. He carefully removed Kevin’s bicycle from the rack and told him to lock it to a cast 118

Carnival Homo Erectus iron ornamental lattice bordering the ground floor apartment’s front door. Kevin was by now too stoned to do anything but wordlessly comply, but as he passed the lock’s chain between the rear wheel’s spokes he grew increasingly apprehensive. He left the lock disengaged, just in case, for any reason, he might have to make a quick getaway. Then he followed his strange host into the apartment’s living room. The décor was expensive and tasteful, but definitely effeminate. Scattered about the room were huge silky pouffes in variant tones of pink, from flesh to shocking; the lamp shades, as diaphanous as babydolls, conformed to this tone scheme with subtle seductiveness. Conspicuously lacking were the materials a man generally uses to mood his lair: leather, chrome, rich woods were nowhere to be seen. With a start Kevin realized that all the framed nudes were males. Hiding his revulsion, he tried to focus on what his host was saying. “Oh, I know it’s not much,” Lance gushed, slouching against a delicate rice paper partition and growing prissier by the second, “but I make do.” Knowing it was expected of him, Kevin murmured, “Oh, it’s really . . . really swell, Lance.” He quickly brought the small talk back to basics. “Look, I don’t mean to rush you, but could I just get that lid?” Lance pooh-poohed the interruption. “No bother; I’m in no hurry. Gracious! What kind of host am I, anyway? Do sit down. Make yourself comfy. What’s your drink?” Kevin remained standing, unconsciously balling his hands into fists. After a moment he said, very quietly, “I don’t drink.” Then, with barely concealed anxiety, “Listen, Lance, I didn’t tell you before, but I’m really in a hurry. No offense or anything, man, but just let me cop a lid and split, okay? Don’t get me wrong, I sure do appreciate the hassle you’re going to and all, but I’ve really got to be on my way. I don’t want to go into details, but I’ve got a heavy date, right away. With a girl,” he added quickly. “My girlfriend’ll be waiting and I hate to make her wait.” He managed a sickly grin. “You know how women are . . . I—what I mean to say is, like, let’s just forget about the lid, ’cause I’m in a like super-hurry so I guess I’d better just split. Nice to meet you and thanks for the ride. I really dug the ride, that’s a really nice car you’ve got there, really. Well, I guess I’d better be going, so take it easy.” He ended lamely, “Thanks again.” He had to look down. And the room frosted over. Lance’s aquamarine eyes weren’t twinkling anymore. He said softly, “You’re nervous. I’m making you nervous.” Kevin nearly blacked out. Something absolutely primitive in his subconscious caught his courage before it could hit the floor, and his mouth, on its own, replied: “Just who the fuck are you to tell me whether I’m nervous or not, huh, man? I mean, where the fuck do you get off thinking you can read my mind, huh, prick?” “You’re getting rowdy,” Lance responded. “I’m making you rowdy.” “I’m not getting rowdy,” Kevin gasped. “It’s just that you keep coming on like . . . like . . .” “Go ahead and say it,” Lance hissed. “Like a queer, is that what you mean? Like a fairy? A faggot?” “I . . . I . . .” “Well, that’s just an assumption. That’s not only unfair and premature, it’s characteristic of a bigot, and if I’d known you were a bigot I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to help you score like this.” “You . . . you said it wasn’t any hassle.” “It’s going out of my way to entertain a bigot.” “But,” Kevin groped, “I’m really not all that big. I just come from a . . . large family.” And Lance was smiling again. “You know what, cream puff? I believe you. There’s nothing 119

Carnival Homo Erectus more disarming than innocence. And,” he divulged, “just to put your mind at ease, I want you to know you’re not the first person to jump to that conclusion.” There then ensued another of those excruciating silences, punctuated only by a slender crystal grandfather clock ticking patiently in the corner. Something about the steady tapping made Kevin’s mind hark back to that crucial November night in the garage loft, when Eddie’d got his head just as stoked on pot, and a similar tapping had portended an explosion that would profoundly affect his future. “I just don’t know what it is,” Lance sighed, alternately sagging and recovering, “that would cause some people to get that impression.” His gaze oozed across the framed male nudes. After a reflective pause he began to discourse: “Y’know, jelly bean, we’ve all heard this label-linking about ‘lifestyles,’ and ‘sexual preferences,’ and all the speculation about whether it’s a genetic thing or something an individual, presumably heterosexual by nature, gets sucked into through exposure to sickies and horniness—as if straight young men are caught in a helpless spiral; from pornography to prostitutes to queer dives. As if to say there’s a lurid substratum of compulsively masturbating thrill addicts needing a harder fix each time; and so moving up the sin ladder. That’s like assuming a pot smoker ‘does it’ for a voluptuous thrill until it just isn’t ‘good enough’ anymore, and so goes on to sniffing glue or dropping downers, finally ending up in a rat-infested tenement sharing needles with another little engine that couldn’t. So you see, passion fruit, the assumptive personality, adamantly indifferent to the facts and completely ignorant of the experience, is the party with the least valid voice in the matter. But everybody knows that. It’s just that honesty takes all the fun out of a witch hunt. “Anyways,” Lance elaborated, “there’s a mutual insensitivity that guarantees both sides’ll remain polarized. You take queer factions, for instance. Now, what outspoken homosexual groups are unable to understand, pudding buns, when they publicly attempt to assuage the straight community with all their rationale about ‘preferences’ and ‘lifestyles,’ is . . . is . . . the absolute, soul-deep revulsion the heterosexual majority is going to experience. As an example I could say . . . oh . . . like I’m a member of the pro-cannibalism movement, okay? Just an analogy.” “I know,” Kevin said remorsefully, “all about analogies.” “Groovy. So we’ll suppose that cannibalism is my ‘preference,’ or my ‘religion,’ or my ‘philosophy.’ Right? So . . . why in the world, my camp wonders, do you goobers react so violently, so canniphobically, to our druthers? I mean, we don’t castigate you for being strict vegetarians, or for being steak and potato guys, or even for being Sara Lee junkies. So why should it bother you that we eat our relatives? You’ve got your thing, and we’ve got ours. All we ask is that we cannibals are treated the same as so-called ‘normal’ people. You see what I mean? And I can stretch this kind of inductive nonsense as far as necessary. I can say, for example, that the morgue is an eco-friendly source of protein, and I can say additionally that people have been ceremoniously eating other people since people began, and that it’s only some weird right-wing taboo which prevents we finger-lickin’ liberals from enjoying, let’s say, the pleasures of the flesh.” “That’s disgusting,” Kevin said. “Exactly. But to our hypothetical cannibals’ society it’s absolutely reasonable, and your aversion is just a popular prejudice. And that’s why queers miss the mark so badly. Apparently they don’t understand that homosexuality is nauseating, infuriating, and absolutely ugly; ugly in a way that deflects sympathy and snuffs any desire to reach a compromise. When a faggot announces his fairyness to someone in the straight community, he’s not communicating to that straight someone: ‘I am simply a person like any other, who just so happens to be oriented toward members of his own gender rather than the opposite gender.’ What he’s communicating is: ‘I am a male who loves to 120

Carnival Homo Erectus suck on another male’s penis while my punk lover rams his penis in and out of my anus. I crave the sickest, most obscene behavior imaginable’.” There was a lull while Lance collected himself. “The premise,” Kevin said brightly, “is everything.” Lance blinked at him. “What premise?” Then he said, “Oh, oh, oh! I see what you mean. Queers, cannibals, and democrats aren’t aware of their transgressions because they’re morally ignorant. They take the Constitution literally. In other words, liberty, perversion, and cannibalism are synonymous: we’re freemen.” Kevin looked away, seeking words to encapsulate and close this increasingly uncomfortable subject. “I really don’t care what people do in privacy,” he said. “But if it’s a bad thing it shouldn’t be in everybody’s face. I mean . . . I don’t think I should even have to know about it, except maybe from some book. Instead, there’s these parades and all this public stuff. They even say they’re proud of it. I don’t understand that.” “Gay Pride,” Lance replied, nodding and slouching, “is definitely an oxymoron. But I guess closets can become suffocating after a couple thousand years or so. Yet,” he said, holding up a hand to obviate any possible interruption, “after all the dirt has been swept aside, there remains one critical, totally unprejudiced question: why is homosexuality? “Now, it’s a simple, undeniable fact that nothing occurs in nature, as a steady-state, without being a part of the Big Picture. Ergo, sweetmeat, homosexuality has a place in nature; it’s not some temporary phenomenon or transient mutation. It’s always been with us, even though it’s been in the closet, retaining its natural hold on a percentage of the population. You can read about it in the Bible, or in the Wall Street Journal, for that matter. But why does it exist?” Kevin shrugged. “The world doesn’t need more babies.” “That does seem to be the only logical answer. A queer won’t get his faggot sweetheart pregnant. But why would the population be regulated like that? Why not more miscarriages? Why not an asexual continuum? Or a naturally-regulated quota of infertile women, or impotent men?” “Maybe because—” “I’ll tell you why,” Lance interrupted. “I’ll answer my own questions, deary, if you don’t mind! I’m not making idle chatter here; I’m attempting to probe the deepest recesses, to get my hands on the naked truth. So . . . notwithstanding that homo sapiens is, to all effects and purposes, out of the food chain, and that our numbers don’t have to be regulated according to how many of our offspring are likely to be scarfed up, and . . . given that there are more effective ways for nature to maintain population control, and disregarding any ecumenical tripe about good and evil, we’re left with a sexual anomaly that resists logic and persists throughout history. And the answer is not to be found in mathematics, and it’s not to be found in reason. It’s even more abstruse than the queer community calling itself ‘gay.’ Now there’s a dignified, ennobling title for you! “Anyway, as I was attempting to impart here, the answer is far more basic. You see, peach, testosterone is an intensely powerful chemical influence. The sexual receptor is the libido, which is a blind area. Men will fuck women,” he sang, “men will fuck men. Men will fuck boys, men will fuck sheep. Men will fuck anything that will accommodate them. A man will fuck himself if he can figure out a way to do it. And it really doesn’t reflect on the individual, except where there’s no restraint. No matter how intense the provocation, each man still has an obligation to govern his reaction. It’s the mind—not the brain, the mind—which gives us the right to call all other species ‘lower animals.’ We can’t spiritually go through life on all fours.” “Now you’re starting to kinda remind me of my best friend.” 121

Carnival Homo Erectus “Really!” Lance gushed. “I’m flattered. Is he cute?” “I . . . don’t know,” Kevin fumbled. “I never thought about it. What I mean is the kinda stuff you’re talking about reminds me of him. I guess there’s a lot I haven’t given much thought to.” “Well, shame on you. You don’t want to live in the dark, do you? That’s what this whole revolution’s about. People are opening their minds and their hearts, instead of just running around following orders and feeding the system. It’s not only the gays. The entire human race is coming out of one closet or another.” “I just wish they’d do it without the parades,” Kevin said, “and quit trying to make everybody feel guilty about ’em being in there in the first place.” “Hypocrisy,” Lance prognosticated, “is one practice that’ll never go out of fashion. So there might be a whole lot less of this homophobia if queers would just quit pretending there’s nothing disgusting about being queer.” Lance, placing his hands on his hips and pouting dreamily, now embellished, “Yet, you know, it’s the same thing, heterosexually speaking, when you put the pump on the other foot. “Take the way women come off making statements about how they’re oppressed, and not seen as anything other than sex objects, whilst they demand equal access to the power thought-pool. Reverse the broadcast imagery, if you will. Now . . . just picture a man in a skirt, wearing special underclothing designed to ‘lift and separate’ his private parts into your focus, wearing lipstick and mascara and eyeliner, his hair dyed and his nails polished, stamping his heels in pique because you won’t take him seriously as a cool, deep, intellectual individual. Imagine it! Women are either as naïve, or as dishonest, as fags. Hell-o-o out there, women! You’re painting yourselves, for goodness’ sake! What are you, aborigines? You’re painting yourselves! You’re dangling baubles from your body parts. You’re boldly walking around in public trying to be just as naked as you can legally be. Everything you do, everything you stand for . . . your entire ‘statement’ is sex—not gender, sex—yet you’re brought up to believe anybody who reacts to what you’re deliberately radiating is dirtyminded. You’re the ones who are dirty-minded! I mean,” Lance shivered, “can’t you just see some curvy guy in drag, expecting to be taken seriously! Why, that’s so ludicrous it’s . . . it’s . . . delicious!” But Kevin wasn’t salivating. Now the grandfather clock was pounding in his head, and Lance had become something out of a nightmare. “I gotta go,” he said. “Later.” “Nonsense! Just relax. Pull up one of those cushions and take off your shoes. I’ll be back in a sec’.” He sauntered into the kitchen. After a moment Kevin sat on a lavender couch and gnawed his nails. If Lance would have stood in his way . . . it would have been different. But take off his shoes—hell! No way was he about to remove a single article of clothing. He told himself to be a man: a tough, resolute lumberjock with thighs of steel, a no-holes-barred hardon who wasn’t about to shake any lip off of some pretty-ass blond weenie wagger. He’d come to screw a lid and, dammit, he’d sit here surrounded by posters of hot shiny naked guys all day long if he had to; it was no big deal, ’cause he didn’t lean that way, wouldn’t ponder leaning, wouldn’t dream of leaning. Kevin actually thought it was fall-down funny that dudes would even pose for other dudes; that was lady stuff, and since only guys liked to look at pictures, only women should spread for ’em. That one guy there, Kevin marveled, must have exercised forever to get abs like that. Or maybe it was just fairy luck: a bi-product of nibbling tofu and sprouts and other leprechaun food instead of real macho grub like hot dogs with heavy mayo and tight sesame buns. A string of saliva joined Kevin’s lips. Or maybe that guy didn’t just diet and work the abs; he was absolutely ripped, from his taut glistening pecs all the way down to his rock-hard thighs. It was really kind of funny looking at another guy’s penis like this. Not funny-haha, but funny 122

Carnival Homo Erectus . . . well, funny. It wasn’t an actual photograph anyway, just some kind of special effects mock-up, where great equipment augments a hairless model’s doink and doo-dads so whoever’s staring hard at it simply can’t look away. Kevin had heard of such stiff in orgio-video class; cameras and filters and lights and codpieces. Manimation. 3-D graphic sensories that feel the observer into believing a picture of some guy’s ripe rolling riftwhomper is, you know, engorging or whatever the hell they call it, getting bigger and shinier and closer and thicker and oh for the love of God; Kevin closed his knees and covered his peaking lap with his forearms. Something totally wrong was going on here. And definitely not wrong-haha. He’d heard of such stiff in science class; bi-ochemistry it was called, where the bodies’ organs could penetrate even the tightest wad until some poor son of a bitch dropped to his knees and embraced a great God in Heaven something really queer was going on here. Kevin bit his lower lip and stamped a foot. For some reason a vision of his mom doing a striptease came to mind, and that was that. But man oh man oh men, somebody must have slipped him something. That grass must have come off a Thighstick. He’d heard about such stiff in Jim class . . . The muzak of a string queertet swished sweetly from speakers lurking in the balls. Lance pranced in, gaily jiggling a sticky woody tray. “Cumfy?” he queeried. On the shiny round tray were: a carafe containing a foggy liqueer, a tall glans of wine, and a bulging, ornately splayed hardwood box. Lance laid the tray on the rump-end of a pronated coffee table. He opened the box, exposing its contents to Kevin’s frankly queerious gaze. The boy half-expected to see a ghastly rectal arsenal of gadgets and lubricants, but the box contained various articles of smoking paraphernalia, little trays of hashish and marijuana, a variety of capsules and tablets, and several vials of powders. Now here was something to focus on. “Did I lie?” Lance prompted gleefully. “Nothing but the best!” Kevin threw his whole attention into the box of goodies. “What kind of pot is this?” “Here, Panama Red. This here is from Viet Nam. And this is Acapulco Gold. Real Acapulco Gold, not the bunk you get on the street.” “Wow! And the hash?” “From India, here. This is from Iraq, and this here’s local.” “Man! What’s in these little bottles?” “Cocaine here, absolutely uncut. Pure PCP here. And this little vial contains s-s-s-mack! for those rare moments.” “No kidding! And all these pills!” “That’s right, spongecake. Uppers, downers, in-betweeners. Mescaline and Orange Sunshine. Pressed powder of peyote. And this . . . is for you.” He handed the boy a neatly bagged ounce of pungent marijuana, and refused to accept a cent in payment. Kevin looked up in awe and deep gratitude, a good deal of his natural repugnance replaced by envy and a sort of diluted idolatry. He stuffed the baggie in his left trousers pocket. “Would you like a toot of that coke?” Lance offered delightedly. “I can guarantee you won’t soon, if ever, sample its equal.” Kevin’s mouth opened wider. “Could I?” “Of course! That’s what it’s here, for, Silly. You didn’t think I brought it out just to tease you, did you? Here’s the vial, and here’s the straw, mirror, and razor blade.” He pointed out these articles and settled next to Kevin on the lavender couch, watching over the rim of his wine glass as the boy indulged. He laughed with a trace of the old merriment when Kevin got a nosebleed from snorting the drug. 123

Carnival Homo Erectus “Wow-w-w—” Kevin said at last. He felt he was out to sea, without moorage, without memory. “Goo-oo-oood?” Lance asked. His voice was distant, soft as cotton on the eardrums. Kevin watched entranced as Lance leaned forward to extract a tiny jade pipe from the box, a slender hand on Kevin’s thigh for support. Lance filled the bowl with a large chunk of hashish and placed the pipe in Kevin’s numb fingers. Some part of Kevin heard a voice say, “Here. Smoke this. It’ll make the high flow easier. It’ll soften you up. But first . . . as an everlasting symbol of our very, very close friendship.” Lance removed his alabaster peace medallion and draped it around Kevin’s neck. “Now!” The boy obediently puffed on the pipe’s stem while Lance held a sputtering match to the bowl. After three hits he was hacking uncontrollably. He felt the chill of a glass in his hand, and was gratefully gulping down a cold foggy drink. The combination of all these stimuli had Kevin completely confused, but delightfully so. If he had previously been frightened and repulsed by his host, all was now forgotten in this wonderful cool weightlessness. He was bobbing and drifting, grinning lazily at the room. Lance’s smiling countenance became just another prop highlighting the strange backdrop floating round and round, and Kevin’s body had grown so numb that it was a full five minutes before he realized Lance’s hand was resting on his knee. He gawked at the man, or tried to gawk. Kevin Freaking Mikolajczyk was made of stone. Lance must have seen something in his face though, for he removed the hand and busied himself with the contents of the joybox. “Come in, come in,” Lance was jabbering. “This is planet Lance to outpost station Kevin; do you read me? I say, you don’t seem to be receiving me, Station Kevin. Come in, come in. Are you receiving me? Are we making contact? Come in, please.” Lance passed a hand like a fluttering bat in front of Kevin’s face. “Dear me, what’s it like out there, Station Kevin? What do you see? Tell me. Tell me what you see.” Kevin grinned at the jackass and his stupid room. He certainly did feel out in space, and this certainly was good cocaine, and mighty choice hashish, but there had been something in that drink . . . he felt oddly open to suggestion. He didn’t want to offend his generous, if comical, host, so he did everything in his power to pay attention, to focus his glassy eyes. “Planet Lance to Station Kevin, Planet Lance to Station Kevin, we are sending up a shuttlecraft. Please open your receiving hatch. Repeat, we are sending up a shuttlecraft. Come on now, plum, open your mouth.” Station Kevin saw a capsule-shaped shuttlecraft growing in his viewscreen, and obediently opened his receiving hatch. There was a sudden obstruction in his throat—and he was choking, but his good friend and benefactor was helping him, holding his head while administering increasingly large doses of that same acidic drink. The offending lump slid down his throat. “You know what that was, biscuit? Seven-hundred and fifty micrograms of Latvian LSD cut with estrogenic esters of Eastwood. Margarine, anybody? Soon you’ll be orbiting out of all known planes, just a big juicy nebula lost in space, a happy creature of godlike luminosity. How does that strike you, sweets? Isn’t it goo-oo-oood?” And Kevin closed his eyes to hide from the hypnotic voice, becoming an astronaut in a huge clumsy spacesuit, floating in a starless void. Far, far away drifted the squat body of his truncated module, a dazzlingly lovely thing shimmering in its own light. Kevin, groping for it, became aware he was without lifeline. He took that news in stride, and began swimming for the module. But the module was moving away, at a velocity precisely mirroring the little forward lurches he managed. He threw out his arms in despair, only to find himself tumbling over and over like paper in a gentle 124

Carnival Homo Erectus breeze. Kevin resigned himself to this tumbling, which soon steadied to a smooth spiraling. Abruptly the great body of the module was before him, and he was closing with outstretched arms. Once he’d embraced it, the module began rocking violently, as though a captive beast raged within. And from out of nowhere a great slug monster clamped itself to his back, growing, growing; bigger than he, then bigger than the shaking module, then bigger than space itself. Kevin cried out in alarm and opened his eyes. And the wildly bucking module became the lavender couch, and the slug monster on his back became his frantically humping ex-friend Lance. Shock prevented his reacting for a moment. But only for a moment. Kevin scrambled to his feet with a wail of horror and disgust. There were some really strange visual events taking place all about the room . . . and Lance was facing him, his Levis and shorts down to his ankles, panting, flaccid. “Are you out of your mind-your mind?” Kevin cried, his voice splintering in his ears. “What do you—what do you think you’re doing?doing?do-ing-g?” Lance was staring with vacant eyes, his mouth working soundlessly. At last he said, viciously, “I should paddle your fanny for that, you know that? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” “No!” Kevin gasped, close to tears. “Get away! Leave me alone!” Lance advanced threateningly, only managing small steps due to the Levis fettering his ankles. “Or do you want to paddle my fanny? You can do it if you want! Yes. Do it! Do it!” He turned and proffered his skinny pale buttocks. “No!” Kevin screamed. The powerful dose of LSD was taking command quickly, and with attitude. Kevin, cringing on the edge of the couch, covered his face while a dozen trail-images of his arms dissolved into multicolored streamers. Green paisley patterns oozed down the walls. When he looked again Lance was gone, but he could hear a soliloquy from the next room, “Insolent puppy! Telling me to get away! In my own house!” Kevin stood shakily. He made for the door in slow motion, forcing the lead stilts of his legs through a thick, sluggishly flowing medium while the ocean roared in his ears. He finally reached the door, hauled it open. Behind the door was only a closet containing dainty garments. He willed himself to close the door but his arm would not obey, so he stood frozen, staring into the rustling disembodied finery. From the adjacent bedroom came an odd snapping, and Lance’s thin voice, “Rude. Naughty. Selfish.” Each word was spat out and punctuated by a cracking report. The voice was nearing. In a panic Kevin freed his hand from the doorknob and swam toward the center of the room. “So there you are!” Turning, Kevin was horrified to see Lance attired in powder blue panties, red high heels, and a limp black brassiere. In his hand was a flexible thing like a rubber ping pong paddle with a phallus handle, its diaphragmatic surface covered with slender, villi-like nylon protuberances. He was slapping the device against his palm. Kevin cried out and slowly dogpaddled away, assaulted from all directions by the most amazing and terrifying hallucinations. The room would yawn to swallow him, then tilt and revolve, drawing him deeper into its crazy reeling belly, and he’d be running along an unending, whirling hallway, puffing up a DOWN escalator, hacking his way through a vacuum, while colors and sounds strafed him from all sides. And everywhere he turned Lance’s feverish voice was in one ear, the smacking of the paddle in the other. The whirling hallway came to an abrupt end. Kevin was cornered. He turned with a snarl just as Lance pounced, both hands scrabbling for the fly on his Levis. Kevin grabbed the first thing within reach, which happened to be the slender neck of a plaster 125

Carnival Homo Erectus lamp. With all his strength he brought the base of the lamp down on Lance’s intent, sweating face. The lamp exploded in his hand and the grip on his pants was released. He opened his eyes to see Lance’s grinning face next to his. There was blood all over that silly mug, and sharp chunks of plaster imbedded in the cheeks and forehead. The look on the man’s face was ecstatic. Kevin, in pushing him away, undulated to his feet. Lance rolled on his back like a submissive bitch, grinning up at him. Kevin whirled, flipped over the lurking lavender couch, and somehow made his way to the front door. As he threw it open the fading daylight burst on him like a tidal wave. In the space within the door’s frame, the horizon was revolving kaleidoscopically about an angry, throbbing sun. Exotic shrieks filled his ears. He reeled into his bicycle and stumbled over it, rolled, picked himself and the bicycle up, mounted it backward, pitched headfirst off the porch. The lock’s chain was fouled in the spokes. He tore out the chain and left it where it fell. A sound of stumbling from the front room. Kevin frantically threw himself on his bike as Lance came clopping out in his bra and panties, covered with blood and bawling, “Wait, Honeyhole! Wait!” Kevin kicked at him twice, missed twice, and wobbled onto the walk. Lance, doubled-over on the railing, shook his fist, cried, “Cockteaser!” and began hollering for the police. Kevin insanely pedaled down the street, hallucinating parked cars rushing at him. The road pitched and yawed. It was fortunate he found his way to Brokeback Beach, where someone in his condition posed little threat to himself or the community. He dragged his bike through the sand until the front wheel turned on him: bitch. With the pink light district in front and the lubricant sea behind, Kevin found himself going south in the petering light. Butt he’d really pulled a boner this time: Kevin had stumbled upon an all-male nude beach! He backed onto a peephole grate, only to have a hot blast of air blow his sheer frilly skirt billowing around his eyes; and that wasn’t the worst of it—Kevin wasn’t wearing any underpants! Blushing bright crimson, he flitted off squealing, his hands desperately cupping his front and rear, an old man on crotches in hot pursuit. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide; the Marvellettes were fingering him fully while searchlight beams danced gaily over the sand, exposing Kevin’s quivering spunkhole to landlubbers and semen alike. Queens to the left of him, jerkers to the right, and cuming up ahead—no, not sperm whales! This was nuts! Kevin screamed as Lance rose from the sand, violated an ankle, and tried to drag him down. The boy kicked and kicked until a snarling wedge of spokes bit into flesh. His bike’s front wheel half-turned, but it was enough to throw him face-first into the sand. In one lunge the faggot was on him. Weeping with the pain, Kevin dug himself deeper, a bottom-up bitch in a gangbanger’s glory hole, holding his own while the naked night punked him to sleep. When he woke it was just getting light. The sand was damp and cold, the area stinking of beached seaweed. His body felt sticky and limp, elastic, as though it no longer belonged to him. He spat the sand from his mouth and sat up. His left foot was swollen and numb, still wedged between the spokes of his bicycle’s rear wheel. With the utmost delicacy he extracted the foot and let it rest on the sand. Curiously, his first concern was damage to the spokes. When he saw there was no problem he let his Gumby body fall back on the sand. And so the memories came rushing back. Kevin struggled to suppress them, to think of other things, but the drug’s effects still had him. Chief among his remaining sensations was a nauseous weightlessness, very much like an alcohol hangover. Yet faint traces of colored light still wriggled in the air, and the cottages off the strand exuded a sickly radiance. 126

Carnival Homo Erectus He limped across the sand to the mouth of a little waking avenue, where he caught his reflection in the window of a notary public’s office. He hung his head. He looked and felt like hell. Kevin ran his hands over his matted hair, pulled his hat back in place, wiped his hands across his face and down his sides. He stopped when he felt the bulge in his pants pocket, fished out the squashed bag of marijuana. Only then did he recall the full horror of the assault. Kevin was filled with a rage so intense it left him limp and spent without having moved a muscle. He wanted to take Lance by the ears and smash his grinning face into a wall, a window, anything that would maim. But that, he realized, was exactly what the man craved. The world was just too sick and perverse to fathom. He continued shambling down the sidewalk. He came to a tiny cafeteria and drank steaming black coffee. Now he could accept the looks of disgust and amusement he received from other customers; he’d become empathic. Not long ago, in another world and another life, he could sneer right back, Now he only felt guilty in public. Shunning any solid breakfast, he dragged himself from the cafeteria and back to the beach, where he grudgingly rolled a joint. After two inhalations he began to hallucinate. He snuffed the joint and dropped it back in the bag. Kevin, returning to the avenue, eventually found himself back on Highway 1. Resting there, watching the gorgeous morning stretch awake, he weighed the urge to chuck it all and just head on home. What prevented him he wasn’t sure, but, as he realized for the first time that Lance’s alabaster peace medallion still hung from his neck, a grim resolve shooed away his thoughts of submission. He raised the medallion to his eyes, prepared to tear it from its chain and hurl it into the nearest storm drain as a proclamation of his outrage. He hesitated. It was a beautifully carved piece. No, he would keep this medallion, along with all the other junk he’d acquired—he was a pack rat at heart. Kevin stared at the gently shimmering houses, at the radioactive gulls scudding over the broad sparkling bay, then, in his mind, at the miles and miles of highway yet to be conquered. Slowly a hard smile turned away the furrows of tension on his brow. The sun, small and round in the east, was glazing the rooftops with gold. Like it or not, it was going to be a beautiful day.

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Chapter 11 Why I’m Single Getting back into the highway groove was the quickest way out of his funk, and the best way to override the acid’s lingering effects. Kevin pedaled with a will, concentrating only on that next downward pump of the leg. Yet for several hours and many miles the ghosts pursued him. The phenomenon of “flashing back” continued to nip, as if insanity, an eager demon, rode puffing just behind. He was afraid to turn and confront this demon, but in his mind he could visualize its face. It would be grinning and bathed in blood, with jagged chunks of plaster protruding from its forehead and cheeks. Kevin scrunched his neck and pumped his legs like pistons. He drove himself on. At one o’clock he broke for lunch in the tiny seaside resort of Harmony. The exertion had all but cured him. Kevin’s demon, unless it lay ahead in patient grinning ambush, had at last been given the slip. He felt so much better, in fact, he could smoke a whole joint with only the slightest discomfort. He scouted around, bought a new lock and chain for his bicycle. Kevin coasted the strand, enviously watching the happy beachgoers. He found a vacant bench along the promenade, sat and rolled another joint, drew on it hard as he could. He began to doze, snapped out of it. A weird sense of alienation overcame him as he took in the casual parade of passersby. Everybody seemed absorbed in participation, as opposed to observation. He felt he could expire right there, in plain sight, and the parade would go on as ever. And while he sat, intoxicated, Kevin was treated to a haunting insight. First came three young women wiggling by in their most provocative summer sex costumes, rudely jiggling their tits and swaying their asses—exhibiting these unbelievably affecting parts, it seemed to Kevin, solely to provoke his rolling, burning eyeballs—while giggling nervously, their own eyes flashing as they pretended to not be inflamed by the four whooping and whistling young men who were hungrily pursuing, no less mesmerized than the lonely fat boy craning on the bench. The horniness was so intense it was almost palpable. Everyone involved was drunk with lust. 128

Carnival Why I’m Single Behind this barely restrained aspect were two couples in their late twenties. The women were doing all the talking and gesticulating, at this age still giggling, clinging to their goofily blushing and occasionally mumbling men as if they were life itself, shrieking with brainless vivacity while slapping the men on their behinds. This phase of mating was somehow even uglier than the lust phase. Next in line came middle age: the Bermuda-shorted, wingtipped males shuffling along vacantly, hands in pockets, pot-bellied. Their females waddled beside them, hanging on as though they were the jealous guides of blind gods, their tits and asses now nauseating masses of funky flopping fat. Their infants they fondled obscenely, slipping readily into baby talk; their growing children they berated almost casually, snapping and scolding and threatening. These women would then effortlessly glide into yammering at their hubbies, whose minds were clearly elsewhere. Finally came old age; senior citizens looking desperately alone, desperately deprived. Nobody was giggling or blushing anymore. And subsequent to the seniors came . . . Nothing. Suddenly there were tears rolling down Kevin’s cheeks, and he didn’t know why. He kept waiting for somebody, for anybody, to follow the procession. But the promenade was deserted. For some reason Eddie’s face came to mind, and now Kevin could clearly discern what before had been only a vagabond impression. Eddie had wanted something too badly. He heard Eddie’s voice: “You’ll never meet your maker, but salvation’s waiting for you with open arms.” Kevin mounted and rode on without looking back. The highway became progressively desolate after Harmony, the road’s regular tenor giving way to long murderous climbs and to brief, exhilarating descents. Kevin removed his vest and peeled off his reeking shirt, once again exposing his upper body to the brutal July sun. It was always one more climb. From the top of the next grade he was certain to gaze over the panorama of a little green valley where children splashed in crystal fountains. But time and again he found himself commanding a lonesome view of an unending highway shimmering in waves of heat, often snaking well out of sight of the ocean, only to return, inevitably, to this backbreaking range. He broke his climb to study his crumpled map of California, certain that Gorda must be very near. But either exhaustion had addled his sense of distance or the map was a liar (Gorda, it turned out, was nothing more than an old house with a rusty gas pump. Maps don’t lie so much as tease). He coasted down the opposing grade barely enjoying the cooler rush of air. Just one more climb! When he reached the top he was going to stop and find shade, or make shade, and perhaps snooze until the sun had eased low enough to make this kind of exertion reasonable. Maybe, he thought, maybe he should henceforth travel only by night. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to see San Francisco any longer, or catch the great concert. He was pretty sure, with almost four days left, that he’d arrive in time, but his mind no longer soared with grand images. The struggle was now automatic, his game plan confused. His basic motivation had become a soporific, singsong mantra on the benefits of rigorous exercise, which only seemed to be killing him, and on the ideals of Love and Peace, concepts which were only applicable in the half-world of his Shangri-la waiting just beyond the next climb. The whole trip made much less sense without his buddies. Guilt made him bitter and defiant. Kevin repeatedly visualized them at home, smugly expecting him to come whining into Santa Monica at any time. Just one more climb! But this grade seemed to rise forever. Grunting, he closed his mind to it, labored up the highway mechanically, head bowed. The sun 129

Carnival Why I’m Single was vicious. Kevin once more donned his shirt against the rays. The rough fabric scraped maddeningly on his back with each forced pump of a leg. Sweat soaked his hair and collar. Traffic picked up. He thought of stopping halfway to the top, but to arrest his painfully slow progress would kill it. He’d never get going again. The highway began to wind. And wind. The yellow caution signs became redundant. “Jesus,” Kevin said. Dismounting, he almost lost his feet. Kevin pushed his bike along. The space between road surface and cliff tapered until he was almost in competition with automotive traffic, and suddenly there was no space. Ahead, he could see cyclists and hikers darting to the road’s other side, which didn’t look any better. Traffic intensified. “Jesus!” Kevin gasped. He stopped at a cliff depression, squeezed himself into the niche. Even the sea breeze was hot. Eventually traffic abated and Kevin made his break. He took three steps and stopped dead in his tracks. What was he doing? Who was he kidding? A close call from a passing flatbed got him moving again, inching along, until he reached a roadside emergency turnout. Kevin pushed himself to the far end of the turnout, where a slight overhang crowned by a few stunted shrubs provided a bit of relief from the sun. He wearily swabbed the lenses of his glasses with his shirt’s tail, elevated his feet. Came hiking round the bend one of the oddest people he’d ever seen. This guy was dressed in a pair of tie-dyed corduroys eighteen sizes too large for his gaunt frame, held up by green-checked purple suspenders. Dangling from the suspenders were several shells, a starfish, various found oddities, and an unopened summer sausage. His left foot sported a scuffed brown wingtip, his right a filthy pink slipper. Painted on his bare chest was a serrated black swastika, superimposed on a stars-and-stripes field. Atop his long, wildly disheveled hair perched a tall dunce’s cap featuring, as on a barber’s pole, a bright red corkscrew spiral. Additional odds and ends were pinned haphazardly to this cap, and he’d topped it off with a slinky toy which bobbed and lunged as he moved. Perhaps most arresting of his paraphernalia, however, was the miniature purple plastic hula hoop suspended from a hole pierced in his nasal septum. Rattling about on this hoop were large mahogany letters spelling out P-E-A-C-E. He was pushing a bashed and battered shopping cart filled to the brim with a variety of found junk—rocks, shells, hubcaps, etc. The cart was candy-striped with red, pink, and white paint, and bore on its front a sloppily painted sign that read FREE NUTS; apparently less an advertisement for pecans at no cost than a timely plea for the wholesale liberation of lunatics. Kevin watched this character schlepping along, fascinated. Now there, he thought, is one together dude. When the guy reached the turnout he stopped pushing his cart to survey the winding grade ahead. He closed an eye and positioned a thumb in front of the other eye like a painter judging perspective, then slowly pivoted round in the manner of a toy drummer. He was now facing traffic with his thumb displayed for the purpose of hitching a ride. Immediately three cars pulled over. The freak took his pick—a late model Mercedes Benz driven by a voluptuous redhead in a nude body stocking, who helped wrestle the shopping cart onto the back seat with squeals of delight—and was last seen being happily shunted along. Kevin considered this transaction for a few minutes. What the hell. He stuck out his thumb. The response was not so immediate in his case. He tried various poses, including lost and lonely, seasoned and aloof, personable and eager. Zip. Finally his nymph arrived. She was of indeterminate age—sixty to be generous, eighty tops—wearing a frayed black 130

Carnival Why I’m Single halter top, faded blue slacks, open white sandals. She had come for him in a 1960 Chevrolet Impala convertible, which produced the racket of Rommel’s Egyptian campaign and enough black exhaust to obscure whatever lay behind it. Oddly, each toenail was painted a different shade of pink, and there were what appeared to be bite marks all over her feet and hands. Her face possessed the singular property of apparently having its contiguous parts in a state of flux. It took Kevin a minute to realize she wasn’t melting after all, that this effect was produced by the woman’s liberal and reckless application of makeup. Her scarlet lipstick, for instance, careened off the right side of her mouth and down her chin, while lumping up under the left nostril. Massive amounts of cobalt-blue eye shadow stained her upper lids and parts of her forehead, where a pair of black squiggles had been drawn to hide the fact she had no eyebrows to speak of, and some weird dark goop had been applied to her lashes so as to produce a few uneven spikes. Handfuls of pancake makeup made her face a bone-white mask, except for those areas where rouge had been carelessly smeared across her cheeks and into her black-dyed, alternately snaking and crimping hair. Eczema was evident in a few bald patches, on the right ear, and on her throat. She now placed a shaky hand on the seat for support, leaned toward the boy and smiled boozily. “Goin’ my way?” she asked, in a voice that would nauseate a grackle. “Umm . . .” Kevin said hesitantly, “this . . . this is my bike,” half-hoping she’d change her mind after considering the extra cargo. “Pleased ter meetcha,” she replied, addressing Kevin’s bicycle. There was a pause. Finally she said, “Well, do you expect me to load the damn thing in for you, too?” Kevin lifted his derailleur and placed it in the back, brushed aside some of the trash on the front seat to make room for himself. The crone took off hurriedly, barely giving him time to shut the door. “My name’s Nefertiti,” she said, once the car had settled in traffic. “I’m Kevin.” Another pause. “Pretty coastline,” Nefertiti said. “I’m hip.” The driver of a white sedan, apparently peeved at having to suck down the Impala’s jetting black exhaust, sounded his car’s horn sharply. Nefertiti flipped him off. The sedan then swerved into the opposing lane and passed the Chevy easily. Nefertiti came half out of her seat. “Fucking showoff asshole!” she shrieked, and hammered her fist repeatedly on her own car’s horn plate until the sedan had rounded the next bend. “Oughta be a law preventin’ creeps like that from obtainin’ a license in the first place,” she declared. She hunched her shoulders and swiveled her neck to get out some of the road stress. “Anyways,” she said. She hiccoughed. “So where you headin’, sweetheart?” “Oh . . .” Kevin answered nonchalantly, “just up the coast.” “Ah, c’mon now, don’t give me that. You can’t fool Nefertiti. I been doin’ readings since I was half your age.” “Readings?” Kevin wondered. Nefertiti swatted him with her free hand. “Now hush up!” She placed the hand on her forehead and looked grave. “So . . .” she intoned, “you’re in your late teens and you’re goin’ solo up north and you don’t wanna talk about it. You’re all dressed up incognito to be some kinda freaked-out hillbilly cowboy or something. The jollied-up bike’s just a part of the disguise. I’d say Uncle Sam’s just declared you’re 1-A and you’re scootin’ your ass right on up to Canada ’bout as fast as you can.” “Nah,” Kevin said. “I’m no draft dodger, not yet anyway. I’m only sixteen. With any luck, by 131

Carnival Why I’m Single the time I’m eighteen there won’t even be a draft.” “Okay, sugar. Don’t tell me. It’ll just be our little secret. ’Cause y’see, honey, ol’ ’Titi’s never wrong. Never. It’s a gift. But you can forget all about this great big ornery horse takin’ you clear to the border. I’m only goin’ far as Big Sur.” “Big Sur would be right-on!” Kevin said excitedly. “Oh? So you wanna party with the animals, too?” “Damn straight!” “Then sugar, you got yourself some like company. Gots me two nephews and a grandson camping up there right now. Visited ’em during the hollydays an they invited me back for the summer. Hardly recognized ’em, but boy, do they ever know how to party. I didn’t realize how squaresville the world really was till I got out and decided to let my hair down. I gotta hand it to you kids nowadays. You can really get it on when you’ve a mind to.” Kevin nodded. “It’s really evolving,” he asserted, eyeing the audacious array of freaks they were passing. “The world is, I mean. Kinda like having Halloween every day of the year.” Nefertiti smiled. “Y’know, sugar,” she said, “all this reminds me of a big ol’ festival they have every year down in Rio de Janeiro. It’s called Carnival. Sort of a giant contest to see who can make the most obnoxious asshole of hisself.” She laughed shrilly. “Yeah,” Kevin replied. “I love America.” Nefertiti swatted him again. “No, silly! Rio’s way down south, down in that other America. One year Hank—before he died, God rest his soul—I says one year Hank and I was down there on a business layover from that stupid computer company that couldn’t make a dime if you programmed it to, and Hank, well, he just got all dolled up in the cutest little Tarzan costume you ever seen, with his little round belly hanging out there and everything, so don’t you know I just had to go as Jane,” she gushed. “I mean I just had to. I mean me, Nefertiti, queen of the freaking Nile, for god’s sake! Isn’t that a scream? So I got out this smelly old wombat pelt Hank had wrangled out of some curio shop owner for next to nothing, sweetheart, and I fastened it in place with a buncha safety pins, and you know what? Honey, it worked! Even though it did smell like the devil, but whoever said Jane was supposed to be some kinda scent queen in the first place, if you know what I mean. And Hank, well he just looks at me with this darling little sarcastic look of his and he says, ‘Oh, you’ll really create a stir, Pinky, that’s for sure,’ like he was supposed to be Mr. Fashion Plate or something and— Pinky’s what he used to call me, God rest his soul—and so I just looks him right in the eye and I says, ‘Stir?’ I says, ‘you want a stir?’ and I just took the top part of that smelly old wombat pelt and pulled it right down, like, like, like . . . this!” To Kevin’s astonishment, she freed her hands from the steering wheel for an instant and yanked down the front of her funky black halter. Her naked, burned-out dugs flapped in the breeze. “Jeez!” Kevin hissed. “Cover up, willya? You want the pigs to come down on us?” In spite of himself, he kept his eyes glued to the dashboard. Nefertiti glared at him, offended. “Ah, lighten up, huh, sourpuss? I’m just exercisin’ my right to expose myself, like it says in the—what’s that damned thing—the Constitution. You aren’t unAmerican, are you?” “Of course not,” Kevin gasped, hyperventilating. “But I’m on the lam. I just don’t wanna end up in the slammer, that’s all.” Nefertiti wagged a limp hand. “B’lieve me, sugar, y’gots nothin’ to fret about. If any copper tries to harass us, why, you just leave ’im to me. By the time ol’ Nefertiti’s done with him, he’ll have traded his six-shooter in for a pacifier. B’sides, wasn’t five minutes ago you was rappin’ ’bout how it’s all bully-bully and hallelujah to the good times you kids got goin’ for you these days. So what’s it 132

Carnival Why I’m Single gonna be? You gonna hide the goods or let it all hang out? Shit, I seen eunuchs got more balls than you got.” Then she whinnied mockingly, half to herself, “cover up, willya? Cover up, willya? That’s just what that stupid son of a bitch Hank says to me, like I’m standing there in some stinking rat’s fur for my own freaking amusement or something, and . . . and . . . oh, Hank!” she cried, and the waterworks came on. “You know I was only doing it for you, baby; you know li’l Pinky never meant no harm to come to nobody, smoochypoo, you know I never meant no . . . aaah—men!” she spat, and looked daggers at Kevin. “The way you act! Why don’t you listen to yourselves sometime!” Kevin stared at her, speechless. Nefertiti gunned the engine and began taking the curves hard, braking halfway into the turns. It was all so very, very unnecessary. After a while she relaxed a bit, pulled her halter back up and said, “Oh, Christ.” Kevin sighed with relief. They drove on in silence for a few miles until Nefertiti said, “And I’m a poetess. How about that?” as if it were one fragment of an ongoing conversation. “Huh?” Kevin grunted. He’d been thinking about maybe rolling a joint. “How about what?” Nefertiti reached over and slapped her palm against the glove compartment’s door, causing it to pop open. A half-full pint bottle of local rotgut in a brown paper bag fell out, but Nefertiti caught it before it could hit the floor. Instead of gripping the cap with her teeth while turning the bottle, she held the bottle steady while unscrewing the cap with her lips—not a pretty sight—and chugged the contents without blinking, all the time dead-eyeing the road. She then tossed the empty bottle over her shoulder onto the back seat, maintaining a grip on the bag with her forefinger and thumb. Now Kevin could see that a number of lines had been scrawled on the bag in pink ink. She smoothed it on the dash, slapped it once for good measure, and stuck it in the boy’s face. “Here. Digest this.” Kevin read: Ah, the tenable lie, the ready pique / the cool denial, the dire eye / Conscience be still and / quarry be damned; you can’t help it, it’s / “human nature.” Cheat, compete, sweet the blade / in the back of the dog your friend / Your vile pride is justified: / it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s / “human nature.” O Irony, worm! Cerebrate; / in the ooze and ashes / of time’s distemper fly / headlong into madness. Imposters! / How must it grate: forced to primp and posture / and all because of The Whip, / that loathed and unflagging fiend you call / “human nature.” No rest, no peace, / no recompense—On: / you struggle on / for honesty, for honor, for equity / only to be foiled, alas, alack, / ever soiled by that accursed demon you deem / “human nature.” What pain must you endure in the keeping of your / crimes! / How insufferable must be the consideration of your / profits, / the memory of your slanders, your hypocrisy, / your double-dealing endeavors / as you valiantly strive to overcome your lust, / your greed, your mendacity / only to be so predictable drubbed / by that crazy dragon you call / “human nature.” Rust not, brave warrior now fallen. / Your rest is / prosaic. / Your camp is / populationsdeep and / generations-wide. / And upon your common, gilded headstone / thine epitaph shall read, / with veracity, with humility: / I’M ONLY HUMAN. Kevin looked up. “Whaddaya think?” Nefertiti wondered. “What does ‘drubbed’ mean?” 133

Carnival Why I’m Single “It means,” she hissed, “it means you can get your big fat ass outta my car!” She whipped the Impala into a dirt turnout and slammed on the brakes, sending the car into a tailspin in a choking cloud of dust, jumped to her feet and began kicking at Kevin’s head. The boy somehow got the door open, tumbled out. Nefertiti lifted his bike over her head and hurled it at him, threw the car in gear, and roared away in a storm of dust and black exhaust. Kevin picked himself up slowly, uncertain whether to (A) shake fist and shout obscenity or (B) stand with hands on hips while wagging head and smiling wryly. As no one on foot or in passing cars seemed to be paying him the least mind, he simply (C) swatted dirt off clothes, picked up bike, walked away with dusty head held high. He wasn’t about to do any more hitchhiking, that’s all there was to it. Chalk it up to experience. It was time to roll a joint. After he’d embroidered his gray matter he resumed the mechanical upward climb. It just seemed to get hotter and hotter. When the grade became workable he stopped pushing and remounted, determined to prove himself. He came to a section of highway that was relatively straight, but murderously consistent: up, up, up. So he put his head down, down, down, and threw himself into it, becoming woozy and colicky, but refusing to give in. Finally he raised his gaudy gourd and searched through sweat-streaked lenses for the top of the grade. Perhaps a hundred yards ahead it did seem to level off somewhat. Kevin could see something like a red handkerchief about half that distance, motionless at the side of the road. As he slowly drew closer he could distinguish white polka dots on the material, and then that it was a scarf, and then that the scarf was connected to the head of a sitting form. The person was hunched forward, exhaustion embodied; face buried in the arms, elbows resting on raised knees. Nearing, Kevin made out a nest of fine chestnut hair escaping from the scarf and falling about the arms. Closing, he saw the firm brown shoulders and abdomen of a slender teenaged girl. Stopping, he saw long, tanned legs connected to a sun-bleached pair of cutoff blue jeans. The girl raised her head and looked up at Kevin out of astonished brown eyes, her forehead white from resting on her arms. She was sweetly pretty, maybe seventeen or eighteen. “Oh, thank goodness! I thought I was the only living person on this road.” Kevin stared blankly at the mirage, marveling its precision, its realism. The girl stood quickly. “Oh, you will help me, won’t you?” she decreed excitedly. “My bike got a flat, and I’m so . . . so helpless with these things.” Kevin’s stare dropped from her face to her chest, where he could see she wore a halter of the same color and pattern as the scarf over her small breasts. His gaze oozed along to her shoulder, followed her brown arm until it came to her bicycle leaning against the rough rocks of the hewnaway hillside. It was an old, clumsy, three-speed bike, sporting a plastic basket adorned with artificial roses above the front mudguard. A rickety affair like that should never have been used on these hills. Kevin gasped. He shouldn’t have stopped. Every muscle ached. His legs screamed with pain. He dismounted awkwardly and limped over to her bicycle. “Oh, thank you,” the mirage gushed. I just knew you’d help me.” She moved up close, and as he sat he bumped into real flesh. That opened his eyes. Kevin looked at her closely. She was anxiously wringing her pretty brown hands. He closed his eyes and let the crimson waves of near-nausea rock him, let his respiration slow. He could feel the sweat seeping from his hairline and crawling down his forehead. He ran a hand over his face, gently massaged his brow with pudgy fingers, slowly reopened his eyes. She was still there, hovering like a hummingbird eager to get at those slow drops of sweat. “Are you okay?” she asked in a faraway voice. “Do you feel sick?” He held up a fluttering hand, gesturing for patience. In a moment he said, “No. No, I’m all 134

Carnival Why I’m Single right now.” Her wings quit beating, and she sank with relief. Kevin, closing his eyes again, wondered if he was correct. The world behind his eyelids was blood-red and in constant swirling motion. Every few breaths the redness deepened. Now he was really sweating. Weren’t fat people more prone to heart attacks than thinner people? Hadn’t he been overdoing it lately? He imagined his parents reading, in a matter of days, a form letter from a remote Highway Patrol office. Their unappreciated son had been discovered dead on some dismal foggy cliff. Cardiac arrest. Serve them right if it broke their hearts. But suddenly his forehead was cool. He opened his eyes and saw that lovely mirage girl again, now holding a damp cloth. Her face was both worried and comforting, and Kevin’s juicy scenario of masochism and self-pity was instant history. “There, is that better?” the hummingbird wondered. “You shouldn’t overdo it in this heat.” She had a plastic quart jug half-full of water in her hand, ready to resaturate the cloth. “That’s okay, I’m fine now. Save your water.” “Are you sure?” “Positive,” he said, pretty sure. “Thanks for cooling me off.” He blinked at his surroundings. “What’d you say happened to your bike?” She dropped her arms. “Oh, it’s awful! And what a place for it to happen! There probably isn’t a gas station for a zillion miles. I was walking my poor bike when—bang!—the tire popped.” She placed a hand on her chest and her wide eyes opened wider. “Did I ever jump! I thought someone was shooting a gun.” “But what are you doing all alone out here? This is pretty tough terrain for a chick.” “You’re telling me! I was with some friends, you see, and we were all riding up to Monterey on our bikes when Linda (she’s kind of square, but she has a darling figure) got ill and had to go home. Then Marcie and Paula and I thought that was pretty much the end of the trip, but we kept going anyway. Then these two boys tried to pick us up down the coast a ways, last night on the beach. They were disgusting! They had this pickup truck with one of those little camper houses on the back, and when we were all inside they got drunk and started pinching and grabbing. I guess Marcie and Paula were getting drunk too, because they actually stayed inside. I just crossed my arms and said, ‘Well, you girls can stay in here if you want to, but I’m not going to hang around boys with no manners.’ Then one of those boys, Robert (he was very rude, and, besides, he wasn’t that cute), made an obscene noise and started tearing off my clothes. Can you believe it! Well, I just slapped his face (not too hard, he was such a sweetheart when he wasn’t drunk) and jumped right out of that old truck and slept by myself on the beach. It wasn’t cold at all. All my sleeping bag and stuff was in those boys’ truck, and when I woke up this morning it was gone, and so were Marcie and Paula and their bikes. Well I hope they have a good time! I can ride up to Monterey by myself.” “You shouldn’t try doing that,” Kevin said, breathing steadily now. “I mean, there’s all kinds of strange people on this road. Look at those guys your friends ran off with.” He shook his head. “What a trip. I was riding up to the Haight with a couple friends, and we all got separated too. I’m by myself for the same reasons you are.” “Ooh. That is weird. Just like in adventure stories, like when Nancy Drew lost her secret ring just before she met this handsome gynecologist.” “Yeah,” Kevin said absently, his mind retreating into gloom. He was sure this girl’s standards concerning males were inflexible, never dipping below fantasy handsome nick-of-time do-gooders; brawny toothy yodeling professional men in sleek, gleaming roadsters. By contrast, he saw himself as lowly and foul, ratty and malodorous—the Bad Guy. But, perhaps because the girl seemed so 135

Carnival Why I’m Single concerned with his present physical condition, he was able to don the white hat of the selfless protector. This girl was a damsel in distress, or soon would be. And, he thought, glancing quickly at his expensive customized ten-speed bicycle, he did have quite an impressive steed. Excitedly he asked, “What’s your name?” “Oh, excuse me. I’m Janet. Janet Campbell.” “And I’m Kevin Mikolajczyk.” “Kevin who?” The boy blushed. “Kevin Michaels.” He looked away, out of words. “Well,” he managed at last, “let’s have a look at your bike.” He rose painfully, but careful to not let it show. Bending down, he saw repairs would be no problem. The tire itself was unruptured, though very worn. It was just a matter of taking off the wheel, patching the inner tube and replacing the wheel. He had the patch kit in the pouch behind his seat, and the pump to fill the inner tube strapped to his bike’s frame. “Can you fix it?” “Well,” Kevin replied, brow furrowed in apparent deep concentration, “I can give it a go.” She clapped her hands delightedly. “Oh, could you?” As he’d supposed, fixing the flat was a cinch. While he worked—zipping off wing nuts, prying the tire off its rim—he picked up details of the girl’s life from her monologue. She lived in Morro Bay, and wondered why he flinched when she told him. He would not go into it. She was seventeen and would be a senior in high school come September. She didn’t seem to like her parents very much, and Kevin had a strong suspicion Janet and her friends were runaways. He gleaned from her expressions when she spoke of her parents that they pampered her to a fault. Kevin could understand why. She spoke vaguely of relatives in Seaside, and meant to stop there, hoping the other girls, knowing, might be waiting for her. Yes, she had heard of the big Golden Gate concert, but wasn’t San Francisco a pretty dangerous place nowadays, what with the police busts and general unrest, and all that trouble so close by at Berkeley? Slowly a glorious scheme took form in Kevin’s mind. If only his mouth would say the right words, and for once not betray him. “Look, like I said, you never know what kind of weirdos you’ll run into on this road. But tell you what; I’ll ride with you as far as Seaside and make sure nothing happens. When we get up there, if you can’t find your friends, you think maybe you’d like to keep going, catch the big jam in Frisco? It really should be a happening; lots of dope—Jefferson Airplane . . . I mean, San Francisco, the Haight, is where it’s at this summer.” Kevin felt his stomach flutter. She was looking at him quizzically; he was making waves. He should have at least got to know her better first. Make sure nothing happens, indeed. It sounded like he was trying to lure her into his confidence; like he was trying to set her up for the big moonlit rape scene. “Well . . .” she said, “I really don’t have any plans. I’ll figure what to do when I get to Seaside.” “Listen, I know how that sounded, but it’s not what I meant to say. I mean it’s not how I meant it to sound. I’m really not like that, like how I must have sounded. Anyway . . . what I mean is you don’t have to worry.” “Whatever in the world are you talking about?” “Oh, nothing. I guess I’m just spaced out.” He had the repaired tire back on her bike. A minute later he had pumped it firm. “There.” “Oh, that’s wonderful! You really are a wizard.” Kevin stood before her, confused and queasy. It was the make-it or break-it moment. Would 136

Carnival Why I’m Single she give him her hand to shake, leave him to pedal alone and lonely up the coast? She cleared her throat and looked down. “Well,” he mumbled. “I guess I’d better hit the road. It was really nice meeting you, Janet. I think you’re a really nice girl. I hope you find your friends.” He straddled his ten-speed. “You’re not going to leave me, are you? After all you said about riding up with me and watching over me—” “No, no, no,” Kevin said quickly, unbelieving. “I was . . . like I said, I’ve been spaced out lately.” His heart was pounding. He shook his head. He’d almost blown it again. So they walked their bikes the fifty yards or so to the top of the grade. They paused to look down. “It’ll be so nice to just coast down this hill,” Janet noted. “It must go down for miles.” “Really!” Kevin said. “By the way, um, do you get high?” “Well, a little bit, sometimes. Doesn’t everybody?” “That’s just what I mean. Want to smoke a joint?” Before she could reply he’d dipped a hand in his shirt pocket, secured a marijuana cigarette and a book of matches. His intention was to get their minds on the same plane, to relate. Already, as he saw it, they had one very bonding appreciation in common. But soon as he fired it up he began second-guessing himself. And sure enough, after they’d passed the cigarette twice he found his tongue tied again. Lance’s weed seemed to have a contrasting effect on the girl, and she rattled on and on about this and that, tirelessly. This standing, however, gave him opportunity to study the girl as an uninvolved observer, and to try to pinpoint his true role in their slowly growing relationship. From the beginning he was jealous and easily hurt. Several times as they covered the miles a painful scene would be repeated: from a passing car would come wolf-whistles and whoops—coarse compliments on Janet’s slender sexuality. The girl, annoyingly, was not put off by these vulgar displays. She would always smile in response—a budding young lady accustomed to flattery. Kevin had a real urge to shout something not-so flattering at these fleeting busybodies, but was it really for him to do? Under no circumstances did he feel she was his girl, rather that he was her temporary harlequin; and, if she enjoyed what they were so crudely shouting, was it any of his business to throw a cloud over her pleasure? Kevin felt he wasn’t gaining any ground by keeping his mouth shut, but at least he wasn’t losing any. And, shortly after the sun had set, the natural romantic ambience of the summer shorescape began to subtly color the ongoing moment. Odd patterns of crest and swell played dreamily on the Pacific. Not far offshore one could see craggy black islets skirted by swirling eddies and the shallow funnels of sea dervishes. Monster colonies of kelp rose lazily with the waves, settling momentarily to appear as blood-red shoals in the twilight. But to return to Kevin’s status as observer: after several miles of riding alongside he was able to compare his present fortune against his ideals. This haze of warm summer twilight on the gorgeous coast highway, en route to his paradise with a pretty girl riding beside him, seemed the script to any number of his lonesome, hopeless daydreams—he never would have believed it could really happen to him. The fictitious hero he’d created of himself now seemed plausible, and the most vital element of the fantasy was riding at arm’s-length. For the first time he could remember, he felt . . . right. And yet a strange pain was riding with him. He knew that each jab of this soft pain was of desperate importance to his being, could not imagine having ever felt otherwise. Home, school, possessions and wants; suddenly these things were all old hat. The restlessness, the pain were sweet, yet at the same time nearly unbearable. He had a feeling of helplessness so acute he wanted to grab her, hold on tightly and never let her slip away. But all he 137

Carnival Why I’m Single could do was ride beside her, gawking, letting the sweet flow of idle chatter wash over and suck him in like an undertow. Thank God she kept talking. Her stream of laughter, of gossip, of stale anecdotes seemed inexhaustible. Kevin had long since lost the thread of her monologue, and was now suffering pangs of anxiety, knowing he was only being talked at, not to. The feeling vaguely reminded him of a recent occurrence, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Something about a girl with a bewitching superstructure . . . Out of a fog his vision of the raven-haired girl returned, a Debbie Somebody-or-Other. Only now the vision had no expressiveness, no life. How different was that passionate beauty of his fiery past, compared to this sandy, girlish treasure of the tender present. Love is vertigo. All women are beautiful, and each possesses an allure, and an inscrutable quality, peculiar to their gender. The sky was rapidly darkening, and in the twilight of his introspection it occurred to Kevin that somehow, apparently, he was going to be sleeping with this girl tonight. The realization excited him, but that excitement quickly gave way to the gnawing presence of doubt. His virginity, so long a burden, might be done away with this very night, his masculinity put to the most crucial and telling test. And it was a test the boy realized he was absolutely afraid to face. Failure seemed so imminent. Then he remembered his earlier statement: “I’ll ride with you as far as Monterey and make sure nothing happens.” Well, shouldn’t something happen? Wasn’t it his obligation as a male to be aggressive, and to assert his masculinity in the one manner that would leave, in her eyes, no room for doubt? As if reading his thoughts, the girl began to slow. “Gee, it’s really starting to get dark. I hadn’t given a thought about a place to crash tonight.” “Don’t worry,” Kevin said quickly, way too quickly. “It’s still early. Way too early.” His nerves were going. “You’re not c-cold or anything.” “No, but I am getting a little tired. But listen to you! You sound like you’re freezing.” “N-nah!” And suddenly he was shivering out of control. When he closed his mouth his teeth chattered, his flabby jowls jiggled. “Well, l-let’s stop for a while,” he gasped. “L-let’s take a breather.” They pulled to the side of the road. Kevin’s hands were shaky enough to jerk the handlebars as he stopped, so instead of dismounting with a semblance of grace he lurched off the bike and rolled, adding a few more contusions to his scores of bumps and bruises. He swiftly found his feet. “Didn’t see that rock.” “For goodness sake,” the girl cooed, “be careful. Did you hurt yourself?” She kicked down her bike’s stand and rushed over. “No! I mean, no. I’m—I’m fine. Just fine.” This was maddening. He thought: Get a grip on yourself! But trying to control his nerves only made the situation worse. The grass, he thought. It must be the grass that was responsible. “Here. Sit down here. Let’s check you for injuries.” Kevin obeyed timidly, slouching on a chalky boulder while she inspected the abrasions on his forehead in the failing light. His nerves took a turn for the worse as she thrust her knee between his. Her soft warm breath brushed his eyelashes. He was conscious of a delicate fragrance; an altogether feminine emanation wafting up his nostrils and flitting through his mind. The urge to rest his head on her bosom was so difficult to control that it set his crass knees knocking against her sweet, insinuated leg. “Poor cold Kevin,” she murmured. “My hero got a scrape on his head.” Then she leaned back, one hand on his shoulder for support while the other fanned her pretty face. “Phew!” she teased. “Do you ever smell! Haven’t they invented soap where you come from?” 138

Carnival Why I’m Single Kevin hung his head. The girl sprang back and ran to her bicycle, fumbled through her purse. In a moment she’d returned with a tiny vial of Mercurochrome and a huge, square, flower-patterned bandage. He clenched his fists, but tears squeezed out at the antiseptic’s sting. When the bandage was in place he popped to his feet and looked away. “Thanks. Look, we’d better get going if we’re gonna find a decent place to crash. There’s got to be a stop coming up pretty soon, what with all we’ve been riding. Then we can dig up something to eat.” “I’m not really hungry.” “Well,” he stretched, “maybe we can get some cocoa or something.” As they remounted he fired another joint, hoping it would open her up again, and spare him the torment of trying to communicate. There were plenty of things he wanted to say, but his mouth just wouldn’t respond. Unfortunately, this time the weed seemed to stifle the girl; she kept quiet and rode with her head down, as if embarrassed. The silence soon became intolerable, and Kevin was reminded of that chilly, soggy night in the garage loft eight months ago—what seemed now like eight years ago. He and Eddie had suffered through this same verbal paralysis, intensely aware of the situation’s absurdity. And the rain’s meaningless Morse had made them jumpier still, hammering away at their nerves until, no longer able to deal, they’d simultaneously jerked their heads to face the warped and rickety loft doors, which after a moment were yanked outward with terrifying abruptness to reveal the mammoth, preposterous bulk of Kevin’s father in all his towering wrath. Eddie had paled as his system prepared itself for a torrent of banshee-like screaming. And in those breathless pinging seconds Kevin had shrunk into himself while, in steady contrast, Big Joe dilated like a weather balloon, trembling and growing darker and darker, until, just when it seemed the tension would escalate forever, Joe had trumpeted like a wounded bull elephant and torn Kevin out of the loft, thrown him clear across the garage. With Eddie’s nightmarish shrieks in his ears, Kevin had crawled away, his scalp afire, his skull and left elbow howling with pain. Big Joe, his face by then a hellish purple, had impaled little Eddie for a moment with great, bulging, sightless eyes, before turning slowly and mechanically to search for his son. Kevin had seen the opacity of his father’s eyes change to the bloody glow of anticipation, as Joe thrust out his great meaty hands and began stalking him with ponderous, earthshaking steps, his breath rattling venomously. Before Kevin could successfully crawl out of the garage, Big Joe snatched him off the floor and shook him in the air as if he were a toy, softening him up, bent on squashing him to a writhing pulp. And, giving vent to another mindless roar, he’d hurled him down with all his force, the boy’s head again cracking hard on the cold cement floor. Then Joe had just snapped; he’d begun stomping on his son, roaring insanely. Kevin had crawled away desperately, and the chase had gone round and round in the garage, Joe trying to stomp him as if he were a scurrying spider, Kevin scrabbling frantically to avoid those huge feet as deadly as pile drivers. Finally Kevin had cornered himself below the loft. Above him Eddie was scrambling like a hamster in a cage, blubbering and whimpering, the doors tightly shut. Kevin had heard a strangled change in Big Joe’s stertorous breathing, and, turning with a wail, all set to be exterminated, had seen his father gone completely berserk, stamping his right foot repeatedly on the garage floor as he pivoted on his left foot centripetally, finally losing his balance momentarily, and, recovering, jerking back his head with a bloodcurdling shriek that shook the rafters. Both hands had shot to his chest and he had torn wildly, as if trying to rip out his heart, and suddenly he’d gone deathly pale and fallen slowly, like a mighty sequoia, to crash on his back with an impact so tremendous it had cracked the cement floor. There he’d remained, eyes rolled up in his skull, only his fingertips moving, dancing an erratic, waning jig. The tapping of fingers tapered. Slowly one of the 139

Carnival Why I’m Single loft doors creaked open and Eddie peeked out tentatively, whining less anxiously now, dropping big tears from his shivering chin onto Kevin’s palm. And Kevin began a laborious crawl toward the garage’s gaping doorway, for he’d noticed that Big Joe wasn’t quite dead. All that revealed this stubborn vitality were the faint sounds of the fingers’ tap dance and an occasional guttural gasp—but Joe was a powerful, terrible man; not the sort to leave an aborted murder without a final go. And Kevin’s mother had come stumbling in like a headless chicken, prepared by some old presentiment for the scene she would face and therefore already in hysterics. She screeched and tore at her hair, then transferred her throes to big supine Joe, hammering her fists on his chest. If it hadn’t been for the trauma of the situation she would have looked supremely comic, with her Medusa hairpile in electric disarray, her spectacles hanging from one ear at an awkward angle, her dumpy body a flurry of spasmodic activity. But then she’d seen her cowering son and a look of satanic rage had darkened her strikingly repulsive face. Having spent countless hours watching daytime soap operas, she had known exactly what to do, and with a truly appalling scream had launched herself atop the boy and pummeled him relentlessly with her pudgy fists, as, safe above all this activity, Eddie slammed shut the loft door and renewed his wailing and scampering. Just then the garage’s doorway had miraculously filled with an assortment of dumbfounded neighbors who, supposing Kevin’s mother a deranged murderess, ran inside to break up the mess as others scurried off to phone ambulances, the police, the fire department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the local Y.M.C.A. Now night had settled on Kevin and Janet like a black blanket, awash with stars. Still the uneasy silence persisted. The chattering of Kevin’s teeth was the only sound other than the breaking of surf and the soft squeaking of the brake heels wearing away on Janet’s bike. To Kevin’s immense relief a cheerful haze of light waxed not far ahead, and in a minute he saw the road sign announcing that Illusion, with GASFOOD and LODGING, was a bare two miles away. The advent of civilization loosened Janet’s tongue right up. With a mile to go she was piping. Half a mile and she was an animated tour guide. By the time they’d reached the first shops she was downright silly. Kevin sighed with relief. This was the strange girl he loved again. They had hot cocoa and pizza at a tiny diner. Kevin gallantly purchased several postcards for the girl, and left an enormous tip with the check. It didn’t go unnoticed. And as the ancient, papery waitress enthusiastically wished them an extremely good night, the girl linked her arm in his. This novelty—being arm-in-arm with an attractive girl in public—was a complete turn-on for Kevin. But the thrill dissolved once they’d exited. He knew he should be extremely aroused by her touch. He should be champing at the bit. Kevin’s hands shook as he and Janet quietly rode around the shops. The girl patted her lips and yawned. “Hot cocoa always puts me right to sleep. You?” “Yep,” Kevin lied. “Sure does.” “Well, this is all new to me. I’ve never had to rough it before. I hope you’ve got some good ideas.” “Don’t worry. I’ve had plenty of experience looking for a place to crash. I used to be a scout.” “Oh?” Kevin colored. “A Cub Scout. Of course,” he said, “that was when I was just a kid.” They pedaled around a while longer. At last Kevin said, “There!” The girl followed him to a nook behind a bowling alley. Beneath a salt-worn plywood overhand were a couple of steel dumpsters. Kevin dismounted and rolled the bins aside. He foraged about until he found a piece of plywood paneling large enough to lean against the wooden overhang, creating a narrow, inconspicuous shelter. The girl kicked down her stand. “What about our bikes?” she whispered. From behind the wall came the sound of a bowling 140

Carnival Why I’m Single ball smashing into pins, muffled cheers. “No sweat,” Kevin said. He unstrapped his sleeping roll and set it on the ground. “We hide ’em right here.” Kevin leaned his bicycle against the wall, guided the girl’s to rest obliquely against his. After dragging the bins back into place he draped wheels and seats with newspaper, scraps of cardboard, miscellaneous bits of trash. As he worked he could feel Janet’s eyes on him, and as he bent to unroll his sleeping bag he was hit by a full court-press of desperation. She was going to get in the bag with him! Kevin knew he should be exultant, but something was upside-down here, something was inside-out. His mouth tasted like he’d been gargling with vinegar, his legs were rubbery stumps. To clear his thoughts he tried to compose a quick letter in his mind: jime wl her i am ubowt 2 klim in thu sak with u gorjus chik et yr hrt owt hr namz janut an shez gawt thez jiunt nawkrz an u as wut wont kwit man i kant kep hr hanz awf uv me shez so horne shez in2 chanten an dop an asid rawk an thu moovmnt And Kevin’s mind began to reel. He started whistling shrilly, realized how foolish that was, and stretched out nervously on the open bag, up against the wall. In the ensuing silence came the whack of a bowling ball into pins. The girl slid in beside him, not quite touching. She zipped up the bag, whispering, “I hope we can sleep with all that noise!” Kevin swallowed. Whispering made it . . . wow. He was beginning to hyperventilate. To cover up he clumsily produced a joint from his shirt pocket and lit it with trembling hands. As he passed it to the girl the back of his hand accidentally brushed her cheek. “Sorry,” he whispered. How warm and soft her cheek was, how he longed to have it rest against his hand forever. Kevin felt a shy stirring in his Levis. His free hand made a fist. He squeezed shut his eyes and ground his teeth, cursing silently. And as he reached for the passed joint his hand grazed her naked shoulder, jangling his nervous system, touching off fireworks in his skull. As if in encore, pins crashed in the bowling lane next to his ear. Getting high, he descended. Inch by inch, into deep and unfamiliar chasms. The roach burned his fingertips. Kevin now used the minor pain of snuffing the cherry to toughen his resolve, to summon the courage to tell her exactly how he felt, if words could explain. “Janet!” he whispered. Regular, deep breathing. The tiniest snores, so very feminine. Kevin could feel her hair’s wispy tendrils fluttering against his face in the warm sea breeze. He sighed, moved his hand across his chest to pocket the butt. And froze. The tip of the girl’s right breast was grazing the back of his hand with each inhalation. Paralyzed, excited, ashamed, he lay still as the dead. Each small touch jolted his nerves—but so sweetly, so tenderly, that his skull felt like it was stuffed with cotton. This was wrong. She was asleep. She didn’t know. Against his will Kevin found himself letting a little of his weight move against her breast, 141

Carnival Why I’m Single without moving his hand. Now he could imagine every contour of the sweet, pert fruit . . . how it sloped upward from the rib cage, how the ruddy peak jutted. In the sweaty miasma of his shame, Kevin felt a real awakening in his loins. The girl gave a small groan and shifted. Kevin held his breath. His hand was no longer making contact. Deeply troubled, he quietly rolled over to face the wall. In a world occupied by guilt and lust and cannoning bowling balls, his cannabis-colored thoughts accompanied him into an uneasy sleep.

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Chapter 12 Louie in the Sty with Dinah Kevin surfaced, all but drowned. It took a full minute to remember where he was, half a minute more to realize he’d had a wet dream. He stickily groaned to his senses. He was way too old for this; he’d have to do something to the sheet, maybe burn a hole in it so his mother wouldn’t catch the stain. But there was a stranger in his bed. Kevin cautiously opened an eye, saw Janet’s lovely sleepfilled face only inches away, felt her straightforward breath on his receding chin. She’d settled heavily, and her chestnut hair smelled of lilies and ferns, of freshly mown grass. Right behind her sweet young face was the full splendor of the waking day. The boy explored with his senses. Somehow, in the course of the night, they’d become hopelessly entangled. Kevin felt that his right arm, sore below the elbow, was being used for a pillow by the girl, and was glad—glad that he’d helped make her comfortable. But his right leg, pinned hard between both of hers, was absolutely numb. He lay still for a moment, holding his breath. Then, very carefully, eased off his left leg. That part was a snap. It was only when he tried to slip out his right leg that he realized the leg was “asleep.” A thousand straight pins ran up his thigh. The girl was mumbling something like “deeper,” or “keep her”—something icky-girly; not meant for studs with boogers in their eyes and pins in their thighs. Kevin tried working his leg out little by little, growing desperate at the total lack of feeling from his waist down. His efforts were gently rocking the girl against him, back and forth, back and forth, and from the way she was breathing faster and harder he was certain she was about to waken. He didn’t want to be rough, but, damn it, his leg was beginning to burn. If he didn’t free it quickly it would atrophy; he’d spend the rest of his life dragging the bloodless limb behind. He tried jerking it out all at once, but it died on him; the burning ceased. Kevin grabbed and shoved off Janet’s leg. She woke with a pretty little gasp, her eyes popping half-open. A fine film of perspiration glistened on her brow. 143

Carnival Louie In The Sty With Dinah “G’morning,” Kevin grated. And, with that fractured little wham-bam, he was lost for words. “My goodness.” She patted a slim brown hand on her lips. “What’s the time?” “Pretty early,” Kevin re-grated. “But I . . . I always get up early. Good for the karma.” She noted the indelicacy of their situation. “We seem—we seem to be a bit tangled up.” “Right. Right. Just let me get this zipper—” He had to lean over her to tug at the zipper, had to roll right on top of her. The zipper was snagged. Kevin grimaced apologetically, still tugging, while she returned the look with a sweet, enigmatic smile. Kevin blushed weenily. When at last the zipper gave he opened the bag in a single quick motion and hopped out on his one working foot. “Sorry, couldn’t be helped, sorry. I’ll just make sure the coast is clear; back in a flush.” Kevin limped round the building’s corner, leaned against a wall, and stamped his foot until some feeling returned. There was, mercifully, a gas station next to the bowling alley. Kevin snuck into the restroom and soaked a handful of paper towels before sloshing into the only stall. He cleansed his sticky crotch and belly, mashed the towels into a wad, and threw the mess onto the mess below. Then, though there was no one around and a perfectly usable urinal just outside the stall, he fell prey to that confounding impulse that rules every other male in a public restroom. Having ascertained that the stall door was securely locked and the toilet’s seat undeniably down, Kevin dropped his drawers and peed into the bowl, on the floor and walls, and all over the begging seat. Having thus pheromonally introduced himself to the next creep in line, he absent-mindedly perused some of the filthy partition’s cleverer scatalogical scratchings. Still limping a bit, Kevin stepped to the wash basin, stared glumly at his reflection in the mirror, and peeled off the flowery bandage with a groan of embarrassment. No wonder she’d been smiling. Never, he thought, had he looked so seedy in the morning. His hair, minus the two great clumps, was a wildly tangled jungle, peppered with miscellaneous bits of trash. A sour stench rose from his armpits and crotch. There was a line of graffiti inked above the mirror. Kevin cleaned his glasses and squinted to make it out. The message read: If you were as smart as you are ugly, you wouldn’t be pissing here. Kevin sighed and nodded. His eye was caught by one section of a photograph crammed into the full receptacle next to the basin. He plucked it out curiously and found himself gloomily studying the blurry black and white image of a stout Mexican woman dispassionately corrupting the virtue of a frenzied Great Dane. The dreariness of this image crept up his arm. Suddenly he was disgusted with himself. And just as suddenly he found it necessary to prove to himself and to the girl that he was not a vile restroom gnome. What was he doing here, feeling sorry for himself . . . surely she was aware, surely she had seen her chance and was even now wholesomely pedaling her rickety bicycle up the coast. Kevin yanked open the door and rushed out, limped puffing to the back of the bowling alley. Janet was sitting, head cocked to the side as she brushed her long shiny hair. She had neatly rolled up the bag. She smiled with secret amusement. “Feeling better?” “Sure,” he replied. “All’s well. Well. I guess we survived the night all right.” He watched her closely, afraid that in the glare of his nonchalance he stood exposed as a wholly forgettable turkey. But she smiled again—that same strange twisting of the lips and sparkling of the eyes that seemed to say so little, yet imply so very much. Kevin’s heart did a belly flop at that smile, and he was hooked for real. “Thanks,” he said. 144

Carnival Louie In The Sty With Dinah “Hm?” “For rolling up the bag. That was really thoughtful. I mean, really.” She laughed musically, said, “Oh, Pooh!” and stood, lifting the bag and tossing it playfully. “Come on, let’s go get something to eat. I’m famished.” “Oh sure, sure.” Kevin strapped the bag to the rack behind his seat, and before he knew it they were pedaling along. Then everything was very strange. She was quiet as she rode, introspective, and for a disturbing moment Kevin could have sworn she gave him, for no apparent reason, a look of almost maniacal hostility. The scary silence was finally broken when they reached a 24-hour diner. Large diesels, coupled to forty-foot trailers, were parked in clusters around this diner. The rigs caught Kevin’s eye at once, as nearly all were lovingly maintained, and sported sparkling chromed rims and grilles, flake and pearl paints. “Looks like a good place,” he said, grateful for the break. “Well, let’s hurry and find us a booth. Must be crowded inside.” Janet said nothing, walking her bicycle beside him. Kevin locked their bikes to a rail by the entrance. He was aware of a ridiculous intimacy in coupling their machines. He held the door for her. A barrage of raucous laughter burst out like hot trapped air. Spoons rang on coffee cups. “Well,” Janet purred, smiling again, “you’re certainly the gentleman today.” Kevin grinned and bowed his head. “My pleasure,” he said with all his heart, and followed her inside. The place was packed. The men were of a general sort: massive, T-shirted, roughly sullen or roughly jocular; hairy arms, beardless, hair cut short and without flair. Now and then one would swivel on his counter stool to roughly stare as they passed. A few continued to watch as Kevin and Janet were led to a filthy booth by a shuffling and curlered waitress. A nametag pinned to her blouse provided for the thoughtimpaired: DINAH. They stood uneasily as she wiped the table clean. “Back in a sec’,” she said, chewing something. “Getcha ya menus.” Dinah winked and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “You kids want coffee?” She looked one to the other, her eyes resting longest on Kevin. “Louie?” “Sure,” Kevin said. Zip, and she was gone. They sat across from each other and were silent. The vibes in this place were razor-edged; it seemed the general hubbub had toned down immediately around their booth. Kevin tentatively appraised the counter. Two men were turned on their stools, staring coldly. The boy looked into their faces and read nothing but contempt. As he turned away he felt their eyes boring into the side of his skull. His appetite had vanished. The waitress was back, carefully setting down their coffees. “There’s yours, honey,” she said, handing them menus colored in glossy primaries. “And now here’s one for you, Louie. On one bill or two?” Janet looked up, and when Kevin blushed and said, “On one, of course,” she became gay and chirpy, clapped her hands and went over the selections with sparkling eyes. Dinah turned to Kevin, still chewing, chewing. “Her first,” he said, unpleasantly aware of a regimenting of hostility at the counter. He looked furtively, once. Apparently he was now the center of attention for at least six sneering and insolently seated men. He only had time to see one blow him a kiss before turning away. “—and an order of English muffins with honey,” Janet was saying, “and ooh, how about Canadian bacon with those eggs?” 145

Carnival Louie In The Sty With Dinah Kevin was considering telling the waitress to cancel their order, to grab Janet’s hand and nonchalantly dart out of here. There were two drawbacks to this idea. One, it would be doing just what these hulking truckers wanted: making him run and feeding their Dark Ages egos. Two—and far, far worse—it would be the ultimate copout in front of Janet. “—and a glass of juice, a tall glass, please, and one of these little pancake plates like in this picture, with the whipped cream, and—” “My God,” Kevin interjected out of sheer nervousness. “Where do you put it all?” Janet brought a small hand to her mouth, raised the menu to cover her face below the eyes. “Oh . . .” she said, “I’m sorry; I just get carried away at breakfast sometimes. And you did say I could order what I want—I mean, that’s what you meant, isn’t it—and I’m simply starving, aren’t you? It is all right, isn’t it?” Her eyes implored. The waitress turned to Kevin again, still chewing, chewing. He wished, unreasonably, that she would choke on whatever it was she was chewing, chewing, chewing. He threw a hand up irritably, body language for: Oh, just order whatever the hell you want; then realized his irritation was simple release from the hostility hanging like a storm cloud over the counter. “—and an order of hash browns, and a thing of yogurt, pineapple if you’ve got it, and a big bowl of Frosty Squares, and—” “If that ain’t just the most Godawful sight I seen all year.” Kevin was sinking; imperceptibly, but steadily. “So that’s the New Generation! Makes you wanna crawl in your coffin and haul down the lid.” Kevin’s eyes refocused. Janet was quiet now, her own eyes half-raised in supplication. The waitress was staring very directly, chewing slowly now, considering. “Nothing for me,” he said meekly. Dinah considered him a moment longer, nodded curtly, and vanished. Kevin avoided Janet’s eyes. It was all he could do to ignore the voices. “If you’re lookin’ for dope on the menu, Louie, we’re awful dang sorry, but this place ain’t used to serving freaks like you.” “Hey, sweetheart, what you see in a fat clown like him?” “Yeah, darlin’. Why don’t you come along and take a ride with a real man?” “Har-har! Why, sure. B’lieve I could ride a sweet little thing like you all night long.” Suddenly Kevin was on his feet, his fists clenched. There were tears on his cheeks and his voice was strained. “You can’t talk about my girlfriend like that!” He felt Janet’s hands at his back. One of the truckers stood, stomped over, and got right in Kevin’s face. “No goddam pillpopping Louie tells me what I can or can’t say!” Beside himself, Kevin whirled and seized a fork off the table. He made an ineffectual lunging stab at no one in particular. The trucker stepped back. The rest of the counter trogs roared with laughter. Dinah, rematerializing, wedged herself between Kevin and the standing trucker, shooed everyone to their seats. She was an amazing piece of work; pirouetting in slippers, soothing here, scolding there. Without breaking rhythm, she scooped a dime out of her tips jar, whirled to the jukebox, and made a selection. It was everybody’s favorite: that song featured in the gratingly omnipresent Vons commercial where the gomer trucker gleefully pounds the wheel every time the gomer singer belts out, “In the heartland!” The effect on the diner was immediate and magical. The altercation was instantly forgotten. The truckers, mug in one hand and fork in the other, beamed and pounded their fists twice on the counter at every reiteration of that 146

Carnival Louie In The Sty With Dinah delightful catch phrase. Dinah blew back to their booth. Kevin was wretchedly wiping away his tears. “Your order’s being cooked up, honey,” she told Janet, “but I think you kids should run along. Sorry ’bout the trouble. These boys mean well; they just got no manners.” “I think they’re terrible, horrible,” Janet said, making a face. “And I’m not hungry anymore.” “There, there,” said the waitress, placing a hand on Janet’s upper thigh and squeezing. “You got a lot of growing up t’ do, sweetheart, and a lot of learning, too. Don’t let one little bad scene (is that how you Louies say it?) give you the wrong impression.” Now, Kevin had never been able to understand the physical intimacy women so straightforwardly share, but this Dinah person was rubbing and squeezing and stroking and patting and kneading Janet’s thigh while she spoke, and the girl appeared to brighten. “When you get a little older you’ll see these boys are the salt of the earth. Like I said, they just ain’t got no manners, is all. So you two head north up the highway ’bout half a mile until you see Arnold’s Café. Tell Arnie that Dinah sentcha, and he’ll fix you up—” she zoned out for two priceless syllables, stomping a slipper and shaking her pad “—with something special, see, ’cause Arnie’s seen this kind of thing happen before with kids like you. Arnie likes kids, God bless ’im. Got six hisself, Arnie does, loves ’em to death, just doesn’t like to see ’em fooling around—Heartland—with pills, going crazy on that LSB stuff, always protestin’ about everything. Can’t say as I blames him myself; you Louies got no reason—Heartland—to be protestin’ all the time. Shit, when we was your age times was hard, what with the Depression and the war and all—you kids got it made, let me tell you, things couldn’t be better. I just wish to God somebody would of set me down and give me a good long talkin’ to when I was your age. Sure, we got into trouble and done some crazy stuff, too; all kids do. Heartland. But we were good kids and we respected our elders, let me tell you, and we listened to real music, Heartland, Sinatra and Crosby and Count Basie, not this nonsense you always hear screaming on the radio all day long nowadays. Yeah, we were good kids, and we were proud to work for ourselves, and we never complained. And at least we had the good sense to mind our own business.” She straightened. “Just what is it you Louies see in taking all them drugs?” “We’d better go,” Kevin moaned, eyes red but dry. “Thanks for stepping in and helping.” He rose. Janet followed uncertainly. “Heartland . . .” Dinah muttered, chewing thoughtfully. When they walked out the diner was as loud and rowdy as when they’d entered. It was as if the incident had never occurred. He held the door for the girl and two syllables rang gloriously. A barrage of raucous laughter burst out like hot trapped air. Spoons rang on coffee cups.

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Chapter 13 A Sur Thing Arnie’s “something special” turned out to be a plate of runny scrambled eggs, bacon so charred it disintegrated when touched, stale toast with jam that was suspiciously bland, and a halffull glass of rancid orange juice. And Arnie did not “like kids”, at least not the three of his own he badgered around the greasy, dingy café. Breakfast was served by Arnie’s filthy sniffling six year-old daughter, on plates that were chipped and unclean. Arnie was a squat, feverishly balding, gray-whiskered old second generation Italian given to explosive gestures and exclamations, hollering, “Stupido! Imbecille! Idiota!” while indiscriminately clouting ears. Arnie appeared to have a select, ungovernable dislike for Kevin and Janet, his only customers. After much shouting and slamming of doors he grimly made his rounds, smearing the grime on the tabletops with a tattered rag of a towel which, from the looks of it, was a multipurpose implement, used to swab floors, scour pots, and grip the pan when Arnie changed the oil in his prehistoric Buick. As he worked he mumbled viciously and incessantly, glaring at them with a spite that kept their eyes on their plates and their conversation at an agitated standstill. And he wheezed horribly, gasping like some ancient janitor attacking stubborn stains in a toilet bowl. He was always right around their table, and when nearest his grumbling would acquire a sharply rising inflection until he was passionately swatting the towel against random chairs and tabletops. At such times he would appear about to break, gripping a chair’s backrest with white-knuckled hands, trembling, raising himself to his full four and a half feet while goring them with burning ire. It was the harrowing tension Arnie generated which made them force down every mouthful of the awful meal, like children at the family table. Kevin paid and they slunk away, swearing off recommended eateries forever. He consulted his wallet, counting the bills with a sinking sensation— where had it all gone? Mostly on goodies. And on treating his friends to meals and snacks. And there was the vest and hat and belt, all much worse for his experiences. And, of course, the pot. For the first time he began to wonder how he would subsist in the magic city, for at this rate he’d be busted 148

Carnival A Sur Thing shortly after arrival. Poor incarcerated Eddie had often told him that one could survive solely on the love and charity of others, never want for a thing so long as one’s head was together, and that one’s head was instantly together on arrival. Then again, Eddie was the only person to provide that assessment. Janet was humming sweetly, watching Kevin affectionately as he stuffed the bills in his wallet. Kevin smiled back. Love? He was already well-supplied. He was rapt. He was intoxicated by it. Dizzy, even. A very sharp pain pinched his eyes and passed. “Are you all right?” Janet was asking, her voice far away. “You just made a face something awful. Kevin . . . are you all right?” Fine, he tried to say, but nothing happened. He couldn’t smile offhandedly, couldn’t look puzzled, couldn’t move a muscle. Kevin swayed, staring at her, wondering at her strange expression. Now she appeared to be speaking urgently, but he heard not a word. Only an angry buzzing in his skull. He willed his arms to move. They wouldn’t budge. A novel terror came over him. Was he dead? Disembodied? Why couldn’t he speak or move? And what was this freaky numbness creeping up from his extremities, why was the sky dancing with sparks? The air seemed to thicken, to fill with little filamentous bodies. The numbness leapt on his chest. The sun beat down. The sun beat down. It hurt his eyes to look at it like this, but he couldn’t turn his head. Wait. Yes he could. Not too easy, but now something cool was on his forehead, something was trickling down one side of his nose. And a very grim face was right in his. This man was rude to stare so hard and directly, and Kevin felt sure the owner of the face was bent on doing him harm. He had the black moustache and dark eyes of the bully at Perky’s house—only he was older, much older, in his thirties at least. Could so much time have passed? Kevin looked away from the face, straight into a navel on a girl’s brown belly. There was gentle weeping above him—nothing serious—which obviously came from the owner of this heavenly depression. His head, then, must be on the lap of the brown girl; that made sense. Yep, he could feel the firmness of her sun-baked thighs. That was delightful to know, and certainly exciting to feel, but the dark bully was watching him and that made it not so good. Perhaps that explained what was so disturbing about the face. He must have made a pass at the bully’s girl, and been knocked silly for the effort. Kevin sat up slowly and a strong hand gripped his arm. “Sorry,” he gasped. He was at the center of a crowd. Two policemen were crouching next to him. So he’d been right. The owner of the face was wicked, for he was surely going to throw Kevin into a pit where Eddie would already be slumped, badly bruised and barely recognizable from malnutrition. Kevin tensed. He tried pulling away from that steely grip. “Steady there,” said the policeman, with a surprisingly gentle voice. “Everything’s fine. Just take it easy. You passed out and had some kind of seizure. Do you remember anything about it? Are you all right now?” Kevin nodded and held out his wrists for the cuffs. Janet took hold of his hands, brought them down to his lap, held them down. The crowd, disappointed by Kevin’s revival, broke up at once. “Yeah, I’m okay now,” Kevin managed. He got to his feet, supported under either arm by a policeman. “You’re sure?” Kevin grinned lopsidedly. “Yeah.” The mustached officer continued to study him closely. “Do you remember what happened?” “The sun,” Kevin extemporized. “It was my own fault. I was looking straight at the sun, just to see how long I could stand it. Dumb thing to do. Then I got dizzy and fell over. That’s all.” 149

Carnival A Sur Thing “This young lady says you had some sort of seizure after you fell. Has that happened before?” Kevin ran a hand over his eyes, careful that the move not appear too sudden. He knew there was something dreadfully wrong with him, and now urgently wanted to see somebody about it. But if he allowed the cops to take him away, or if he went to a clinic on his own, he was sure as sure could be that it would mean losing Janet. And he could deal with anything but that. So he said, “Well, I hit my head when I fell. I remember that. Plus, like I said, I was dizzy, real dizzy. That must have been what caused it. Sure, that’s all it was. I’m fine now. I feel great.” “No history of epilepsy, tumor, heart trouble?” “Uh-uh. No sir, nothing like that.” “Are you taking any medication?” “No sir. Honest, I’m fine. It was just a freak thing.” The other officer, who was chubby and redheaded, searched his partner with a deeply concerned expression. His cheeks began to tremble, his neck muscles grew taut. He closed his eyes, squinched, and then his mouth burst open with the widest yawn Kevin had ever seen. He shook his head like a wet dog. “Gonna wanna runna shubriety?” “That’s okay,” said the mustached officer after a moment. “Shine it on.” The redhead nodded, yawned again. He walked over to clear away the few remaining bystanders. The policeman looked at Kevin critically. “Come here, son.” Kevin dropped his head and followed him over to the car. So he was going to be taken away after all. The officer hitched up one leg of his trousers and perched casually on the car’s front fender. “Have you been taking drugs, son?” he inquired offhandedly. “Oh, no sir. No, honest to God. I swear. Really.” “Okay, okay. I believe you. You seem like an honest enough kid. But let me warn you, man to man now. If you are, you’re just looking for trouble.” He held up a hand. “Now, I’m not trying to preach to you. But you’d be surprised at how many kids end up like you were, and then we find out they’ve been taking reds and acid and God knows what. But they don’t learn. They go out and pull the same stunt over and over and over until it kills them. This girl here says you’re from Los Angeles, on your way up to San Francisco. There’s nothing wrong with that, if you’ve got your folks’ permission, but I guess you know as well as I that San Francisco’s the worst place to be if you want to experiment with drugs. So I’m telling you right now . . . no, let me rephrase that, I’m asking you to watch out. I’ve got every right, and reasonable grounds, to search your effects for drugs, but I’m not going to. You’re not holding any drugs, are you?” Kevin vigorously shook his head. “Like I said, you seem a nice enough kid. So just a word of advice. If you are holding anything you shouldn’t, throw it away. Don’t take chances with these things. There’s so much to live for, so much to look forward to.” He patted Kevin’s shoulder. “Take care.” Kevin walked back to the girl sagging with relief. Not such a bad cop after all. Janet was all set to go, so he climbed on his bike and they took off immediately, not daring to look back. “You weren’t telling the whole truth,” Janet said sharply. “You weren’t looking at the sun, buddy, you were looking at me. Now I want the whole truth, mister, right now! Out with it.” Kevin stared at her, surprised at her change in manner. “What are you getting all excited about?” “I’m not excited. Don’t tell me I’m fucking excited. If there’s something wrong with you, I want to know about it, that’s all, and I don’t want you keeping anything from me, either. Why, you had me scared to death back there, flopping around like a big fat fish and saying all kinds of weird shit. And you had everybody staring at me, like it was all my fault. And what was I supposed to do 150

Carnival A Sur Thing about it? You didn’t tell me what I was supposed to do about it, did you? You didn’t tell me anything! So I don’t want you holding anything back from me, you got that? Or we can go our separate ways right now. Is that clear?” Kevin swallowed. “Wow . . .” he whispered. “Janet, how can I explain something I don’t understand?” “You can start by being honest, for crying out loud.” The girl appeared to mellow as quickly as she’d freaked. She took a deep breath. “Look, Kevin, nobody’s ever going to get on your case for not being well. Don’t you understand that? It’s just the dishonesty, the holding back, that keeps people apart.” Her expression was wistful. “And here I thought we had something special between us.” The boy blushed. “Really?” “Really. So tell me, what was that all about?” “Like I said, Janet, I just don’t have a clue. It’s only happened a few times now, but—” “But . . . bullshit!” she screamed. “I ask you to be fucking honest, and all you do is play fucking mind games!” “I’m not playing games.” “Fucking retard. If you’re not going to level with me then just keep your fat trap shut.” Kevin fixed his eyes on his front wheel, his neck bunched into his shoulders. For a moment he saw red, but only for a moment. Janet began humming Baby Love, and a soft breeze came whispering off the sea. A caravan of motor homes rolled lazily by. Kevin sighed. At least they were still together. If only these bizarre attacks would cease, or at least become predictable. There had to be a recognizable catalyst, something he could monitor. But the more he thought about it, the farther he seemed from an answer. They made Big Sur around noon, aided by a lift from a sweet old couple in an ancient, clattering pickup. The man and woman, both in their hale seventies, had sold their Santa Maria farm and were following the coast to belatedly “get out and see the world.” Kevin and Janet had accepted the lift only because the couple were so friendly and so insistent. They had secured their bikes in the bed and rode cramped up front in the cab. The seniors were enchanted with Kevin and Janet, whom they considered model hippies. For Kevin, the experience was as close as he’d ever come to feeling part of a family. Alongside the road were dozens of bicyclists and hitchhikers in all manner of attire, from the most ragged to the most elaborate and ingenious. Tents could be seen between the pines. As they approached the forest proper the ambience became that of an endless party, for in those days Big Sur was one of the Movement’s major stomps. When they reached Jules Pfeiffer forest they hopped out and said their farewells. There were so many revelers loitering in the road that traffic was at a standstill, so the couples had time for goodbyes that grew redundant. At last the old truck moved away, and Kevin and Janet walked into the throng with stars in their eyes. There must have been thousands of picnicking, partying, souls present that day, and the ruckus was tremendous. It seemed everybody had an instrument; a guitar, a harmonica, a tambourine. The wood was alive with song. Long-haired satyrs wove melodies with flutes and piccolos and recorders. Somewhere in the thick of it a full drum kit paced an electric piano. And through it all rang countless voices; voices shouting, chanting, laughing, shrieking, reciting, singing. The moment held a special magic for Kevin. Here was a taste of what he craved, and the first real indication that spots like Haight-Ashbury or Greenwich Village might actually exist as described. He saw Big Sur, via the tutelage of Eddie, as a major oasis in a nation unflinchingly devoted to war, antiquated ideals, corporate gain, stiff associations; a business-suited, arrogant place 151

Carnival A Sur Thing designed to render life as dull, as mundane, as sober and routine as humanly possible. But this remote and enchanted commune throve upon a philosophy that defied those traditions supposedly responsible for the mortar in all working social structures. Theoretically a society such as this should not be able to endure, since its only requirements were that one be peaceable, use drugs (or at least be tolerant of their use), deny the principles set up by, or approved by, the preceding generation, and have a worshipful sense of identity with rock music and its heroes. Yet this society, and others like it popping up around the world, could survive. They persisted partly through the allegiance of the inhabitants and partly through the unsung contributions of benefactors from all walks of life, who, like the straights who so adamantly condemned these docile, carefree outcasts, ached from the bottom of their hearts to be free of their inhibitions, to be bohemians. But this generation had its own new standards, its own leaders, tenets, heroes, gods. Within this subculture—or counterculture—it was perfectly respectable to be poor and rootless, to run naked or in rags. And in Big Sur it was always party time. There were characters in turbans and robes offering one odd candies and free incense, long-time residents and newcomers embracing each other like family. You were free to simply look on, or to participate in any music-fest, discussion, or purely social gathering. And of course marijuana was everywhere. Several times total strangers would hand Kevin or Janet a joint without introduction or examination, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. But most of all Kevin was blown away by the size and vitality of the crowd. It reminded him of what he’d read about January’s Human Be-in on the Polo Fields of Golden Gate Park, when White Lightning tabs had been passed out in a crowd numbering in the tens of thousands, and beaded and feathered freaks had managed to keep it mellow all the while. Now the easygoing affection of the people around him made it possible to believe that, in the near future, he would walk on those very Polo Fields on a date which, he felt, would grow to be of equal historical stature, when, he was pretty sure, this girl Janet here, this beautifully blossoming flower child, would stand beside him and take him seriously, he seriously doubted, when he told her he wanted to be her guru, and she to be his earth mother, throughout the Revolution and beyond. Kevin wasn’t sure he could summon the words or the courage, but he was positive her refusal would crush him. Here he was, in the kind of environment where anything seemed possible . . . and his heart was telling him that without her he was nowhere—that without her happy exclamations and little electrifying nudges and squeezes of the arm he’d might as well be on the moon. A bit deeper in the woods Kevin and Janet came upon an assemblage interesting enough to bring them to a halt. Perhaps a hundred freaks were gathered in concentric circles around a smaller group of seated persons, each poised with hands raised slightly above the head. After locking their bicycles to a tree trunk, Kevin and Janet made their way down through the crowd to its focus. In the center a bearded, totally bald blind man sat on an upturned paint can, wiggling his fingers over his head. On his right sat a skinny, leotard-clad middle-aged woman, her eyes rolled up, her arms crooked about her head to form a frame for her face. Members of the inner ring were apparently the blind man’s adherents, as they now commenced, almost in unison, wiggling their fingers in rapt mimicry. It looked like Kevin and Janet had arrived just in time, for even as they sat the blind man ceased wiggling, and his disciples respectfully followed suit. “Now,” the blind man intoned, “we shall demonstrate, for all those who seek inner peace and wisdom, that ancient and most sacred Sri Lankan technique known as Abu-bu-agubu. I, having labored a lifetime in search of the Self’s ultimate fulfillment, chanced upon this sacrosanct method while a guest in the mountaintop libraries of the Vishbewa holy order. 152

Carnival A Sur Thing “It is not mere happenstance that our hands and feet should have precisely five digits apiece. As you shall presently see it is essential that the devotee have a minimum of five fingers upon each hand—although I have personally witnessed certain digitally-challenged elders of the Vishbewa order perform the Abu-bu-agubu using only the toes. Truly an awesome and uplifting experience. “To demonstrate the technique we have my assistant here, the lovely Moonflower, who has herself transcended the worldly too many times to number, and is the most proficient purveyor of transcension west of Delhi. “Now, the key to reaching the inner Self is, of course, the severance of the spirit, or tukhu-khu, from the senses. You will learn here today that enlightenment resides within each of us, in a dormant state, and that its natural expression is inhibited solely by the barrage of sensory impressions we constantly receive from without. Therefore, you must understand, it is vital that we remove ourselves from sensory stimuli in order to set our spirits free. To this end we employ the five fingers of each hand, our tukhu-sem, in the esoteric ballet of Abu-bu-agubu. To prepare ourselves, we engage in Bawa-khe. Moonflower?” The skinny woman now began gracefully wiggling her fingers above her head. The disciples copied her movements eagerly and with precision. Kevin and Janet also began warming up. Janet was giggling. “Why do I feel like a jellyfish?” she whispered. “C’mon, Janet,” Kevin said, wiggling away. “Maybe this guy’s for real. I mean, look at all he went through just to get inside himself.” She placed a hand on his thigh for support, pushed herself to her feet and looked around. “You go ahead. I’m going to try to get inside myself in a ladies’ room somewhere. I’ll be right back.” Kevin was about to object when the blind man resumed his monologue. Janet stepped around sitting observers. Kevin heard her asking directions. “First of all, as Moonflower shall demonstrate, we employ the little finger of each hand, the tukhu-pe, and the second finger of each hand, the tukhu-ba, in tandem, touching the tips of our tukhupes together, and touching the tips of our tukhu-bas together, as Moonflower is doing, to form a temple shape; then bending the first knuckle of each tukhu-ba to create, roughly, a rectangular shape, a bawa-we. “The bawa-we is now placed upon the mouth, or ama-mi, and the tukhu-pes and tukhu-bas are brought toward each other, pinching the lips so as to prevent the ingress of any substance polluting to the spirit. At this stage it is vital the follower be breathing only via the nostrils, or ama-ama.” Kevin achieved the first step, like everyone else, by copying Moonflower, whose lips protruded obscenely from her cinched bawa-we. The woman was obviously no sloucher. “And now,” the blind man continued, “we employ our middle fingers, or tukhu-jis, by thrusting them into the ama-ama, thus further cutting off the profane outer world from the sanctity of the tukhu-khu. It is essential that participants, at this stage, no longer be breathing, and yet remain relaxed and alert. Moonflower?” Moonflower now rammed the middle finger of each hand up a nostril and rolled her eyes ecstatically, looking like a bulimic gargoyle. Kevin gently placed his tukhu-jis in his ama-ama, but found he was cheating, taking occasional shallow whiffs of air. “Now,” said the blind man, “place the index finger of each hand, your tukhu-mas, over the eyes, thus shutting out all visual impediments to the liberation of tukhu-khu.” Kevin, Moonflower, and the disciples did so, but Kevin again found himself cheating; peeking this time. 153

Carnival A Sur Thing “And finally, place the thumbs, or tukhu-vas, in the ears, thus completely blocking sensory stimuli, and allowing the Self its full expression. Moonflower?” Moonflower jammed her thumbs in her ears and remained absolutely still. After a minute or so her face began to turn blue, her ribs to quake, her arms to tremble. One by one audience members gave in to the profane, removing their hands and gasping; embarrassed, ashamed. Moonflower, after quivering a while longer, keeled over at the blind man’s feet. Adherents rushed to her aid. “By that sound,” the blind man said, “I understand that Moonflower has once again achieved tukhu-khukhu, has transcended the worldly to commune with her sacred Self in the utmost expression of bliss. Reveal to us, Moonflower, what secrets your Self has divulged.” Moonflower, supported under the arms by envious followers, grinned dopily, saliva hanging from one corner of her ama-mi. Suddenly her body jerked forward. She lay on her face, head and legs still, torso thrashing like a landed fish. Moonflower became absolutely limp, and the crowd went wild. Kevin wiped his hands on his Levis and got to his feet, looking for Janet. He saw a little cabinshaped outhouse not more than a hundred yards away amid a cluster of pines, and realized she couldn’t possibly be lost. He was just beginning to worry when he saw the unmistakable cascade of chestnut hair only thirty feet to his right. She wasn’t alone. Kevin was surprised to find her engaged in animated conversation with a foppish young man who had apparently sidled through the crowd to attempt a pickup. The threat was somewhat diminished in Kevin’s untrained eyes, for this intruder was such a phony Janet had to be doing everything she could to keep from laughing in his pretty-ass face. With that comically too-neat hair and those embarrassingly too-sharp clothes, and with all those tacky, expensive-looking rings on his fingers and that way-too fancy gold medallion, the gaudy jerk stood out like a sore freaking thumb. He couldn’t possibly know what a fool he was making of himself. Yet, perhaps because she was embarrassed for him, Janet appeared to be humoring this phony. Kevin proceeded, not by degrees but by leaps, from wry curiosity to narrow resentment to outright jealousy. He walked right up beside them, as though urgently impelled from behind, and was entirely ignored. A troubled and nondescript bystander, he stood with mouth contorting, hearing portions of their conversation in one ear and a cacophony of partygoers in the other. “. . . no really, swear, you remind me of this chick so much you could be her sister.” “. . . get that medallion? And those rings?” “. . . was playing with this group from Blackpool.” “. . . bet you got all the girls.” “. . . only the naughty ones.” From Kevin’s lungs rose a great bellow of shock and outrage at this betrayal. Somehow the roar got stuck in his larynx, and all that escaped was a croaking sound compromising a belch and a grunt of frustration. Janet and the intruder stopped talking and looked at him curiously; the stranger with mild surprise and she with a touch of irritation. As no further gutturals seemed pending they took up where they’d left off. Kevin turned his head sharply and clenched his fists, his expression twisting into one only his father could appreciate. Could she possibly hold his love in such low esteem? Were all his considerate and selfless acts to be dismissed so casually . . . could anybody really be so cheap and underhanded? Clouds of creeping comprehension passed over his face. Those clouds grew darker and darker still, until Kevin stood alone in deepest shadow. A voice appeared in the middle of his skull, attempting to infuse that skull with wisdom that, to an impulsive male, is only a distraction. And the voice described how 154

Carnival A Sur Thing women are attracted to the weakest, least masculine end of the male spectrum, and explained that those males are psychologically closer to a teddy bear than to a figure of independence. No selfrespecting man, the voice elaborated, would flirt, or allow himself to be babied—genuine men do not pucker; they gag when the maternal instinct rears its gooey head. This indictment, the intrusive voice went on, is in no wise a celebration of the male marauder, whose profanity is monumental. Yet is there no compromise ’twixt the teddy and grizzly? The dandies dance their darlingest dance, the duet effete permeates our narcissistic, ass-happy land of opportunity. Stress breeds men. Lack of same produces . . . you guessed it. There’s just too much liberty, that’s all—and liberty does not bring out the best in people. Seems humankind’s heartfelt supposition is that people are basically good, and simply need as much liberty as possible to express their highest potential. People are animals, both figuratively and literally, and they’ll exploit any system as far as they can. It’s so tough dealing with explosive words such as evil, or immoral, or improper. So the voice coined a noun, one both childish and simplistic, certainly . . . grammatically awkward, yes—but the only one aptly describing human character. That word was UNGOODNESS. How many truly good people, the useless voice inquired, have you encountered? Not people who simply are not bad, and not those who behave positively because they’ve been proselytized, or reared properly, or scared straight. How many people have you met who live virtuously because they are of a virtuous nature, and are instinctively repulsed by worldliness? Don’t bother enumerating. The voice tapered to a murmur even as the sun began to peek through the clouds. Kevin shook his head. Hearing voices was a real bad sign. And Eddie had no damned business fucking with his head right now. There was more at stake than logic. Kevin’s eyes refocused. He again became a reactive engine, as nature intended. But though he tried to shut out the broken dialogue beside him another part of his mind eavesdropped intently. “. . . beach house in Monterey.” “. . . just love Monterey.” “. . . going deep sea fishing. Maybe you’d like . . .” At this point Kevin turned and asserted himself, every nerve on fire. “Sorry, man. But we already had plans. I mean we have plans. Look, why don’t you just mind your own fucking business and split, okay? Let’s, like, let’s not, you know, let’s not lose our heads over this.” His hands, forcibly unclenched, were trembling. He was hyperventilating. The dandy stared in surprise for a moment. His eyes flashed. He looked back at Janet, who seemed grimly absorbed in some godawful noise coming from an amateur band to their right. “Forgive me,” he addressed her gallantly. “I thought you were alone. My apologies. Your brother?” “Not my brother,” she grated. “Just a friend I met down the coast.” Kevin flinched. Just a . . . friend. She couldn’t . . . couldn’t possibly have any idea how those words hurt. He began blinking rapidly, pain clouding reality. What was going on here? She was . . . dumping him. It was over; it was sealed: it could be read in her voice. He was being discarded, traded for this bastard fop as readily as a princess would replace an impudent servant. “Just a friend?” he choked. “Why, I practically saved your life! I fed you and protected you and—” “Don’t you,” Janet said loudly, “shout at me!” Several heads turned to look on with interest, 155

Carnival A Sur Thing bored with love and peace, itching for attitude. “And don’t give me all that crap about what you did for me, mister. Nobody forced you to feed me.” The flashy intruder now intruded again, stepping between them while easing a protective arm in front of Janet. “Now look, man, I’m not going to stand here and listen to you badmouth this young lady. Why don’t you run along to mama before I forget you’re just a big fat kid with a big fat mouth.” Frustration fogged Kevin’s vision. The crowd pressed in with greedy faces. The stranger was rolling up his sleeves, and Janet’s eyes were gleaming over his shoulder. When that gleam lanced through everything made a savage kind of sense. Clearly, there was only one way to reestablish himself in her heart. Chivalry or insanity, it was convenient this dapper meddler was offering his prissy homo face as an outlet for years of frustration. With a snarl Kevin threw a haymaker, and the power behind that punch was aimed not only at the weasel, but at all the pricks and pussywillows who had conspired from Day One to make this adventure an undeserved kick in the balls; at all the so-called friends who had exploited his trusting nature, at all those pretty pink jock-playgrounds who had taunted him, intentionally or no, with their unbearably desirable bodies—trashing him with a complete lack of sympathy for his honest green susceptibility. Fortunately the punch was wide; the young man had seen it coming and deftly sidestepped. There was immediate activity all around, as those closest tried to lay on some controlling hands. Kevin’s opponent, though easily forty pounds lighter, was a clever and experienced fighter, managing several good jabs with his left fist while feigning with the right, steadily driving Kevin back into the crowd where there was no room to swing. The boy found his hard punches consistently glancing off the stranger’s quicker forearm blocks, but he hardly felt the jabs against his nose and chin. He was looking for an opening. When he found it he was going to leap on the pretty-boy thief and thumb out his eyeballs before he strangled him to blazes. A gesticulating man began pleading for peace and order, but the crowd, deaf to him, gravitated to the action, forming a shouting ring around the fighters, whooping and cheering with each connecting jab. One of Kevin’s random roundhouse punches finally caught his opponent on the temple and sent him stumbling back shaking his head, but the boy was slow to capitalize on his advantage. He threw himself on the dazed stranger clumsily, and the two went rolling in the dust amid a stampede of retreating shoes. The young man, squirming free, leaped right to his feet. He kicked furiously at Kevin’s face, drawing ecstatic boos from the onlookers. Kevin rolled away and scrambled upright just as his foe came sailing through the air, delivering a fine judo kick to the side of the fat boy’s head. “Get up,” he said, licking his lips. Kevin’s skull was ringing. It wasn’t anger that moved him now; most of his rage had passed in that initial swing. The taunts of the bystanders were firing him. Even though he knew the struggle was lost he gamely pulled himself erect. The crowd cheered. Kevin made a growling rush, somehow coming out of it with a handful of the nimble young man’s hair. He held on long as he could, landing three solid hammering slugs to the forehead, until a barrage of desperate kidney-punching caused him to release his grip. They whirled away together, slamming into a group of lounging bikers. These party-crashing thugs immediately reacted by grabbing and trouncing any flower child they could get their greasy felonious hands on. The domino effect was dazzling. Hippies showed their fangs, lovers became brawlers. Kevin, struck from behind, was flung hard on his stomach. He rolled over as his enemy pounced, but before the young man could completely straddle Kevin’s spreadeagled body a wall of clashing hotheads fell in a line. Kevin had a 156

Carnival A Sur Thing glimpse of elbows and heads as his opponent was golfed away. Next thing he knew he was desperately fighting to make his feet. Those interested only in escape were being trampled, falling back into the fray before they could worm out. Kevin scurried underfoot to the melee’s edge. He crawled out like a dying man. Park Rangers in jeeps and on horseback were pulling up nearby. With the aid of several huge Hell’s Angels members, these men in uniform began wrenching fighters apart. A quickly finished skirmish broke out between two chain-wielding troglodytes and half a dozen efficient Rangers. A helicopter magically appeared above the trees. As the roar of its rotor hammered down, the fighters pulled apart one by one. Kevin lay in a heap, too done in to be bothered by running feet. As in a dream, he heard hundreds chanting for peace, with more joining in on each call. The ever-watchful arm of Authority was back in control. The kids were all right.

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Chapter 14 Love Is For Losers “. . . Never been so embarrassed,” Janet was saying bitterly, her lovely hair flying. “Never!” She shook a fist in his face, her expression wild with contempt. “You asshole! You filthy son of a bitch! You fat ugly prick! You . . . you . . . you bastard!” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, and when she looked back up she was no longer just a distraught pretty girl. She was a psychotic, raving hellcat. She spat in his face, socked him right in the nose, raked her long nails down his cheek. She called him every insult at her command. Finally she sank against the cab window, breathing heavily, and when she looked at him again she seemed to have regained control. “Why,” she panted, “why did you have to bring me into it? Just tell me that. It’s not enough for you to single-handedly destroy the good vibes in that place, it’s not enough for you to just ruin everybody’s day with your rowdy shit, but then you have to go connect me with all the trouble you caused, and get everybody staring at me.” Her voice rose, fell, rose again. Then she screamed, “JesuswasIembarrassed!” and designer tears tumbled down her cheeks, from an inexhaustible supply. She bit her lip and spat, “I’m getting sick of your shit!” her words and expression nearly identical to those terminating Mike’s outburst three days earlier. Kevin wiped his nose and let his head hang almost to his knees, long past defending himself. It seemed he could do nothing right. They were in the bed of a Park Ranger’s green pickup truck, being banished from the park as troublemakers. The driver, a conscientious Ranger in his late thirties, sat gruffly behind the wheel with shoulders hunched, wearing regulation sunglasses. He never once turned around, though he was no doubt keeping an eye on their reflections in the rearview mirror. The occasional hitchhiker looked after them curiously. “Sorry,” was the only defense Kevin could muster. For the last half hour he’d uttered the word with parrot-like redundancy. “Well, that’s great! That’s just fucking peachy! That clears it all up, does it? I was having such 158

Carnival Love Is For Losers a good time, too. At least you could tell me why.” Kevin wagged his hands. “I don’t know,” he whined. “I guess it’s a guy thing.” He shook his head. “It’s just that I . . . well, I didn’t want that phony taking advantage of you.” “I’m a big girl now. I can take care of myself.” “Well, I thought since I was kind of escorting you—” As Janet leaned forward the glare of her eyes cut him off. She said fiercely and very distinctly, “You don’t own me, buster. Nobody owns me. And for that matter, I don’t know where you got this stupid idea you’re some sort of chaperone or escort or whatever the hell you think you are, because you’re not. I’ll make my own decisions when and how I want to make them. Is that perfectly clear? I won’t have you playing big brother, either. You’re like a child who thinks he can have everything he wants, and when something doesn’t go his way he throws a tantrum. But you can’t own me, mister, so you keep your fat hands out of my personal life. Is that perfectly clear? Do we understand each other?” It was. They did. Kevin, having drawn deeper into himself throughout the scolding, was now peering plaintively between his kneecaps. “Yes,” he whispered. “I said I was—” “And I heard you—for the eight hundred and thirty-seventh time! So just shut up and stay out of my face. You’re giving me one hell of a headache. As a matter of fact, you are a headache.” Kevin closed his eyes, a ball of remorse. He’d deserved the scolding, had almost enjoyed it. For, no matter what she said or did, he was still with her, and being near her under any circumstances was infinitely better than being without her. On the back of his eyelids he reviewed her terrible indignation when he’d sheepishly told the infuriated Rangers he was there as her escort. Once the Rangers had everything under control, they’d rounded up Kevin’s much-dirtied but self-righteous opponent. The crowd was highly in favor of the young man—since he cut a finer figure and had pretty much controlled the fight’s tempo—and had unanimously fingered Kevin as the instigator. After damning Janet as roundly as Kevin, the Rangers had confabbed, deciding to not call in the police for fear of a riot, given so many youngsters with their blood up. They had ordered Janet and Kevin into the back of the green pickup, to be forcibly removed from their beautiful and beloved park. Janet had been in tears. The Ranger drove them all the way to Monterey, although he was not commanded to do so. His orders were to remove them far enough up the coast so as to be out of the county, but he had a girl in Monterey. When he pulled over it was twilight, and Kevin and Janet were shivering. “All right;” he said curtly as he stepped from the truck, “hand your bikes over the side.” Kevin obeyed, then dropped to the road on aching legs, his shoulders hunched. Janet refused any assistance from the Ranger, who shrugged and gave vent upon Kevin’s bowed head the full measure of his fury. “Now, if I ever see either of you in my park again I will personally, repeat personally, rout you like rabbits and run you out by the seat of your pants. You hear me? We’ve kept Sur a nice place, even with all you kids up here, even with all the publicity. And let me tell you, most of those kids are really nice guys. Kinky or not, they believe in what they’re doing. But there’s always some punk who has to throw a wrench in the works. You’re damn lucky I’m not dropping you off at Carmel City Jail. The only reason I’m not is because we don’t need the bad publicity. And we don’t need creeps like you.” Kevin took it all wordlessly, by now conditioned to reprimand. The Ranger stormed away, climbed in his truck and threw it in gear. Janet immediately mounted her bike. “Wait!” 159

Carnival Love Is For Losers “Wait,” she wondered icily, “for what?” “Look, let me make it up to you, Janet. I didn’t mean—” “Yes, you’ve told me and told me and told me! You’re sorry. It was all a mistake. You’re a peace loving hippie. A sorry peace loving hippie.” “Okay, then I won’t say I’m sorry. But please don’t run off without me. Please. Look, I’m asking you—I’m begging you. Janet, I’ll make it up to you, I swear!” Something like a smile firmed the girl’s soft lips, but it passed as she looked away, up the road at the brightening lights of the city. “I’m almost there;” she said quietly, “that house I told you about. I’m quite sure I can make it the rest of the way without your kind of help.” “At least let me get you a cup of cocoa first. It’s too cold to ride without something to warm you up. Maybe you’d like something to eat.” He was clutching. “Okay,” she said presently. “You can buy me cocoa.” Monterey was cracking and fizzing with fireworks. It was the beginning of the municipallysponsored Fourth of July celebration, and just the distraction Kevin was praying for. Janet, delighting in the aerial displays, quickly forgot all about the day’s unhappy episode. Kevin bought her Smokey Petes to toss, sparklers to wave, an expensive king-size fireworks kit and, later, gratefully bought her cocoa, and then a meal that would have pleased his father. As she led him through the boulevard shops her mood continued to brighten. Janet allowed him to buy her a blouse, a multicolored handbag, a transistor radio, and a poster showing The Beatles romping through several scenes of the movie Help! Kevin was relieved to be on something like speaking terms again, although he realized his appeal resided in his wallet. That was all right with him. He would rob banks to keep her. As they found the coast and began to idly pedal along it was old days again. She rattled on tirelessly about the fireworks and about her friends, while he sucked up beside her, his jaw slack, like a loyal pooch fascinated by the absurdly complicated modulations of his mistress’ voice, and impatient to delight in that single command which kept them a unit: Kevin! Fetch! They made slow headway. As they neared the Seaside residence Kevin used every excuse to stall for five minutes here, for ten there. He was, already, visualizing himself being rewarded and dismissed with a perfunctory handshake or peck of lips. Kevin saw it coming—but not as a bad turn. It was another ice-cold rip-off, just like the rest of the crap he’d taken all . . . oh, years. But this was worse than a loss; it was a calamity. And a guy can take only so much . . . there comes a time when the victim wears a new face: the face of an animal without compromise. At this stage no compassion remains, no honor. Only the high-gear nervous action of snarling defense. The grip on Kevin’s handlebars became viselike. His mind went dark, his pouting expression twisted into a savage grimace. His face grew so contorted Janet immediately braked her bicycle. “Wow! You’ve simply got to stop and check out your mug!” Kevin braked hard. He was trembling head to toe. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’m all right.” “Are you sure? You look terrible.” “I’m fine. Fine.” They were in the residential section of Seaside, on a homey sparkler-lit avenue. “Your friend’s house,” he managed. “How—how far?” “We’re almost there. It’s on the next block. Look, are you positive you’re all right? If Jamie’s home he’ll give you a ride to the hospital.” Kevin closed his eyes. “Jamie?” he muttered. He shook his head. The side-to-side movement faltered, became a broadening elliptical progression, and then Kevin was nodding—he’d been right all along. He’d outlived his usefulness. Jamie? He blew out his cheeks. Fucking Jamie? “No,” he whispered. “No, I’m okay.” “Whew! You had me worried there. I thought you were going to pull another of those stupid 160

Carnival Love Is For Losers numbers like the other—look, there’s Jamie’s house now! The one with all those eucalyptus trees in the front. You can see the porch light.” “Far out,” Kevin muttered. When they reached the house he knew it was over. In the back of his mind he’d been praying that any tenants would not be home, giving him a chance to convince the girl to go elsewhere, if only temporarily. But light filtered through psychedelic posters on the windows. Electric music could be heard. He stood on the walk while Janet rang the doorbell. A soft yellow haze illuminated her as the porch bulb came to life. The door was opened and a pleasant looking young man of twenty peered out. His light brown hair was cut like the young Prince Valiant’s, although longer and fuller, and there was also something of the Hal Foster character’s noble bearing and poise about him. He reminded Kevin of somebody else. His eyes were very clear and bright, his figure slim and full of grace. He was dressed casually: Levis and a brown rayon shirt open at the neck, tan hushpuppies. “Jannie!” he cried, embracing her exuberantly, gently rocking her by swiveling his pelvis. “Sweetheart, how’ve you been! Why didn’t you let us know you were coming? It’s been ages.” “Oh, Jamie, I missed you so! I was so afraid you wouldn’t be home.” On the walk, forgotten, Kevin was wondering who to kill first. As his body coiled and his fingers flexed, a profound sense of alienation transformed the powerful compression of his frame to a cringe. And while he watched their identical shut-eyed expressions during the embrace that went on and on, his mind, curiously, decided to take a stroll; remarking, quite transiently, that one of the window posters was similar to a poster on his own wall in his room at home, or what used to be home; that his bicycle was holding up to the journey well; that San Francisco, according to Eddie, was Spanish for Saint Francis. Just compulsive thinking, the sort any healthy mind resorts to at point of surrender. But then he thought, Why doesn’t he just throw her down and ball her on the spot, for Christ’s sake. What’s he waiting for? He was close to vocalizing his thoughts when the two pulled apart, allowing light from the front room to wash over him. His eyes glinted. Jamie noticed him, said, “Oh.” Janet turned. After echoing Jamie, she said, “Excuse me. Jamie, this is Kevin Michaels, a very good friend I met way down the coast. He’s on his way up to San Francisco, and he was thoughtful enough to escort me up here and make sure I didn’t have too much fun.” Jamie grinned. “Hi!” He offered his hand, expecting Kevin to approach, but the boy remained hunched and stationary, glaring. “Well!” Jamie said. “Why don’t you two come on in and make yourselves at home.” He turned and, with another friendly grin, strode inside. Janet returned Kevin’s stare for a long silent moment. She folded her arms across her chest. “Well?” Kevin’s jaw worked spastically before creaking open. “I—I . . . I’ve got something to say, Janet.” “Well?” What he had in mind was something along the lines of, Listen, you skinny fucking bitch, you may not know it, but I’m a human being with feelings too. And I’ve done everything to prove my love, but you’re so self-centered it was all like totally in vain. So this is the big goodbye, honey. I’ve been hurt, but I’ll heal, so save your sobs for the next sucker. I’m not saying it wasn’t fun, or that you ain’t cute, but there’s a whole buncha other funky fish in this funky-ass sea, etc. What came out belied his thoughts. “Oh Janet, I’m so sorry for all the trouble I’ve been. For real. I know you’re sick of hearing me say I’m sorry, and I know what you must think of me. It’s hard to admit this, Janet, but . . . I can’t let 161

Carnival Love Is For Losers go. Oh please don’t leave me alone now.” “Jesus, when are you ever gonna grow up! Didn’t you just hear Jamie invite you in?” She turned on her heel and skipped inside, her aloof and disgusted expression changing in the wink of an eye to one of brainless gaiety. Kevin looked around uncertainly. “Slut,” he whispered. He walked his bike to the porch, passed the lock and chain through the rear spokes. Inspired, he stood Janet’s bike against his and locked them together to the porch railing. Kevin regarded his Peugeot an extension of his body; to tamper with it was to pinch a nerve and bring him running. He almost felt he had a say in the situation. He stopped just inside the door, flabbergasted. Against the far wall were three totally naked persons, perched on cushions in the lotus position, palms turned up on knees, eyes closed. They appeared to be in trances, entirely unaffected by the hard driving psychedelic music pulsating from flanking stereo speakers. The two males, one old and one young, were both gaunt and starved-looking. The girl sitting between them was a chubby, unclean thing of twenty. What shocked Kevin was not the nakedness of the girl. It was seeing naked men in front of Janet—he wanted to cover her eyes . . . and for reasons best left interred, his own. Maybe he just wasn’t cut out to be a revolutionary after all. What was going on here was, thenadays, perfectly acceptable conduct. The black light, the enormous ceramic water pipe, the musky scent of incense in every corner—these were all standard stimuli. But he couldn’t overlook the nudity. No doubt about it, this Jamie guy had to be one righteously sick dude. Janet was seated right next to him, on a low crushed velvet davenport, her tapering legs curled up comfortably, her slender feet bare. Just in front of the couch, on a glass-topped driftwood coffee table, were several glasses, a bowl of ice, a quart of Pepsi, and a fifth of Cream of Kentucky bourbon. Kevin stood by the door, his mouth shoveling warm air and incense fumes, watching Janet’s and Jamie’s teeth gleam surrealistically in the black light’s glow. He felt such a minor part . . . he was sure what looked like an orgy in the making could proceed without paying him the least mind. When at last the record was over, and only Janet’s musical laughter and the hiss of the stylus broke the silence, Jamie looked up and waved. “Well don’t just stand there, man. Have a seat!” Kevin mumbled something and shuffled over, sat down heavily. The impact of his body would ordinarily have merely rocked Janet in his direction, but Jamie picked that precise moment to get up to change the album, telling the boy to go ahead and fix himself a drink. As a result Janet rocked heavily against Kevin, and, recovering her balance, laid a small hand gently on the sensitive pudding of his inner thigh. Her giggles were like bubbles popping melodiously against his eardrum, as she breathed essence of cola and bourbon in his face, and whispered: “Well, pour yourself a drink, silly. You don’t have to look so grumpy and uncomfortable. We’re all friends. Just make yourself at home; take off your shoes . . . relax. While you’ve been standing around acting too cool for the room I’ve been telling Jamie all about what a hero you’ve been; how you fixed my flat and stood up for me against those big men when we almost had breakfast this morning. That really scored some points with Jamie. He thinks you must be a super high dude to be so inventive and brave. He digs people who have confidence, so don’t act so stiff and paranoid. Just sit back and make yourself at home. Take off your shoes and get comfy. Relax. Have a drink, why don’t you? Why are you so quiet?” Kevin grunted. He was keenly aware of a juxtaposition of past and present; how this event so strongly paralleled the time at Perky’s house when the raven-haired girl had perched so near and 162

Carnival Love Is For Losers likewise placed a hand on his thigh. A chill raced up his back, and with horror he felt his lips leak the words, “He your boyfriend?” “Who? Jamie? He’s my cousin, but he’s like a brother to me. He stays out here with Rod every summer. We used to live only a couple of miles from here; me and Jamie and my family.” “Rod?” “That older man sitting over there tripping. He’s heavily into the Consciousness Movement. He doesn’t need acid or anything. Jamie told me that Rod and Linda and Holland—the other couple there—said the Om exercise this afternoon and have been grooving on inner space all day long. Isn’t that heavy?” She leaned against him. Kevin kept his big mouth shut. The nudity and Janet’s on-again off-again behavior were related in some way, held some special message for him, but right now he didn’t know if he was coming or going. Only minutes ago he’d been begging her to come back, and now he was praying she’d move away. Her slim brown hand was alarmingly close to his crotch, and she didn’t seem to be worried about Jamie noticing. Or was Jamie part of the plot? And, to aggravate his confusion, Janet’s hand, unlike the ivory fingers of the raven-haired girl, was eliciting no response from his body. Kevin looked away. The chubby girl was the first female (besides his squat and shapeless mother, and not counting photographed models) he’d ever seen naked. But unlike the nudes Kevin had goggled in adult magazines, this Linda person sagged at every curve. Her skin was the hue of raw potato meat, scored with pimples and brown bruises. Her breasts were collapsed with the slump of her heavy shoulders, and her crotch, that secret land, seemed a foul place, all smelly and kink-wired and clammy and unclean. The huge lumps of her feet were gateposts, their nails chipped and unpainted. And, horror of horrors, her legs and armpits were unshaven, sporting a dark curly growth like that of the Laurel Canyon girls. Janet kneaded his thigh. “Re-lax, will you?” “I’m not uptight,” Kevin maundered, perspiring. “Who said I was uptight? It’s just that . . . well, you’re not bugged by seeing these guys all bare-ass naked? I mean, it doesn’t bother me, of course. After all, I have to take showers at school, don’t I? And seeing a chick in the buff is nothing new—like, I’m no prude or anything, you know. Don’t get that idea. I just thought you might be offended, or embarrassed, by having to look at these guys.” She laughed. “Is li’l Kevin afwaid Janet might see the boys’ nasty ol’ pee-pees? Oh, you are a child. We used to sit around here naked all the time. There’s no hangups. This is the Sixties, remember? Have a drink!” She drained her glass and leaned forward to mix him one as Jamie rejoined them on the couch. “Janet was telling me what a good job you did of taking care of her on the road, and I’d like to say I really appreciate it, man. The whole world’s turning on to love, but there’s still some nasty little pockets of uncool out there.” As Kevin drank down the sweet mixed beverage he peeked over the rim of his glass and for the first time noticed subtle similarities in the cousins. There was a rare frankness in the eyes when either smiled, and the same silky tone to their complexions. “Really!” Janet said. “You never know who or what you’re going to meet on the road. It’s a terrible place to be alone. Oh! Did I tell you?” She turned back to Kevin. “Jamie says that Marcie and Paula were here yesterday, and took off on their bikes again. They went up to Golden Gate Park to catch the concert. I’m going too, if only to give those girls a piece of my mind for ditching me like that.” Her eyes sparkled. “So it looks like I’ll be needing an escort.” She sipped half her second drink 163

Carnival Love Is For Losers while watching him over the rim of her glass, in a manner that struck Kevin as sultry. He stared back until his eyes were burning. Fate or Karma or Providence or Whatever had granted him a reprieve. He masked his emotion by draining his glass and leaning forward to pour another. The liquor warmed him and he laughed. And somehow they were all holding hands and singing along as Roger Daltrey artfully stuttered and snarled through My Generation. The moment for Kevin was powerful and magical, containing the long-craved elements of friendship and family. He laughed again, loudly, and killed his second drink. “This is it,” Jamie said contentedly. “This is our house, our world, our future. God damn it, this is our generation, the dawning of a new world devoted to love and peace and the reformation of a power-hungry society! Just think: in a matter of only a few years, maybe, every lonely or needy person will be united as we are now, holding hands and sharing a common soul, and that soul, that single soul I tell you, will be nothing less than the communal substantiation of God Almighty Himself!” “Oh, Jamie,” Janet cooed, “you have such lovely thoughts in your head.” “I’m hip,” Kevin said, and promptly knocked over his third drink. He bent forward to clean the mess. “No, leave it!” Jamie said. “Fuck it, man, what’s that rug anyway. Just the plastic, dyed, prefabricated product of a technology bending over backward to conceal nature with crud. Soon, soon enough, the only carpet we’ll see will be the real green of sweet grass itself, and our homes will be teepees, and we’ll shit in the woods like bears, the way man is supposed to live! To hell with technology and the atom bomb! Man, that’s regression. This generation is sick of the stagnant past and the slippery present. Progress! God damn it, we’ll show ’em progress!” Janet hiccoughed. Jamie poured her another drink. She sipped it, sighed, draped an arm around Kevin and an arm around Jamie, let her head rest against Kevin’s shoulder. She yawned and hiccoughed twice more. “Hooray for the Revolution!” Kevin blurted, in seventh heaven and more than a little tight. He pulled out his baggie of grass and his rolling papers. “Roll us up some joints, brother Jamie. And make ’em bombers!” “Right on!” “I’m so sleepy,” Janet mumbled, hiccoughing. “I’m so tired.” Jamie rolled and fired up a monstrous doobie. Janet abstained, and by the time the two had finished smoking she was snoring softly on Kevin’s shoulder. “Look,” Jamie said, “I’m late for this Fourth of July bash over at my partner’s pad. And after the party I’m gonna see about scoring some hash oil. I’m talking quantity here. This kind of deal always takes all night, so you guys can crash in the room I’m using. Is that cool with you?” “Sure.” “Okay. Feel free to use the pad any way you want. And don’t worry about Rod and these people. I’ve seen them on this trip before. They won’t come out of it till sunup.” “Right.” Jamie rose and offered his hand. “Well, it was cool meeting you, Alvin.” “Same to you, Jimmy.” “I’ll catch you in the morning.” Jamie winked man-to-man. “Take good care of my cousin.” Kevin shook hands tipsily but warmly. “Yeah, be cool, man. Take it easy.” Jamie removed his hand with difficulty. Kevin’s arm dropped lifelessly to his side. Jamie opened the door. “Later on, then.” “Keep high, man.” 164

Carnival Love Is For Losers “All right. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” “Easy on.” “Catch ya later.” Jamie stepped out. “Take it easy!” Kevin shouted at the door. “Have a good one!” The house was now quiet, except for the hiss ca-chuck, hiss ca-chuck of the needle at record’s end. Kevin listened to the sound for a few minutes, half-conscious. Finally he got to his feet and staggered across the room. As he was bending to pick the arm off the record he checked himself. He’d been here before. He took a deep breath and, with the utmost care, lifted the arm at its tip with his thumb. He had it halfway back when it slipped off and tore across the disk. He picked it up hastily, dropped it again. After dropping it twice more he came to his senses and switched off the set. As the turntable slowed, the rasping sound wound down with a noise like a fading air raid siren. He straightened and blinked. The paralleling of past and present again. Perky’s house . . . he’d knocked on the door, almost a week ago, and the music had— Janet groaned. Kevin turned and walked over unsteadily, roughly shook her shoulder. She half-opened her eyes. “Whachoo want?” “Jamie split. He says you crash his bed. I sleep here . . . couch.” She yawned, stretched, and held out her arms, hiccoughing. Kevin hauled her to her feet and danced her to the bedroom, apologizing extensively when his hands unintentionally gripped her rear in the awkward shambling embrace. As soon as they’d lurched into the room she kicked shut the door and pulled him down on the mattress. As he tried to rise she held tightly. “When first met you,” she hiccoughed, “didn’t realize what animal you were.” “Said I was sorry.” “Help me with my clothes.” She sat up, belched daintily, and pulled off her pretty new blouse. Kevin swallowed and turned his head, sobering considerably. He squeezed shut his eyes, as if to obliterate the second’s impression of her jiggling breasts. The girl wore no bra—her torso proud, slim, tanned. The nipples were smallish, dark and coarse. He suddenly wanted out of there fast. “Don’t be embarrassed,” Janet said. “You’re not embarrassed, are you?” “Of course not. What makes you think I’m embarrassed?” She reached to unbutton his reeking shirt. “Because I’m not embarrassed. Why should I be? Cause what’s there to be embarrassed about?” “Of course you’re not, darling,” she peeled off his shirt. Kevin steeled himself for her laughter. When she didn’t laugh he only trembled harder. “I’m not embarrassed, really. I feel fine, fine.” “Look at me.” Softly commanding. He turned his head slowly, forcing himself to look at her face and not at her taunting breasts. Her eyes were unbearably direct. Kevin quailed; his own eyes slunk away. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He willed his gopher to become engorged with blood, to manfully get the job done. But there was no response. None at all. “Your shoes;” Janet said, “take off your shoes. You don’t sleep in your shoes, do you?” Kevin slowly bent to unlace his boots, his fingers numb chubby sausages. It wasn’t fair. There just had to be some kind of credible, wholly acceptable excuse a guy could use under these circumstances to justify an immediate and unavoidable exit. Or at least a damned good reason for not performing. But young men in Kevin’s position are expected to be blessing their stars and horny as all get-out, not trying to dodge the culmination of all their wet little fantasies. Maybe, Kevin thought desperately, maybe she would fall for a last-minute stance of chivalry if he could pull it off 165

Carnival Love Is For Losers convincingly enough. He could say the time wasn’t ripe, that he respected her too much to engage in carnal shenanigans without a longer, deeper relationship. But that was copping out. And real men don’t cop out. He just wanted to make a lasting impression. Yet, according to everything he’d picked up from locker room banter and from pornography, the only thing that would impress her was a great throbbing purple erection—an organ so rigid and immense she would be swept to multiple orgasms on sight. Finally he’d fumbled off his boots and socks. As he sat he felt the bed rock. Janet was standing in front of him, a hand on his shoulder, gracefully wiggling free of her cutoff jeans and soft blue panties. He closed his eyes, his mouth dry. The pressure in his bowels intensified. In his mind he tore through the girlie books and smutty souvenirs of his old bedroom cache. He visualized massive pendulous breasts, great beseeching buttocks, pouting red lips, long silky legs . . . all to no avail. “Lay back,” Janet ordered, whispering huskily in his ear. He hesitated, obeying with a whimper. But when he felt her hands at his fly he bounded to his feet. “I’ll take care of that,” Kevin said. And . . . she was still standing in front of him, a knee against his, cupping her breasts with her hands and pouting sensuously. Feeling sick, he faced his frontispiece to the dorsal while fumbling with the snap and zipper of his Levis. Janet reclined on the bed. C’mon, c’mon, he thought feverishly. Get up, grow big and fat! Just this once, c’mon! He dropped his pants and stepped free, felt Janet’s warm hand on the back of his thigh, steadying him. C’mon, you fucker! Come ON! Grow! Grow! Kevin’s mind began to wander, remarking how filthy his underwear was, how badly he needed a shower. Come on! He whipped down his shorts and surveyed the crucial area. Nada. He’d might as well have just stepped from freezing water. Kevin sat in a crook, ashamed, his traitorous member covered with fat trembling hands. Janet’s arms encircled his neck. He winced. “Look at me, darling Kevin. Look at me, my sweet, sweet lover.” He looked at her, almost in tears. She just had to be the loveliest piece he’d ever seen, a thing sleek and brown and luscious, curving in all the right places. Why then did he want only to cover this tanned gazelle? She placed her hands on his plump pecs and squeezed and caressed. Tremors shot through him at her touch. She leaned forward and, incredibly, began to suck on his left nipple. But, instead of rising to the occasion, his hapless tool only shriveled further. At last she pulled away. “Now you,” she whispered firmly, like a teacher demonstrating for a retarded pupil. She pried his hands from his lap and clamped them on her breasts, dropping back her head and moaning as she maneuvered them roughly. She pulled them down to her waist and, with another moan, looked hard at the place where Kevin’s prong was supposed to be. Dropping his head, Kevin was mortified to find he was weeping softly. “Shh, shhhh,” she soothed, slowly passing a hand down to his scrotum and gently squeezing his cringing jewels. He caught his breath mid-groan, let his head fall against a breast. She began squeezing harder, almost to the point of pain, until the miracle occurred. Kevin’s shrunken pal poked its head out sleepily, understood, and quickly firmed in her hand. “There, there,” Janet crooned. “That’s it, baby. Oh, darling Kevin, oh come on sweetheart.” Kevin ground his teeth. His mind went fuzzy. His machine drew sensation as a bellows draws air, became a vital, demanding, powerful entity. He gasped as she started stroking it. His hands went to her breasts and she pulled him down on top. “Yes,” she hissed as he fondled and tweaked her nipples, “Yes, that’s it! That’s it, darling!” Sweating, grunting like a pig, Kevin mounted and began thrusting away. His aim was wide, 166

Carnival Love Is For Losers but she slid down a hand and eased him in. There was the briefest sensation of dampness. After a moment he remembered who and where he was. Kevin slid off with a smacking sound as their sweaty bellies pulled apart. He lay trembling anew, his heart hammering, hearing her fingertips drumming on the sheet. She turned to face him, hiccoughed. “You were wonderful,” she lied enslavingly, a woman at heart. “That was pure heaven.” She kissed his forehead. Kevin tentatively placed a hand on her hip, drawing current and encouragement. He was her puppy now, her grateful fool. His arm moved to girdle her waist. “No,” she said. Not “not now.” No. She turned away from him, and from the sound of her breathing was instantly asleep.

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Chapter 15 Thrasymachus Was Right How does it feel to have taken that momentous step; to have crossed that seemingly uncrossable chasm separating cocksure manhood from timid boyhood . . . from a boyhood spilling over with hopeless longing, with botched opportunities, with naivete; with pointedly-replayed scenes of transparent poses, with utterly forgettable episodes of slinking down the avenue of that week’s goddess praying she’ll appear—yes, and belaboring the bygone, guilty only of innocence; elaborating on smoke and self-deception, knowing yet refusing to believe; fantasizing, wondering how the act will feel, yes, and whether you’ll faint or go all to pieces with the unbearable, impossible ecstasy of it as you imagine it will be . . . how does it feel to have experienced carnal knowledge and become, through the feverish gymnastics of your beloved, as different from your inexperienced little buddies as night from day? And how does it feel to know you’ve come into the closest possible contact with a warm, giving female—one of those hypnotic little creatures equipped with a variety of slopes, curves, peaks and orifices . . . oh yes . . . strangely fascinating turf your tortured psyche has relentlessly demanded you poke, squeeze, lick, and fondle with every appendage at your frantic body’s command until you moped, until you grated, until you nearly howled with the frustration of it all? What’s it like to have been, at long last, laid? Kevin, attempting to address this all-important question, was being eaten alive, for he was anything but elated. Multiple orgasms, indeed. He was sure Janet had been barely aroused; certainly not beside herself with panting, snarling passion. One fuckup after another. Mike had been right. He was curled on his side, feeling sticky and sore, letting the hot morning sun wash over his chest and face. Beside him was only the impression of her body. Kevin had surfaced from another of those heavy slumbers, having recurrently dreamt he was chasing her sheer rippling figure through some vast crowded building. She had not been avoiding him in the dream, yet had somehow managed to elude him, to lead him on. She had drifted like mist; through a ghostly, droning mob, to the building’s gigantic entranceway. There she’d become tiny in the yawning night. The portal had 168

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right expanded, ever outward, at last dissolving in endless space. Kevin donned his eyeglasses to study the length of his reclining body, flexing comfortably buried muscles. He rolled off the bed and almost collapsed. For some reason his left hip hurt like crazy. It felt like he’d been hit with a sledge hammer. He massaged the hip, and, after determining the house was otherwise unoccupied, took a long and scalding shower, scrubbing until it hurt. Kevin shampooed his hair thoroughly, dried himself, and stood before the hallway’s full-length mirror wearing only the towel around his waist, amazed at the number of bruises on his legs and shoulders. What he saw lacked not only magnetism . . . his image lacked (except for the great incorrigible mane, now inching up into a shapeless wad as each drop transferred its weight to his shoulders) any personality. But as he watched himself dress, he saw the ho-hum reflection transformed, bit by bit, into something dynamic and complex. The crusty boots were, in his eyes, symbolic of his generation’s flight from the plastic and neon garden. The frayed and faded Levis represented an enlightened, wash-and-wear hardiness; the work wear of a people dedicated to building a new world. The DO YOUR OWN THING belt buckle, he felt, justified his appearance and ideology to all the ulcerous, uptight straights he encountered, without his having to say a word. And Lance’s peace medallion was even cooler than a crucifix . . . like, who’s against peace? The mangled leather vest, with its Zig-Zag logo and remaining strung beads, showed he was stone carefree; a carouser, a card, a guy at home underground. The floppy felt hat, besides concealing that malicious shearing of Danny Boy’s, lent him, in his opinion, an added dimension of transience—made him a restless and faceless sometime hobo; Guthriesque frequenter of boxcars and campfires, known and loved nationwide, a laconic but likeable treasure trove brimming with tales of strange encounters, yet made distant by tender memories of horizon-searching lovers. Metamorphosis complete, he stood erect. Now the picture had composition. In Kevin’s eyes the mirror reflected a young man of deep insight and conviction—a wandering soul of conceivably profound intellect, yet certainly of simple means; a hip, happening, tripped-out specimen the Movement could take pride in. The eyeglasses, though, would have to go. They looked so geeky. He removed the damned contraption, and his mirror image became a watery apparition. The solution was, of course, clip-on Polaroid lenses. But he’d never been able to tolerate looking through the things; they made the world appear closed, and the wearer introverted. Kevin wanted to look aloof-cool, not aloof-cold. He decided to check out the house for ideas. In the kitchen, while going through the wide cabinet drawers below the Formica sink counter, he discovered a paper bag containing small glass beads in a variety of shapes and colors. Eleven of these teardrop-shaped beads had tiny clips screwed onto their narrower ends, presumably for fastening the ornaments to lampshade bases and such. These he arranged, while squinting at the table, to dangle from the arms of his glasses. Kevin returned to the mirror. The result was a cross between tacky exuberance and a sort of psychedelic aboriginal silliness. He was satisfied. The reflection was of a multifaceted, serious boy who did not take his seriousness at all seriously. Where was she? Kevin found pen and paper in the kitchen. He sat at the table and stared out the window shaking his head, the beads tinkling against the plastic arms of his spectacles. After a minute he began to write: jooli 5 1967 jime wuts goen awn prtnr howz yr hed im ritn this ltr frum csid up pas mawntura csid iz u vaere hv town man to2le 2gthr an kumpletle trnd 169

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right awn we wr in big sr ystrda kan yoo blev that didn sta thu nit bcuz thu h8 iz supozd 2 b waer its rele hapunen i gs bi now yr wundren hoo i men wn i rit we chk this owt i mt this litl fawx namd janut down thu kost thu da b4 ystrda we hit it awf lik pnut butr an jam man an i bawld hr las nit in this pad im riten frum wutd i tl yoo man didn i sa id b bawpen u bunch uv chix up her i havn mt ne groopz yt but i thenk il drag ulawng this hune i skrood 4 u yl wl it loox lik im gunu hav 2 sin awf now jime thu orgz ubowt 2 strt an iv gawt mi i awn this blawn flowr chiul with jigantik boobz im sndn yoo sum pawt bak 2 kep yoo kumpune sta hi kevin He found his pot right where Jamie left it, on the coffee table, by the carpet stain; near the couch now so mocking in its emptiness. Very little remained. Just a pinch. Kevin idly rolled three cigarettes for Jimmy, found an envelope and stamp in the kitchen, and dropped the letter, with the contraband flattened between the folds, into the envelope. He was left with a single joint, which he determined to save for a moment when its heartening effect could best serve him. He walked to the front door, drew it open. It was going to be another scorcher; another clear, cloudless day, perfect for swimming and riding. Gulls circled like flies beyond the houses he was facing. He gazed for a long time at their locked bikes. With the smell of the sea and the cries of the gulls, he felt cast adrift. Kevin remembered the letter in his hand, and was about to seek a mailbox when he heard an automobile make a racing change down the block and come tearing in the direction of the house. He inched the door until it was nearly shut, leaving a crack to peer out. A primer-gray 1957 Chevy screeched to a halt directly in front of the house. At least seven teenagers were crammed inside. Over the car’s blaring radio Kevin could hear feminine shrieks and masculine cheers. An empty beer can dropped out the passenger-side rear window. The door flew open, and a bleached-blond teenage boy wormed out laughing. He crouched with his fingertips gripping the edge of the car’s roof, staring inside while cheering. Half a minute later Janet emerged giggling, gracefully sidestepping the boy’s grubbing paws. Kevin tightened his grip on the doorknob. The blond boy, laughing lustily, resumed his spot on the back seat. Janet, as gaily pretty as a Sixteen cover girl, lifted and kicked shut the door. She bent at the waist and leaned on the door with her elbows, her rump seemingly thrust out for ogre-voyeur Kevin. Her rear revolved lusciously as she bent a knee back and forth to the music’s rhythm. Now Janet leaned in laughing, grabbing at the boys in the back, who responded by trying to pull her in. She danced out of reach. The driver honked the horn and Janet waved. The car screeched off in first gear, smoke jetting from the rear tires. The girl watched until the car had whipped round the corner. She turned and skipped up the walk. Kevin ducked back into the kitchen, where he busied himself lacing his boots. She froze when she saw him, the smile capsizing, as if he were a stranger caught rifling the bureaus. Gradually the smile returned. A little crooked, only half-lighting her face. “So! So you decided to wake up! I never in my life saw a heavier sleeper. And what a fuss you made!” 170

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right “Fuss?” “Fuss. Disturbance. You know. You whined all night. Every once in a while I’d wake up and you’d be kicking and throwing your arms all around. Then you’d just sort of mumble and start whining again. What a racket!” “Sorry. Guess I was dreaming.” “Well, at least you didn’t snore up a storm like the night before last. What’s that hanging on your glasses?” Kevin reddened. “Oh, I borrowed these, hope you don’t mind. It’s . . . it’s what the Indians do, see. It’s hip to do it because the Indians are hip, and the Indians do it. It’s like a way of showing you’re down on the Establishment, and don’t dig the trip of ruining nature and fucking with the Indians, who are super cool and just want to groove on nature. It’s very hip.” “Weird. Well, are you all ready to go?” “Go?” “Yes, go. Leave the premises. Get on our bikes. Ride up to the park.” She blew out a sigh. “I saw some old friends while you were still in La-la Land. Randy says that Marcie called Ernie’s house and told Mikey they were already up there, at the planetarium. They’d better stay put! I can’t wait to get my hands on them. And Marcie told Tod when he was over at Ernie’s house with Petey-pie that the place is swarming. It’s just like you told me. A real festival of brothers and sisters.” “How about that.” “So let’s go! And did you eat breakfast?” Not really looking for a reply, the girl jumped on eggs, links, and browns. Kevin was muted by the endless barrage of her chatter. While he watched her work he wondered if she’d been out satisfying the urges he’d left unanswered. She might have seduced any one of those guys in the car. Hell, she could have taken care of all of them, repeatedly, and in concert, if what he’d heard of the feminine gender’s sexual insatiability was true. Whatever, she never brought up last night. Kevin thanked his God, sotto voce. If just thinking about . . . it . . . was painful, discussion would surely be torture. And while he ate she wrote Jamie, thanking him for both of them. Before Kevin knew it he was unlocking their bikes. It was less than ninety miles to the park now. If he kept at Janet’s pace they’d be there by tomorrow afternoon. And if she found her friends in the park there wasn’t a chance in Hell he’d be allowed to tag along. No way. They would whisper in a secret language only girls understand, conspiring. He would be a burden, a downer, a gleep; an embarrassing load to be ditched at the first opportunity. It was crucial Janet never find her friends. With any luck the park would be so crowded she’d give up entirely. Kevin swallowed. Maybe, given that scenario, she’d feel his company was better than nothing, and stick with him until the concert was over. Then what? No telling. Perhaps Fate would work something out; there was still time. Time . . . Eddie had told him there was no such thing. But then Eddie had never been in love. Janet blew him back to reality: she gasped and rode away frantically, waving her arms so hard she almost lost control of her bicycle. “Linc!” she cried. “Oh Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln!” Kevin, cursing quietly, followed her to an old flatbed truck stalled off the road. Spouting steam showed above its raised hood. The bed was full of junk—fenders, cardboard, broken-down appliances—everything coated with a thick film of grease. The bed had wood siding leaning dangerously to the right, as though one more shock would send it clattering down the road. The head of an ancient black man appeared from behind the raised hood. His leathery face broke into a dazzling smile. 171

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right “Why, miss Janet—bless mah soul!” He held out his arms as Janet dropped her bike and flung herself against his chest, embracing the stout, crooked old man with squeals of delight. Kevin pulled up unnoticed. “Oh, Linc, what’s it been—three years? And you’re still the same. You haven’t changed a bit.” Linc looked down. “Tree yeahs? Musta been.” He looked back up, and the sun caught the gold of his front caps. “An’ tha’s mighty flattrin’ of ya, sweetheart, tellin’ an old fella like m’self Ah hasn’t changed. But lookit you! A fine growed woman awready, my, my.” And then: “Whups!” The truck’s radiator was erupting jets of rusty water. “Same ol’ truck, an’ she ain’t changed none neither.” He slapped his knee. “’Member when we was mobin’ ya ma’s fuhniture dat day, honey? An’ dis ol’ gal blew right at the innersection of Grace an’ Stanley during Chrissmas rush hour?” He held his side as he chuckled. “We backed up traffic so bad it look like a parkin’ lot, an’ nobody knew what t’ do.” Janet was laughing too. “And then when the tow truck came and lifted up your truck’s front end all mom’s stuff went flying off the back. Boy, was she mad! And they had to back everybody out and close off the street until they could clean up the mess.” Linc looked sober. “Was mighty gracious of your ma not to hold it agin me, though. A mighty fine woman, Missus Campbell.” He heaved his shoulders. “Well, guess I best get busy an’ get the ol’ aich-two-oh outta the back. Though Lord knows she’ll jus’ go agin.” He patted the truck’s fender and winked at Janet. “Dat’s a woman fer ya, honey. Treat her jus’ right, or look out!” He began a hobble to the back of the truck for the ten gallon water container he always kept handy. Janet stopped him short. “Wait, Linc! Let Kevin do it. Don’t strain yourself.” “Kebin?” Linc, turning slowly, noticed the boy for the first time. “Well, bless me, son! Ah didn’ see ya dere. Guess Ah’m slowin’ down fuh real.” He stuck out his hand. Kevin dismounted and shook it, surprised by the strength in the dry old paw. “Kevin!” Janet snapped. “Help Linc with the water can!” He couldn’t help giving her a hard, offended stare. She sounded like a harried housewife berating a naughty child. “Don’t . . . worry about it,” he said slowly. “What kinda guy d’you think I am, anyway?” He climbed onto the bed and found the water container, danced it to the rear, and with Linc’s help lowered it to the ground. Then, to show Janet, he refused Linc’s aid and carried it balanced against his hip to the front of the truck. Linc flapped after him, his face worried. “Nebah carry it like dat, son! Ya gots t’ roll it on the bottom, like dis.” He demonstrated, then creaked back to his normal stoop, face shining with sweat. “Elsewise,” he puffed, “ya gonna end up a bent ol’ man like me.” Kevin scoffed good-naturedly and hefted the can to rest on the frame above the caved-in grille. Old Linc seemed about to lecture him further, but since the can was already in place he just loped around the side, hauled himself into the cab and played with the ignition until the hot engine kicked over. Kevin poured slowly, wrestling with the container. When water began bubbling out the radiator’s mouth he set the container down, much lighter now, and stood by proudly as Linc forced on the bent radiator cap. Linc lovingly eased shut the hood. He stood grinning and mopping his brow while Kevin carried the container to the rear and heaved it onto the bed. Kevin came back strutting. “Ah’m obliged, son. An’ t’ you too, Miss Janet.” He took Kevin’s hand in his right and Janet’s in his left. “But now Ah gots t’ be mobin’ on b’fo’ she blows agin. Ah’m so glad t’ see you agin, missy, an’ right pleased t’ meet you, Kebin.” “How far—” Janet burst out, “how far are you going, Linc? Can you give us a ride, oh pleeeease, Linc, we’re in such a hurry.” “Why sure, honey, if you’re goin’ dat way. Ah gots t’ go clear t’ A’bany, ’counta Mista Bruce 172

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right so kindly offered me two ’frigahraters he don’ need no more. If dat’ll help ya any, of course you can come.” Janet threw her arms around him. “Oh Linc, that’s perfect! We’re going to Golden Gate for a big festival. You could let us off downtown.” She gripped both Kevin’s hands in hers. “What a break! We can be up there in a couple of hours.” She embraced him and squeezed, kissed him full on the lips. Tickled and surprised, he climbed into the truck’s cab beside her after making room for their bicycles in the bed. It wasn’t until they were bouncing up the highway that he began to sweat. The hours were rapidly being shaved off his respite, and, unless the old truck failed to make it, this could very well be the end of the line. Kevin impulsively grabbed Janet’s hand. Thinking he was sharing her excitement, she squeezed his sweaty hand and placed it on her lap. As they bumped along, Janet whispered in Kevin’s ear: “So what do you think of Linc? Isn’t he just the sweetest?” Kevin pondered. When he whispered back, it was with complete sincerity. “Well, you gotta admit, Janet, that he is, no offense, kind of a stereotype. I mean, to be like totally honest. But he sure does have good manners.” Linc turned his head, and for a moment his eyes bore into Kevin’s. “Ah gots good ears, too.” Kevin swallowed. “I didn’t mean that. Not the way it sounded.” “Shuh you did. Dat’s exzackly what you meant.” He shifted his gaze back to the road and shrugged side-to-side. “Mebbe Ah am a stareyatype, son,” he said after a moment, “but ya gots t’ unnerstan’ dat Ah was bohn way back in 1901, an’ dey wasn’ all dat many oppatunities fo’ a young black man growin’ up. T’be honest, dey wasn’ no oppatunities.” He heaved a sigh. “But how ’bout you, Kebin? Speakin’ of stareyatypes, you jus’ gots t’ take a good long look at y’self sometime.” He laughed, reached over and tugged the brim of Kevin’s floppy hat down over the boy’s eyes. “My, my,” he said. “Now ain’t we a pair?” Some time later, as they passed through Watsonville, Linc observed: “Mus’ be a plenny big fes’ibal. Ah nebah seen so many younguns hikin’ dis highway b’fo’.” The truck’s bed was already loaded with over a dozen hitchhikers old Linc had taken pity on, and forty miles per hour was now top speed. Linc hummed in his deep throaty voice, a kind of jazzy gospel; part sustained growling, part formless melody. The humming was tremulous from the old truck’s vibrations, as earthy and hopeful as the endless highway. In Santa Cruz a man completely ignorant of the concert would have known something big was happening farther north, as it looked like ninety percent of all traffic was headed that way, and hitchhikers lined the road, alone and in groups. Linc picked up five more, slowing the truck an equal number of miles per hour. And so it came to pass that, at one o’clock on the fifth of July, old Linc dropped everybody off at the Harrison Street offramp, just across from the Hall of Justice in downtown San Francisco. Before he drove on to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge he motioned Kevin to the cab. Linc leaned out wearing an anxious expression. “Dat’s a might fine young lady dere, Kebin, a mighty fine young lady.” Kevin swallowed. “I know it, sir.” “You keep a real good eye on her, hear?” “Yes sir.” He motioned Kevin closer. “Ah didn’ say nothin’ t’ miss Janet b’fo’,” he whispered, “’cause Ah didn’ wanna be puttin’ the scare into her. But Missus Campbell—dat’s miss Janet’s mama—she call me up on the telephone t’day, at the crack o’ dawn, an’ she was powerful worried, Kebin, Ah means t’ say. An’ she tol’ me she was settin’ the poe-lice out aftah her.” He gripped Kevin’s shoulder 173

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right passionately. “Now, Kebin, Ah don’t wanna see missy Janet put in the jail, no how. She too sweet a chil’, an’ no good would come of it. She wanna have a little fun so she run away from home t’ see dis big ol’ fes’ibal. Dey’s nothin’ unusual ’bout dat. All chillun do it once in a while. But poor Missus Campbell is fit t’ bust on account of it. So Ah says t’ m’self when we was dribin’ up here, Ah says, ‘Linc, ya ain’t good for nothin’ but pickin’ up othah folks’ gahbage, but ya gots to’ help out Missus Campbell who’s such a fine woman, an’ ya can’t be takin’ miss Janet’s fun from her, so jus’ what you gonna do? An’ what Ah figgers is dis: Ah’ll let miss Janet have her fun, an’ Ah’ll call Missus Campbell from a pay phone an’ tell her miss Janet’s safe wit’ me at mah house. Missus Campbell an’ me’s always had us a unnerstandin’, Kebin. She trust me, an’ if Ah tell her missy Janet’s safe she won’ need t’ know no more. Den when Ah comes back down from Richmon’ in a coupla days Ah’ll pick miss Janet up at the bus station obah on Sebent’ Street. She know where it is. Now, Kebin, Ah gots t’ count on you t’ take care of her an’ make sure she be at dat bus station! Ah’ll be dere day aftah t’morrah at six in a aftahnoon, an’ Ah’ll wait all night if Ah has to.” “But Linc,” Kevin whined, “how can I do that? I can’t force her to stay with me, and I just know when she finds her friends they’re all gonna ditch me.” Linc thought and thought, the pleats of his forehead bunched like a monument to worry. “Dey’s bad girls miss Janet’s runnin’ wit’, Kebin. Bring her nothin’ but trouble.” He slapped his hand against the seat. “But Ah nebah lie t’ miss Janet, an’ Ah can’ be startin’ now. You jus’ tell her the truth, Kebin, like what Ah tol’ ya. She a sensible girl, an’ she know Ah wouldn’ be tellin’ her t’ do nothin’ what wasn’ in her own bes’ innerest. You tell her Linc say he want her t’ stay wit’ you, an’ t’ meet me at the bus station when Ah tol’ ya.” “Okay, Linc,” Kevin said, his heart singing. “Gotcha.” “Ah’m countin’ on ya, Kebin,” Linc said, his face still scrunched by concern, “as one stareyatype to anothah.” He waved, and steered the old truck down the road. Kevin almost skipped up to Janet, just emerging from the ladies’ room at the corner Chevron station. For two days he was her appointed guardian, and after that who could say? He’d already made up his mind to accompany her back to her Morro Bay home, and there sleep in the bushes outside her window like a watchdog, protecting her from the advances of foppish young suitors with mod haircuts. He still had money, so he still had hopes of inspiring her affection in one way or another. When that was gone he could get a job, maybe, and pursue her from close to home. If she were to go on a date with some smirking dandy, well then, it would just be a matter of following the guy and, when the moment was right, yanking him into an alley and beating the holy crap out of him. A few instances like that and the offender would get the message. Vicious and dirty and against principle, but that couldn’t be helped and to hell with the Movement and anybody or anything that got in his way. After seeing her beaus with shattered smiles and their Sears and Roebuck specials torn to ribbons, Janet would pay kinder attention to the faithful young man who simply would not go away. She’d see the light. Eventually. If it took a spotlight. “Got some bad news for you, Janet,” he said as they rode down Harrison Street. “Linc told me your mom’s got the pigs looking for you. They don’t know you’re up here yet, but I think your mom’s got the idea, ’cause she called Linc this morning before we ran into him. Linc wants me to look after you for a couple of days. That’ll give him time to cool your mom. Then he says he wants us to come back with him to Morro Bay.” “It,” Janet said bitterly, “figures. Sometimes I think she can read my mind. It’s just like that nag to get the cops to do the dirty work for her.” Her mood changed abruptly. “Oh, Kevin, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was running away. I hope you don’t think I was trying to keep secrets from you. It’s just that I thought you might go off and leave me if you knew.” 174

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right Kevin goggled her. “Listen, Janet, I don’t know how to put this, but you . . . never have to worry about me leaving you. Ever. Janet—I’ve been trying to say this since I first met you, but I can’t get my mouth to work right. What I mean is, what I mean is, I mean . . . I mean I think you’re a really far-out chick. I don’t know how else to put it.” She stared. Hard. By common impulse they stopped. They traded looks for a long moment, panting. Janet blushed prettily. “Do you really mean that, what you said about you think I’m a far-out chick?” Her eyes were downcast, the lids softest pink below the suntan. Kevin tightened the grip on his handbrakes, and when he spoke it was with the heartfelt naivete of those two syllables soldering matrimony. “I do,” he spewed. “I mean, I did. Mean what I said, I mean. What I said I meant. The first time. Yes.” “That’s just because you happened to meet me on the road. You’d say that to anyone.” When she fished for compliments she had an endearing, albeit melodramatic, habit of turning her head to one side. Now she looked as far behind as her neck would allow. “Oh no!” Kevin said quickly, eyes wide in pleading sincerity. “I’d think you were far-out whether I happened to meet you first or not. Really. Honestly.” “You’re just being sweet.” “No, believe me, I mean it! I think you’re just the nicest and the coolest and . . . the foxiest chick I ever met. I don’t mean that dirty-like, when I say foxy, I mean more like pretty . . . and wholesome—like a real sister of the revolution. You know.” “You’re just saying that.” Kevin paused for breath, seeking the right word, the apt phrase. “No, really, you should read the mail I write home. It’s so flattering, you’d . . . you’d think I was in love.” She looked up, her stare unbearably direct. Kevin swallowed, realizing he’d put his foot in it again. Why were those three little words so very difficult to say? And was it just all the pot he’d smoked, or had he suddenly become intuitively aware, in the congealing hush of her crosshairs stare, of an ages-old prim bitchiness that had plagued man throughout his occupancy of this planet? But suddenly he saw himself genuflecting at the base of her pedestal, puckering to receive that slender extended foot for the latest in a series of meek offerings. Kevin gnashed air, trying to find the correct digressive response to the prompting of her eyes, though the only assuaging answer hung in the air between them like a spider from its web. Well? Her eyes demanded. Aren’t you? A jeep stopping at the light saved him from having to reply. He was spared because an extremely powerful radio on the front seat made an audible reply nearly impossible. A moving popular song by Scott McKenzie now advised millions of restless teenagers over the AM airwaves: If you’re going to San Francisco, Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. If you come to San Francisco Summertime will be a love-in there. Kevin and Janet turned with spontaneous feelings of awe and tenderness and fellowship; authentic flower children now, pilgrims in the holiest of holy cities. And the question didn’t have to be answered. Of course he was in love with her. If you’re going to San Francisco, You’re going to meet some gentle people there. 175

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In the streets of San Francisco, Gentle people with flowers in their hair. In this jeep in the streets of San Francisco were three men barely out of their teens. The young men were obviously Army fodder, for each had hair cut so short he had to be fresh from boot camp. The driver had orchids taped to his scalp, and the guy in the back seat was holding a laundry basket filled to the brim with freshly picked wildflowers. They all waved, and Kevin and Janet waved back. The driver honked the jeep’s horn maniacally, made the peace sign with his free hand. The ex-warrior in the back seat laughed and began strewing flowers in all directions. The light changed and the jeep roared off in a shower of petals and stems. Janet waved after them, delightedly clapping her hands as she skipped into the street. She came back pelting Kevin with flowers. “Hold still!” she commanded, and reached into her purse. She fished out a saucer-sized badge proclaiming I LOVE RINGO in black on shocking pink, and used this to fasten a fan of wildflowers to his hat, overriding his frantic objections with equally passionate acclaim. “No, really,” he said desperately, catching his reflection in the glass of a parked car, “I mean, really, I can’t; it’s silly like this. You don’t want to ride with a guy who looks like a fool, do you?” “I just told you,” she said sharply, “you don’t look silly. You look divine. Now hush up and quit complaining. After all you’ve said about the Revolution, about letting your freak flag fly, now you want to look all stiff and sober.” “No, it’s not like that,” Kevin corrected her gently. “There’s no one more into the Movement than I am. It’s just that this badge, well, it’s not me.” “Why not?” she leapt. “Don’t you love Ringo? I thought you said you thought the Beatles were practically the greatest thing to ever happen to the whole world.” “I did. I mean I do. The Beatles almost single-handedly shaped the Movement, and I think they’re the heaviest group of all time. But it’s like I don’t love them. I mean, they’re guys, and I’m a guy. It’s just not right.” “And why not? You yourself said that society has perverted the word love to having sex meanings only. Now you seem ashamed of the word.” Kevin dropped his hands. “How can I make you understand . . . guys have to be careful nowadays with the impression they make. If you’re even friendly with another guy, like if you just put your arm around his shoulders for a second, people will think you’re a fag.” “Oh, that’s just silly. That’s all in your mind.” “Sorry,” Kevin said firmly. “I wouldn’t wear this thing in public for the world.” Janet folded her slender brown arms across her chest and looked at him coolly, from beneath half-closed eyelids. “You wouldn’t do it for me?” she asked quietly. He didn’t like the sound of that; it was much too like a threat. His mouth fell open in mute rebuttal, and a furious finger came up preparatory to a firm wagging in front of Janet’s unflinching face. But he was sensitive enough to fear she might actually just push off and pedal away without him if her childish demand was not met, and the now-you-listen-here gesture wimped out to one of ear-reaming pensive consideration. He removed the finger and absently displayed it as in lecture, its tip shiny with wax. “Tell you what,” he said compromisingly, sensing one of her tantrums just itching to break surface, “I’ll wear it a while for your sake—but first person makes fun of it or gives me one strange look . . . off it comes and back in your purse it goes. Is it a deal?” “It’s a deal!” Janet piped, her face all rosy pretty smile. She stuck out her tiny hand. 176

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right Kevin shook hands, a smirk on his face. She thought she had it all over on him, but he could play her game. The first person to see him would laugh uproariously; he’d have made his point and reestablished masculinity as the authoritative force in a relationship. But as he looked around it hit him . . . he’d really arrived: some of the denizens were so freaky-looking he felt his appearance was tame by comparison. There were men with radically bushy beards and hair reaching clear to their waists, their bodies painted and clad in bizarre and colorful garments; a young man naked save a dirty rag wound up like a diaper, sitting lotuswise at the corner of 12th and Folsom and mumbling a garbled pseudo-Hindustani; a filthy-but-happy group of new arrivals, all hair and rags and backpacks and beads, the only female member dragging along two naked screaming children; and of course the inevitable train of shaven, pale, punished-looking Hare Krishna chanters, rattling their tambourines and jabbering to high heaven or wherever, trailing their diaphanous, flesh-colored gowns behind them. As for the conservative populace, sick to tears of the sideshow siege; they were too conditioned to this vivid new wave to pay much attention to Kevin and his I LOVE RINGO badge. They saw nothing remarkable about his getup, and if pressed would probably have said they had taken it for granted that he did love Ringo, passionately and unwaveringly, and that that was his business and more power to him. And so Janet came out on top, and Kevin grumblingly admitted his error in prematurely judging these obviously hip inhabitants. In time he grew proud of the badge and searched for other goodies to enhance his appearance. The leather fringing of his vest soon had a punctured bottle cap or nickel washer suspended from every strand; he wore additional flowers on his boots, the stems secured under the laces. And this was only the threshold; a few more miles and they’d be at the park itself. If only Eddie could be here, Kevin thought remorsefully, instead of rotting away in some dungeon for a crime he had never even committed. It may have been merely an outlet for his own guilt, but suddenly Kevin inflated with rage. What crime? For possessing the leaves of a harmless plant in the name of the Revolution? For lovingly offering his energy in the tutoring of his fellow man? For minding his own business and trying to live in peace? For this gentle little Eddie was being dragged to the gallows by some mammoth, slavering, porcine degenerate in a funny dark costume, whose occupation was lawful sadism and whose orders were being excreted by grim and savvy black-suited politicians who kept their greed for money and power hidden behind a mask of law and order? Whose law? What order? Officers of the Peace: what hypocrisy! Eddie had been kidnapped, Kevin suddenly realized. Forcibly removed by order of those deranged politicians, who, Kevin supposed, had probably kept poor little Eddie under surveillance for years, wiretapping his home and shadowing him to school and back. With a gasp of horror Kevin understood: Eddie had been bagged by those two brutal robots and driven somewhere to be grilled and eliminated. In all probability the sensitive, kind, harmless boy was already long dead; incinerated or fed to starving captured illegal aliens, or whatever the Government did with its victims once they had been milked of all possible information to use against other Innocents. And Kevin’s confiscated grass? Used the same way; planted on some preoccupied flower child the Government suspected was guilty of being loving and generous, and of other egregiously intolerable attitudes. Snuffed out by the machine. So Eddie had explained it that cold soggy night last November, when he and Kevin had fled to the garage to escape the bellowing tantrums of Big Joe, who, in his purposeless and directionless rage, had just threatened to mutilate Kevin’s mother, and had instead literally torn the door off the refrigerator on finding his beer supply dwindled to a single twelve-ounce can of Eastside. Like rats the boys had scurried outside, and, finding it too wet to walk anywhere, had climbed into the little wooden garage loft. Big Joe had made a tremendous impression on Eddie, who blamed the Government without compromise for Joe’s erratic behavior. It was The System itself, Eddie had claimed, which brought on those 177

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right violent reactions he described as “terminal sociocultural aggression,” a condition shared to some extent by everyone over thirty. In excited whispers Eddie had expounded on his theories, which, he said, were actually ingrained truths revealed under an LSD trance. It seemed ages ago, when man was at the halfway stage separating quadruped and full-fledged biped, beings from another galaxy had decided, for some reason Eddie said had not been related in his trance, to experiment with the genes of these dull-witted creatures, using their advanced technology to inspire in the species a tendency toward unreasonable avarice. Though of long range, this influence was impermanent and, according to Eddie, mankind was just now shaking free of it. Hence the new generation was actually the first generation not dominated by this extraterrestrial power, the first generation capable of free will. It was obvious, Eddie had explained. The change was everywhere. Kevin, who had recently seen a movie that was coincidentally nearly parallel with Eddie’s theory, had been excited by this portentous train of thought. Only the day before he had been a self-pitying, unpopular, futureless nobody, and all of a sudden he was a dignified member of an advanced culture lifting its shaggy head to claim its birthright to a planet gone mad with industrialism and warlust. And Eddie, becoming more animated, had described certain communities where this evolution into the Age of Aquarius was taking place at an accelerated rate. The names of these communities had had faintly familiar and exotic flavors: Greenwich Village, Haight-Ashbury, Big Sur. In particular Eddie had raved about Haight-Ashbury, a district of a few square miles next to a great big gorgeous park named Golden Gate after the famous waterway connecting ocean and bays. In Haight-Ashbury, Eddie had contended, people sprinkled hallucinogens on their morning cornflakes as liberally as sugar, and as a result everybody was in a state of euphoria around the clock. Public nudity, Eddie had maintained, had the sanction of City Hall, which was decorated with Persian tapestries and gave away magic mushrooms at the Department of Peace. Marijuana, pre-rolled and packaged, was sold in vending machines, profits providing new strobe lights for the community’s street lamps. Haight-Ashbury, Eddie had explained, was world headquarters for the revolt against the power pox, the deadly malady of the dollar. And the Flower Children weren’t content to let the old age die out naturally, for by then the world might be too corrupt and contaminated to survive. It was touch and go, and those revolutionaries actually present in the Sacred City during the fall of the old social order would go down in history as heroes, and become Grand Gurus on the cabinet of the Great Guru, who, Eddie had pointed out, was presently a tossup between George Harrison, Donovan Leitch, and Dr. Timothy Leary. And the method of revolt, Eddie had concluded, was child’s play: a simple formula of passive resistance, indefatigable intoxication, willful poverty, indiscriminate loving, and rock and roll idolization. That had all sounded pretty good to Kevin, and he had been filled with envy of all those lucky souls who were so fortunate to be on that hallowed ground while history was in the making, and wasn’t it a drag that he and Eddie had to be in the thick of one of the more industrialized areas in the world while the great carcinoma of greed closed about them, with Haight-Ashbury only four hundred miles away? Eddie had looked up from studying his tightly clasped hands and said, “Three hundred eighty-six and a third miles,” and then grown pensive. After a moment of silence he had looked back up and said with pent excitement, “And it’s all beautiful coast all the way. I’ve got a bike.” Then he was silent again, having read nothing but a formless enthusiasm in Kevin’s face. Finally he’d said, “Do you?” “Do I what?” “Have a bike.” “No.” Eddie grew increasingly restless, and pretty soon he’d fished a fat marijuana cigarette from his pocket and raised an eyebrow quizzically at Kevin. Uncertain of the procedure, Kevin had imitated Eddie’s intense expression, and finally Eddie had said, “Do you?” “Do I what?” “Smoke pot.” “When?” “Ever.” “No.” “Want to try it?” “Right now?” “Sure.” “Wow!” So Eddie had fired up the joint, taken a deep hit, and passed it to his new pal. Again imitating Eddie, Kevin had sucked hard on the joint, and, though the urge to 178

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right cough the smoke back out had been powerful, he had held it in long as possible to impress little Eddie. After two more deep hits he had become aware of a number of novel and agreeable sensations, such as a physical lightness, a pleasant congestion within the skull, an increased sensitivity to sound and color. There were also quite a few not-so-agreeable sensations. A sort of ululating claustrophobia, an almost panicky urge to be alone, an almost panicky terror of being alone, a stuffiness of the nasal passages, an acute sense of embarrassment. Eddie had apparently been going through this same blunted trauma, for, although there were all kinds of things to talk about, the boy’s tongue and brain had simply refused to cooperate. Both he and Kevin had been wary of speaking first, and perhaps saying something that would be misconstrued and need taxing explanation, or, worse, something that would be taken as offensive. The problem was the duration of this silence. The longer either of them waited to speak, the more difficult and less valid the breaking of the silence would be. And so the silence had extended and the animal electricity had arced between them until they had simultaneously turned their heads to face the rectangular panels of the loft’s doors, as if each thin piece of wood were a picture window revealing some activity without of interest to both. And suddenly the doors had been whipped outward with insane force to reveal gargantuan Joe in all his senseless, wanton wrath, his beet-red face contorted by a hideous snarl. Yet there had been no look of surprise on that face, only a perverse triumph, and this suggested he’d been standing there, clad only in his foul jockey shorts and sweat-soaked T-shirt, for a good while, listening and waiting for the proper moment to pounce. And pounce he had. He ripped Kevin out of the loft by the hair and hurled him across the garage. He silenced screaming little Eddie with a glassy stare, then turned and stalked his son, stamping furiously until the great heart staggered in its struggle, stalled and sent Big Joe crashing on his back. And Kevin’s mother had come barreling in like the demon in a cheap horror film, hurled herself on Joe and then on Kevin, until a nick-of-time rescue by the neighbors. It had taken eight strong firemen to lift, haul, drag and heave elephantine Joe to the ambulance, and then they’d discovered that trying to fit Big Joe into the ambulance was like trying to cram a baby grand piano into a station wagon. While they were sweating over the problem, Joe, who by all rights should have been stone dead, somehow had pulled out of it long enough to embrace two firemen with the reserve of his fury, crushing the pelvis of one and dislocating both arms of the other. Then, swearing profusely, he had slipped back into unconsciousness. The two injured firemen had been taken to hospital in one ambulance, Kevin’s hysterical mother in the other, and neighbors, cops, firemen, and Y.M.C.A. members had pooled for a group effort, finally heaving mammoth Joe onto the bed of a neighbor’s pickup truck, thereby transporting him to Santa Monica General. Kevin had watched all this activity in hiding, cowering with little Eddie behind the avocado’s great trunk. And after all the official vehicles had departed Eddie had run to the loft to get the joint butt, fearing the F.B.I. would respond to all the excitement by sending a special squad to the garage, ferreting out the roach, and somehow getting his fingerprints off it. Then, Eddie was sure, there would be no rest. The Government would track him to the darkest corner of the planet. When Eddie returned he found Kevin sprawled in the dirt, face pale and tongue bleeding badly. Kevin wouldn’t respond to Eddie’s shaking him by the shoulders, nor to the few gentle slaps Eddie administered. Kevin’s eyes had been rolled up and his mouth working strangely, making drowning sounds. Spooked, Eddie had used the garden hose to soak Kevin down. Kevin had choked, flailed his arms about, and come to his senses retching on his knees. The fit, a mystery to both boys, had been attributed to the stress Kevin had undergone. Kevin had spent that night at Eddie’s, and the very next day Joe was back and as full of fury as ever, though his skin had taken on a waxy look and his hair grown grayer overnight. But there was a change from then on. Kevin had been allowed to look the way he wanted to look, and Joe had even, perhaps out of some long-suppressed sense of guilt, decided the wretched little family should 179

Carnival Thrasymachus Was Right celebrate Christmas that year and offered to buy Kevin a present of whatever the boy might want. Kevin had passionately specified he wanted to find a ten-speed under, or next to, the tree (Joe had gone on a rampage that Christmas morning, murdered the neighbor’s Great Dane and made matchsticks of the Christmas tree, but that’s another story), and Joe had complied with one of the finest ten-speeds Peugeot puts on the market. Kevin and Eddie had become riding buddies, which meant that Mike, Eddie’s old riding buddy, had to accept Kevin or lose Eddie’s friendship, and the three, under Eddie’s tutelage, made plans for what Eddie called “The Ultimate Run.” That had all taken place over half a year ago. And now Eddie was dead and Mike was at large and Kevin was looking for an excuse to get the hell out of San Francisco and down to Morro Bay. A lot of growing up had taken place mighty fast, and this particular ass had already learned to equate the carrot with the stick. Just so: There’s an unbearable, almost unbelievable lesson which self-respecting human beings must come to accept in the real world—a lesson which’ll be lost on all the shallow, materialistic, hypocritical anybodies out there; fighting, fucking, and finagling away in the carnival, with their silly religions, marriages, careers, and assorted bullshit fronts: the facades they so neatly slip behind to gainsay the very appetites which drive them, crucifix in one hand and genitalia in the other, to transmogrify the natural, healthy outcome of every vital activity . . . They are legion. We must ignore them, for we cannot possibly survive them. They are pumping out impressionable babies, and indoctrinating them into the ways of the herd, even as we, peering aghast, perish. We must ignore them, for they can only diminish us. They make us digress. And burn. Through the onslaught of their slimy, overt mundaneity, through their celebration of—nay, through their worship of—mediocrity, they compel us to ream them intellectually, to speak freely, and to, in moments of stolen quiet, question the worth of our noble ideals. And sometimes they can even drive us to write angry, profane-yet-profound prose. They make us want to go postal, and to desecrate their gaudy altars, and to stand on street corners—erect, indignant, articulate, intense—and cry to the deaf stampede: “The Big Camera is whirring, sure enough, and it wants you all to perform for it; just as loudly, just as lewdly, just as publicly as you possibly can. It wants you to strut your stuff. You’re right! You’re right! You are special. You can tap and shuffle and wiggle and pose. You can feign and parry, you can huff and bluff. You can and will do anything to get what you want, then claim you’re doing it for your mate, or your children, or your country, or your deity. The Big Camera has known it all along: you’re stars! So get yours, you soulless, posturing pigpeople. Go preen. The great lesson is this: Life, for the individual who doesn’t possess the ‘brains’ to ‘make it’ as an ass kisser, is over at conception. “And yes, the Power of Denial will get you by. But anybody who buys into this game is guilty of collusion, of dumping on his own potential and perpetuating the Pig. Pretentious bastards. You are why the world is a sty. You have social-esteem. How dare you lay claim to self-esteem. You know you’re all frauds. “You know.” Ah, the voices, the voices! Hi, Mom! Rest In Piss.

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People In Motion

Chapter 16 People In Motion “Do you—do you realize where we are?” Janet asked. Kevin looked up, shooing away the naughty voices and unpleasant memories. “Where?” She indicated a west-running street sign. “Look! Haight Street!” Kevin pulled out his San Francisco street map, scanned it excitedly. “Why, according to my map, we’re only about a mile from the center of the universe!” Janet waltzed her bike next to his. Together they spread Kevin’s map over their handlebars. The paper was so crumpled and ridged he had difficulty pinpointing their location. After ripping it down the middle he gave up trying to smooth it. “Look!” he said. “Here we are, on the corner of Haight and, um, Gough Street. We follow Haight under that overpass, going . . . west; we go west until we hit Ashbury Street. Haight Street and Ashbury Street!” Janet looked at him sultrily, from between narrowed eyelids. Her nostrils were flared. “HaightAshbury,” she breathed. “Can you believe it? Aren’t you excited?” “Of course I am. I’m excited for you.” “It’s . . . it’s like a dream,” Kevin mumbled. He grabbed her hand. They looked long and hard at one another. At last Kevin cried, “Let’s go!” So they pedaled down the street, blending right in: two more straggling teenagers in the going groove. This asphalt river flowed straight and true to the Holy Corner; to the spot Eddie had described as the terminus of all streets. Already Kevin sensed an exalted change in the denizens about him: their hair appeared to be longer and totally neglected, their clothes downright ragged. They all seemed to be in hallucinogen trances, wandering aimlessly, gathering in lethargic groups along the river’s banks. Fascinated, he quickly made his way downstream. “Wait!” Janet called. “Wait up, Kevin!” With a start he realized he’d been pedaling hard, neglectful of the girl. It was the first time 181

Carnival People In Motion she’d lost her grip on his heart, and it scared him. He looked back. He’d gained almost a block on her. Kevin, shaking his head, imagined himself spending the rest of his life searching these unfamiliar streets. She looked so pretty and childlike struggling to narrow the distance between them. He felt like kicking himself. “I’m sorry,” she said, breathing hard. “I can’t ride that fast.” He stood straddling his bike’s frame, his mouth hanging open. Janet mimicked the look, eyes crossed and tongue lolling. “Well? What are we waiting for?” Kevin’s face relit. “Look!” he cried. “There’s Webster Street. C’mon. Not too far now.” He called off the streets as they were crossed, his heart swelling anew. And so at long last they’d reached their Mecca, and found themselves. There their selves stood, panting, at the corner of Haight and Ashbury, drinking it all in. The area was crawling with young people in wild dress, and with children in no dress at all. The tenements lining Haight Street were marred by graffiti urging the rapid and indiscriminate consumption of drugs both hard and mild, and the immediate disbanding of all American military forces. Garbage was heaped in the gutters. The air reeked with the smells of sewage and incense and burning marijuana. But Kevin noticed all this peripherally. His stare was fastened on a single signpost on the intersection’s northeast corner. He slowly walked his bike toward this signpost, taking measured, pious steps. When he reached the pole he tenderly wrapped his fingers round its warm, coarse surface, a recently discarded wad of chewing gum adhering to his palm. Janet spoke close to his ear, “I wish I’d brought my Brownie. This is a moment to always remember.” Kevin regarded her from on high, his eyes translucent, his hair gray. “Wow!” Janet said. “Do you ever look spaced-out!” He pulled himself together, took a deep breath and let it out with a long sigh. “I feel like I’ve lived here all my life. I feel like I belong here.” “You look like you belong here.” Kevin lit his last joint. “Let’s meet The People!” They sauntered up the sidewalk, steering their bikes carefully, and Kevin, in the grip of his emotions, impulsively wrapped his left arm around Janet’s slender waist. She pulled free immediately, then giggled and let her head rest against his shoulder. He squeezed her body against his, and, carried away, planted a sloppy swashbuckling kiss full on her lips. A sudden lancing pain pinched his eyes and passed. She gripped his hand and they skipped along, laughing, flashing the peace sign at everyone they saw. Kevin’s heart was hammering like a blown transmission. The sidewalks were jammed with characters of every possible description, the air tumultuous with their mingled conversations. Street poets spewed their antiauthoritarian doggerel to constantly splintering groups. A chubby girl of twenty, completely naked, sat atop an overturned city trash bin, laughing gaily and pelting pedestrians with begonias. Farther down the street stood two bemused beat policemen, grinning helplessly amid a throng of chanting, pot smoking youngsters. Kevin flashed the peace sign at the officers and they smiled. Silly with the moment, he went so far as to offer a hit off his joint. The officers looked at him uncertainly, then one shook his head and smiled. Kevin shrugged and grinned idiotically, smoke squirting from his nostrils. He and Janet waved goodbye and both officers flashed the peace sign. “This,” Kevin cried, “this is just too much. It’s just like what Eddie said; greater than I ever imagined.” “What?” Janet laughed. She was having trouble staying by his side and hearing him. The knot of their hands was constantly broken and reformed as they made their way through the crowd. The 182

Carnival People In Motion din of voices was astounding. “I said I love you!” he shouted, snatching her hand again. “What? Oh, look, look.” And he was desperately holding on as she wove her way to a tenement porch cluttered with wine bottles and grinning teenagers. A banner decorated with scribbled hearts and peace symbols announced THIS IS THE SUMMER OF LOVE from above a boardedover door. On the stoop a stoned girl was holding a frazzled Afghan, its once-beautiful coat choked by filth and mange. The beast stank from six feet away, and the smell was no laughing matter. The intensity of the stench left no doubt about the advanced nature of the animal’s condition, and the miasma had infected the unknowing flower children on the porch; it was in their clothing, their hair, in their lungs as they breathed. The dog’s tiny yellow eyes were bright and staring, but at a scene the flower children were blind to. The hound was wearing a silly homemade hat hanging low over his long muzzle. Patches reading LOVE and PEACE were sewn into the hat’s crown. A sweater had been converted to fit the dog, and he wore it now with sweltering ignominy. There was a pouch sewn on the sweater’s chest like a marsupium, and in this pouch an equally mangy alley cat was secured by lengths of colored twine, only its head and forepaws free to languish in the light and confusion. Every now and then the Afghan would give the cat a rasping lick with his tongue, occasionally receiving a lick in return. The poor cat had miniature sunglasses, with peace symbols painted on the lenses, strapped to its head. “Oh!” Janet cried breathlessly. “Aren’t they darling!” The spaced-out girl looked at them with a warm, hallucinogenic smile. “Peace,” she said. “Peace!” they responded. “This is proof that animals can live in harmony,” the girl said, scratching the quarter-sized ringworm patches practically covering her forearm. She gestured globally, indicating the street to be a working model of humankind in its entirety. “Out here’s proof the whole world can live in harmony. Can you dig that?” “I can dig it,” Kevin said. Janet was in loving genuflection, holding the dog’s head while scratching the cat behind its ears, murmuring affectionate gibberish, kissing the animals as they licked her chin. She looked up with small tears streaking her face, at the several teenagers crowding around her and the dog. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she bubbled. The youngsters all agreed it was simply marvelous, contagious tears popping from their eyes and rolling down their pinched, grinning faces. The dog’s owner wiped her eyes with the back of a scabbed hand. “He’s a hip and loving dog because he’s a high dog.” She lit a pipe, its bowl full of hashish, and filled her mouth with smoke. The Afghan appeared to know what was coming, for he lowered his head and closed his eyes. The girl tugged at his scrawny neck, but the animal wouldn’t budge. She finally took hold of his muzzle and forcibly turned his head, blowing the smoke directly into his quivering face. She repeated the process three times and released her hold. The beast drooped his head wolfishly, strings of unhealthylooking saliva hanging from black gums. “He likes it,” the girl said. “We stoke his head every time we get high.” “Who wouldn’t like it,” Kevin said. “There’s a word for it, for what’s happening here,” the girl continued. “It’s called symbiosis. And he’s digging it. It’s almost like I can tell what he’s thinking. It’s like he’s tripping on all this heavy scene and wondering why his ancestors ran around scarfing each other up, when they could have been cool and grooved.” “Yeah,” Kevin said. He was inspired. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe in the future all the wild animals will get hip and become peaceful. Maybe someday they’ll all turn into, like, vegetarians, and 183

Carnival People In Motion stop bumming each other’s trips.” “Oh, that would be heavy,” the stoned girl crooned. “And it can happen. It’s happening here!” The Afghan abruptly shook from head to tail. He snapped at something imaginary in the air, retched and sneezed convulsively. The cat tried to bail, but only became further entangled in twine. “He’s cool!” somebody cried. “He just needs another hit!” As Kevin and Janet proceeded down the sidewalk they watched two of the youngsters on the steps helping the girl hold the dog still while she administered ever-increasing doses of smoke into the creature’s grimacing face. They stopped to admire a group of musicians at the entrance to an alley blocked off by a police car. Lavishly ornamented blacks tapped and palmed conga drums to the abbreviated gyrations of a toothless old woman rattling a tambourine. There were flutists and harmonica players, half a dozen guitarists. A painted young woman wearing only a pair of police hats wiggled her way among the musicians, her arms thrown back, her head lolling. The two hatless policemen sat on the hood of their squad car, nodding and clapping their hands to the reggae-like music. A battered tin can was displayed on a coffee table just inside the ring of onlookers. A sign taped to this table read: DONATIONS. HELP THE CLAYTON ST. FREE CLINIC HELP OTHERS. GOD BLESS YOU. LOVE AND PEACE. Occasionally a figure would step from the audience to drop in a few coins. Kevin impulsively took a ten dollar bill from his wallet, held it up for the makeshift band to see, let it fall in the can. “Outtasight, brother!” called a guitarist, quickly echoed by the other musicians. There was scattered applause, a flurry of hooters just for Kevin, a brief ascension in donations. “Kevin!” Janet said, as they continued along the sidewalk. “How can you just give away so much money?” “What the hell,” he replied. “That was for Eddie.” He took her hands. “Janet, money doesn’t mean anything anymore. What’s money? Money’s shit. It’s like there’s a revolution going on! Everything, I mean everything’s gonna change! The new world won’t be built on money. It’s gonna be built on love and sharing.” “Right,” said a haggard young ruffian who had witnessed Kevin’s charity and followed them. “I can dig what you’re saying, man, and the Haight is where it’s all happening. You’re really beautiful, man, and your girl’s beautiful, and the whole fucking world’s beautiful. But it’s like I got to eat, man, and so does my old lady and our kid. If you can lay a little bread on me, man, I’d sure appreciate it.” As he extended his hand Kevin saw a skeletal arm pocked with the telltale scars of hypodermic injections. Kevin glumly reached into his change pocket and fished out his remaining coins, perhaps two dollars worth. “That was all the bills I had,” he lied, “but you can have what change I’ve got.” The panhandler scraped the coins off Kevin’s palm with a rigid claw. “Thanks, man,” he said suspiciously, mentally balancing his chances of snatching Kevin’s wallet. He looked at Kevin’s face out of dark and sunken eyes. “That’s all you got, man?” When Kevin nodded he whirled and elbowed his way through the crowd to the shadows of a tenement. “Peace!” Janet called after him. She pressed herself against Kevin. “That was sweet of you. That poor man and his family will be able to eat now. You’re so right. Love and sharing are all that matter.” Kevin grunted evasively. “I wasn’t telling the truth,” he confessed after a moment. “I’ve still got plenty of cash in my wallet. But we’ve got to eat, don’t we? And how about dope? We’ve just got to stay high. And speaking of dope—” He was cut off by a wild shriek from another stoop, where a seated group was holding hands in a tight circle round a disheveled woman in her late forties. The woman’s makeup was streaked, her 184

Carnival People In Motion blouse torn. “Oh, my God!” she was screaming. “Help me, it’s coming, it’s everywhere, Jesus God it’s beautiful, help me, help me!” Her face was a fluid mask, running the emotional gamut from weeping bliss to raving horror. The people around her were a gently bobbing wreath, attempting to console her. “Yes;” they were saying, their voices deep and chilly, “yes, we’re friends . . . help you . . . yes . . . you’re beautiful . . . yes.” “It’s the acid!” the woman screamed. “It’s God. IT’S GOD!” Her voice lashed Kevin’s nerves. He wanted to pull Janet away, but the sidewalk’s human tide had encountered an obstruction somewhere out there. They were forced to remain where they were, helplessly watching the woman thrash about. Kevin, reminded of his own harsh experiences on LSD, had an idea of what she was going through. “Help me!” she shrieked, her head flopping and rolling on a neck suddenly shorn of muscle control. “God, it’s beautiful, it’s beau-tiful—it’s the acid, the acid.” She began raking her long nails down her face. “Somebody help me!” “Yes . . .” the circlers sang, “yes . . . it’s fine, you’re fine . . . the acid is God . . . yes. It’s the acid. The acid’s fine . . . you are God . . . God is fine . . .” Kevin’s face began to melt. He needed to run, and fast. There came a pair of spine-jarring crashes. Without having to look down, he realized that bolts had just been hammered through his feet. A massive member split the sidewalk just in front of him. Kevin seized a man’s shoulder and spun him round. “Hey, man, why doesn’t somebody help her? Can’t you see she’s freaking out?” “Yes . . .” the man replied eerily, “. . . don’t worry, everything’s fine . . . I’m fine and you’re fine . . . acid is God.” Kevin let go the shoulder as if the man had bubonic plague. He looked into eyes that were glassy whirlpools, tore his feet from the sidewalk. The monster went limp. “Let’s get out of here!” “. . . Yes . . .” Janet said. Kevin grabbed her wrist and side-armed a path through the crowd. Much subdued, they walked their bikes along the sidewalk, their eyes downcast, hearing the mumblings of motionless characters loitering in storefronts. It was the sidewalk come-on of dealers. “Mescaline?” the voices would offer, popping into the mind like memories. “Speed? Acid?” Kevin shook his head with gathering urgency. “Crystal, man?” “Hey hey, got some dynamite Primo here.” “Dust . . . hey man, dust over here.” “Barbs?” Soon Kevin was too depressed to continue. “Sorry,” he mumbled, “but my head’s getting all bummed out.” “That’s okay. I know just how you feel.” Janet found a few vacant trash-covered steps in front of a boarded-over door. They sat down wearily. “Everything’s groovy,” Kevin said. “It’s just that those acid trippers brought me down a little.” “There, there.” “We just need to rest a while.” “Sure,” Janet said. “We can watch it all from here.” There was a lot to watch. Colorful paraders bore pickets demanding America leave Viet Nam alone. Homosexual couples, hand in hand, promenaded with smiles of triumph. In the middle of the street a group of protesters was openly burning draft cards. Hell’s Angels members rode plowing through the thickest groups, kicking, heedless of cries of protest and pain. Everywhere there were youngsters, some barely into their teens, guzzling beer and wine, popping pills and smoking grass. And down the sidewalk blew a constantly halting procession, both colorful and familiar. Above the primitive thump-and-clatter of tambourines Kevin made out their outrageously infantile, stupefyingly mantric chant: 185

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“Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.” He grabbed Janet’s hand. “Time to go time to go. Time time go go. Go time go time.” They walked their bikes across the jammed street and began moving down the opposing sidewalk, still proceeding west. Janet was handed a stick of incense by a devotee who had splintered from the procession. She lit it gaily, sniffed the smoke with simple, childish pleasure. She waved it in front of Kevin’s gloomy face. The scent was frankincense. “Oh cheer up,” she said sternly, her mood shifting swiftly to the dangerous level. “We come all this way, and I have to listen to a zillion boring lectures all about San Francisco, and about how happy you’re going to be, and then you start moping around like a goddamn—” “Keep your voice down,” Kevin begged. “Everybody’s starting to stare.” “Don’t you fucking tell me what to do, buddy! Who the fuck do you think you are! And get your fat fucking hands off me—” for Kevin had gently gripped her shoulders “—before I start screaming rape.” “Oh no,” Kevin said with rising alarm. “Don’t do that. Please don’t do that! I’m sorry. Really I am. Look at me; I’m smiling, see? I’m smiling. Please don’t yell.” “Rape!” Janet screamed. “Rape! Rape! rape rape—” She fell against him, beating her fists on his chest, heaving with sobs. At last she gasped, “I wanted so much to have a good time. Why did you have to spoil it for me?” He put his arm around her, gently patted her shoulder. Women, he thought, sure are funny creatures. Regular yo-yos; up one minute, down the next. But he enjoyed the feel of her in his arms, felt very protective. Janet ran a hand down to his waist. Then below. Then . . . Kevin gulped. “Rape,” she giggled in his ear. Kevin pulled away as gently as he could. “Not here!” he whispered. “Please. People might—” Janet shoved him hard, her face wild. “You fat asshole! Don’t you fucking tell me what to do!” She took a swing at him, but he caught her tiny fist, pulled her back against his chest. She began to cry again. Quietly now. Faces in the crowd grinned knowingly. “Why did you have to be such a grouch?” “I’m just . . . sorry,” he whispered. He didn’t know how to play it. What would Bogart do? Shake her roughly, tell her to can the kid stuff? “I’m sorry, Janet,” he repeated. “I don’t know what came over me. I need to get my head straight, that’s all. I just wish we still had some pot.” One sweet pretty beam, and the sun was gone. Kevin, suddenly in a vacuum, clutched her bike to his. As Janet was swallowed by the crowd he searched desperately; raising himself with his toes, catching sight of her as she stopped couples and nuzzled into groups, losing her again. When he caught her at rest, she was engaged in a gesturing conversation with another girl. At last she made her way back, guided by his calls. The relief he felt at hearing her voice was like plunging into cool water on a scorching day. “Ooh! I did it, I did it! She’s a really sweet girl, and she says she knows where we can score a lid for ten dollars. Aren’t you proud of me?” “Sure,” Kevin said as they walked their bikes, “only I wish you wouldn’t run off like that. I don’t want you getting hurt.” The girl Janet had befriended was sitting on a low wall, as unstably as Humpty Dumpty. 186

Carnival People In Motion Although she was only seventeen she appeared about to give birth to quintuplets. Except for the great globe of her lower torso the girl was frightfully skinny; simply an enormous round melon with two stick-arms and two stick-legs, and a dirty, bug-eyed doll face framed by electric strands of grimy blond hair. “Peace,” Kevin said. “I’m Kevin, and I guess you’ve met Janet.” “Yeah, yeah, peace,” the girl responded in a husky voice. “I’m Jennifer. Y’know: ‘Jennifer Juniper.’ If you guys wanna lid we gotta walk down a coupla blocks to Grattan Street. Just gimme a sec’ here, and I’ll be right with you.” She eased herself off the wall, aided by Janet. Kevin could now see she was very tiny; scarcely four and a half feet tall. He and Janet formed a protective wedge with their front wheels as she waddled down the sidewalk between them, puffing and groaning. She had them turn south on Cole. Janet’s sparkling eyes caught Kevin’s dullards. “Do you live here, Jenny?” “Yeah. I been living in the Haight for almost a year. It was really a gas at first, but by parents quit sending me checks a coupla months ago, and the pigs caught up with my old man, Harvey, who was AWOL. Lemme tell you,” she swallowed, “I been feeling really shitty since I got knocked up this last time. It’s got me thinking about making some serious life changes. All this rap about acid and chromosome damage is screwing with my head. Now I’m determined to just stick with booze and downers.” Her expression went deathly pale. “Being pregnant in the Haight,” she gasped, “can be a real drag. ’Scuse me a sec’.” Jennifer stopped and leaned against a fire hydrant, pressed a hand to her side. Janet steadied her by the shoulders. “Are you okay?” “Yeah, yeah,” she gasped. “Yeah, I’m fine. Jesus, this kid’s gonna be a whopper.” Kevin thought a minute. “It’s really like a bummer,” he observed, “that your old man got kidnapped by the pigs. If what my friend Eddie told me is true, they never let their victims see the baby.” “Whoa!” Jennifer laughed, wincing. “He’s not the papa, that’s for sure; not Harvey. Ever since I first met the guy he was either too loaded or too paranoid to get a hard-on. I dunno who knocked me up this time, man. Hell, ever since this free love business began I’ve spent more time on my back than on my feet. I’ll just be glad when it’s over. Pregnancy’s a drag, but labor’s a real bitch. And I guess I’ll name it Peace if it’s a dude, or Love if it’s a chick. Here’s my pad.” They halted facing a lot overgrown with weeds. All that remained of the house was the foundation, but in the rear was a ramshackle, squat, one-story little building built like a bomb shelter. At first glance Kevin saw only the broad double doors of a garage. As they walked up the dirt drive he noticed a cottage porch jutting from the rear. “It’s not really my pad,” Jennifer said. “Me and some other heads share it. You’ll like them; they’re groovy people. You better stash your bikes behind these bushes; around here deraillers get ripped off quicker than dealers.” It looked like a safe place, but Kevin locked their bikes to a gas line just the same. The wooden garage doors were old and splintered. Rusted hinges groaned as Jennifer tugged. She paused just inside, wincing and holding her ribs. The interior was illuminated by candles placed haphazardly, and by a pencil-thin beam of daylight emanating from the rear, where apparently the wall had been broken through. The sudden wave of bright daylight must have dazzled the garage’s occupants for the moment the doors were open. Perhaps a dozen pairs of eyes gleamed at their entrance like rats, and then Jennifer had closed the doors and Kevin’s eyes began adjusting to the darkness. The floor was mostly taken up by mattresses and blankets and rags of clothing. A few backpacks and a single crutch were propped against the left-hand wall. The air was heavy with incense smoke, and the walls were 187

Carnival People In Motion covered, as in Perky’s house, with posters of rock stars and multicolored graphics. The rats themselves stuck to the old pattern: long unwashed hair and beards; dressed for the most part in rags and beads. But there were a few hapless souls who helped make the room look like a disaster ward: a white-haired old man either dumped or collapsed in the space between a mattress and the rear wall; a filthy Mexican girl breast-feeding a naked infant; a boy with one arm and one leg in casts; a teenaged boy, his face in darkness, shivering on one of the yellowed mattresses and staring up fearfully. There was no music, and when the sudden shock of daylight had worn off Kevin could hear their voices begin to stir anew, like wind through leaves. Jennifer started the introductions. “Hi, guys. This here’s Janet and Kevin. And this is Booger and Lalena and Funkho and—oh, hell, you guys just make yourselves at home and get to know each other. Sahib’s got the pot; he’s probably in the back. You guys wait here. Sahib doesn’t dig it when I bring in strangers to score; I guess he likes to check ’em out first.” Jennifer waddled into the cottage like a fat mother hen, disappearing into the black recesses of what, from the flickering of candlelight on old stainless steel, appeared to be a kitchen conversion. Now, Kevin could bring down the humblest room. He looked to Janet for comfort, but she deserted him for the nursing girl, begging to hold the baby. “Oh, he’s so darling!” Kevin heard her cooing, “but the poor dear looks so sick.” Soon they were involved in a girlish banter that knows no language barrier, and Kevin found himself looking down at the shivering boy. He remembered the name, offered his hand in greeting. “Um . . . what’s happening, Booger?” He zoned out. “My name’s . . . um . . . my name’s Kevin.” Booger hugged himself, shuddering violently. His eyes seemed to barely reflect the candlelight. “Are you—are you the police?” “The pig?” Kevin laughed. “No! Of course not.” The room, except for the girls’ exchange, went deathly quiet at Kevin’s bark of laughter. Then the baby screamed and, one by one, the voices pattered anew. Kevin’s laugh, even to himself, rang false and harsh. “No, I’m just visiting,” he said in a quieter voice. “I only dropped by to try and score some pot.” Booger, gripping himself tighter, dropped his head to his knees. Kevin had to move even closer to hear the boy squeeze out his words. “You’re . . . not the police . . . God, I’m glad. You’re not the . . . police.” Moved, Kevin sat beside him, placed a comforting hand on the boy’s bony shoulder, felt a shudder run up his arm. “Please . . . don’t touch me.” “Okay, Booger.” Kevin removed his hand. “I can see you’re sick. Is there anything . . . anything I can do?” Booger shook his head sharply, once each way. He straightened his back, his neck muscles taut, and stared at a point midway between the top of the garage door and the ceiling. Kevin suddenly saw himself as a huge intruder all in shadow, so he picked up a sputtering green candle set in a coffee can. Booger turned to face him with an agonized tremor. Kevin recoiled at the sight of Booger’s face. The wing of one nostril was eaten away, the left side of his forehead terribly distended, his hair spare and brittle-looking. Booger’s teeth were in miserable shape, his gums bleeding freely from the act of speaking. His face was little more than a skull mask with a thin covering of gray flesh, the cheeks hollow, the eyes sunken. The boy’s left iris was of a much paler hue than the right, and nearly twice as large. Kevin instinctively looked away, just as Jennifer reentered the room and spoke his name. Sahib was a huge man of forty, sporting an incorrigible beard and dark snakes of hair rapidly going white. Rimless spectacles with lenses thick as Coke bottles perched on the sad bridge of a broken nose with a gleaming bulbous tip. He was heartily overweight and blissfully sanguine, 188

Carnival People In Motion dressed in modified Army fatigues and a bright Mexican serape. Sahib, with his maple complexion and mischievous round eyes, certainly appeared to be of Indian extraction. In the early days of his turning the garage into a sort of hospice, some of the first arrivals, ignorant of the appellation sahib as applying respectfully to Europeans of rank in Colonial India, had supposed it meant something more akin to swami, and the name had stuck. Sahib liked to spoof sobriety, so the contrasts he displayed suited him fine. Now a small and compactly built man, with hair bleached almost white, stalked into the garage and peered angrily over his shoulder. Sahib smiled hospitably, but the small man said, “So you’re looking for a lid, huh? Who sent you?” “Nobody sent us,” Kevin replied uncertainly. “We’re just passing through and need some weed.” “Yeah? Where you from?” “We rode up from L.A.” “Jesus Christ!” the blond man spat. “Another one!” He shook his head disgustedly. “Go head, Sahib. Sell him a lid. But this is the last time.” And he stormed out, slamming the garage doors behind him. “Who, might I ask,” Janet wondered in a cold voice, “was that?” “That,” said Sahib pleasantly, “was Spacer, our high-strung connection.” He dismissed the subject with a flick of his wrist. “Booger, me lad,” he said soothingly, “you’re very tired, son. You can barely keep your eyes open. Don’t you think you should sleep now?” He took Booger by the shoulders and gently helped him to his feet. “You come sleep in Sahib’s room, where it’s quiet and cool.” Booger, shuddering hard, let his head rest on the big man’s shoulder as he was led from the room. In a moment Sahib had returned, and in his hand was an ounce bag of marijuana. He sat crosslegged on the floor and rolled a sample joint. “What’s wrong with Booger?” Kevin whispered. “I’ve never seen anybody so . . . sick.” Sahib shrugged and said brusquely, “Fuck if I know.” He caught himself. “Forgive me. Perhaps effendi Spacer’s current bout with paranoia has begun to get under my less than impermeable skin.” He looked pensively at the dark opening leading into the mysteries in the rear, and after a moment said, “The boy was like that when we found him. Only not so advanced.” He handed the joint to Kevin. “Oh, we tried to get the little guy to the hospital—believe me, we tried— but for some reason he’s become so conditioned to this marvelous abode that he’ll react most violently at the first suspicion of being moved. I have a friend who’s a practicing diagnostician at Litteman General. He came by to check Boog’ out as a favor and said he was damned if he know what was wrong. Anyway, from what we’ve learned from the boy, this is the closest he’s ever come to having a home. So we just keep him warm and tell him stories, feed him the best we can. If we put him out on the street he’d die like a dog. Oh well, Mr. B has a date with Mr. D soon enough. Even a fool can see that.” He smiled broadly, his eyes twinkling behind the thick lenses. “Just another victim of dat heartless ol’ wilderness out dere,” he said grandly. “They come and they go, the Boogers of this world, and there are plenty more on the way to take the place of those who fall. Though why so many of ’em are turning up in San Francisco beats the hell out of me. Funny. But you should see some of the unfortunates this shoddy little dwelling has entertained. Big kids, little kids, young and old,” he sang, “and how many of ’em will be successful? How many will raise healthy families? How many will even be sure of a roof and a hot meal? Ah, well. Ours not to reason why. That’s for theologians and psychoanalysts and the doctors of various sciences; all striving to learn what makes Johnny run, or, as in our Booger’s case, run down. Bad chemicals, you wonder? Rotten parents, 189

Carnival People In Motion perhaps? No education? Who can say, who can say . . .” Sahib allowed his voice to trail theatrically. He blinked at the figures around him, wondering if he was losing his audience. When he saw the mesmerized expressions he gleefully hunkered down to become the campfire storyteller, but, perhaps because he’d fallen victim to his own pessimistic turn of patter, his true morbid nature found vent instead. Sahib’s soul now discovered gravity; he became the prey of his own “bad chemicals,” and ran down. The garage was morgue-quiet. Sahib looked inward, at a gaudy stage in an empty house, and, speaking as much to himself as to his company, brazened out the mess of his dark spirit’s debut. “Every time the adrenaline starts to flow I get this spooky feeling I’m being manipulated. You guys know where I’m coming from? It’s like each of us has some gung-ho freak perched on his back, and these freaks just keep fucking with our heads and kicking us in the ribs. We’re all half out of our minds with anxiety, but something’s got us boxed in, something won’t let us breathe. And we wanna go, man, we wanna go, because if the tension gets any higher we’re all gonna chew right through our bits. But wait a minute. What’s in it for us? And if we’re so damned afraid of the finish why are we so desperate to break out of our gates? It’s almost as if we’re being used, y’know? Consumed. It’s as if we’re being goaded into busting our butts for . . . what? To keep our silly asses at each other’s throats? Ah, the joke’s on us all, my intent and starry-eyed little friends. Because all along it’s actually the merry-go-round that’s been running the riders, and because . . . because something just ain’t kosher in the cosmos, kiddies.” Sahib stopped mid-thought. He was clearly becoming agitated. He’d thought “I suffer” for so long that articulating “We suffer” was not so much about a feeling of relief as helping to define the common quarry. Now he was no longer the prey. He was a man again. He smelled figurative blood, and for a moment imagined the scent was shared by his company. Then just as abruptly he said: “Fuck it! “I tell you, life’s a gag, man, a joke; a silly little diversion in the endless labor of creation. And I’m not saying it’s not a good joke. I bust a gut every time I think about it. But it’s like this is a running joke, you dig? It just goes on and on and on. Okay, so maybe I’m not smart enough to see the glorious purpose of this living hell, and maybe I’m not deep enough to know whether it’s a deity or a demon running the show, but before I go, man, before I go, I just gotta get my hands on whatever’s in charge and say, ‘Hey, Sucker! I’m hip to sick jokes, okay? And I’ll take the fall as lamely as the next second-billionth banana. But don’t leave me hanging! Man oh man oh man, just what the hell’s the punch line’?” Sahib looked down. He absently fingered the hem of his serape, painfully aware he’d exposed his nonchalance to be as much a façade as his attire. He handed Kevin a book of matches, speaking as though he were addressing one of the idle rich, “You would perhaps consent to sharing some of your herb with the poor souls about you?” Upon Kevin’s nod Sahib was rejuvenated. He raised his arms like a choirmaster. “Gather round, boys and girls, gather round. Let us join hands and bask in the generosity of a fellow refugee, this blessed young man from L.A., from the Big Machine.” Kevin heard the shadows sliding and shuffling closer. He fired up the joint, took a hit and passed it to Sahib, who drew on it deeply and lovingly, savoring every aspect of the experience. The joint lasted twice round the circle. Then they all held hands around Sahib, who looked on them collectively with a jolly and genuinely compassionate expression. “Friends,” he began. “. . . No, that’s not entirely fitting. Brothers and sisters. “Brothers and sisters, we are linked here at the dawning of a new age in the history of civilization as we understand it. On the surface things might not appear as hunky-dory as they are, I assure you, in reality. What with all the shit that goes down, it’s not easy to perceive what looks like a lousy and useless life as the celebration it really is. We must always remember this is only the 190

Carnival People In Motion surface we see. Forget all that silly dark crap I was saying. Any fool can see that the source of universal light is love, and that your generation is bringing it home. Now I know this is all old hat, but, if you’ll excuse my somewhat irritating penchant for long-windedness, I’d like to take this opportunity to make a few predictions, if I may. Firstly, I see before the turn of the century a complete revision of the old standards. Power, which, as we all know, goes hand in hand with money, will lose its flavor, its relish, once it is made evident that love and community are beyond price. There will be more power manifested in a small group forming a chain as we are now, than in all the cabinets, police forces, and administrative institutions in the whole wide wonderful world. Money will eventually become obsolete, unfit even to wipe our precious little asses with, for in our new society no amount of cash will buy . . . respect. The pariahs of today are the elite of tomorrow. And you wanna know something? There’s no monopoly on light. Love is gently burning in each of us, just waiting to express itself, to penetrate the darkness as the break of day bleeds back the night. Everybody, I mean everybody, is just about to burst with love and—what the devil?” For there was a revving of motorcycles at the front of the drive. “I’ll see,” Kevin said. He grabbed Janet’s hand, and together they crept to the double doors and peered out. What he saw froze his heart. Three motorcycles bearing huge Hell’s Angels members were storming the garage. Before Kevin could shout a warning the lead cycle crashed straight into the right-hand door, tearing it from its hinges. Chaos ran through the garage like wildfire as the rats scurried squealing and hobbling through the break in the wall. Janet was screaming and screaming and screaming. Kevin clamped a hand over her mouth, the breath whistling between his teeth as she gnawed his fingers. Neither had been hurt by the falling door, which had lost momentum against the garage wall before sliding on top of them. Through a crack in the wood Kevin now saw an enormous hairy man in sunglasses, spiked helmet, and full Hell’s Angels regalia, dismount and heave his bike back on its stand. His partners crunched in behind him, leaving their choppers just outside. Sahib, still sitting cross-legged, blinked up at them. “Greetings, gents. Don’t be bashful. Come right in.” The burly Angel grabbed Sahib by the front of his Army shirt and hauled him to his feet. “Where’s Spacer?” “That,” said Sahib, squirming a little, “is anybody’s guess. However I can assure you he is most certainly not down the front of my shirt, nor is he anywhere on these premises. He left, in fact, scarcely ten minutes ago.” “You’re a liar!” the huge biker roared. He shook Sahib like a dusty rug. “We know he’s got our skag. Where does he keep it?” “I never heard anything about it,” Sahib gasped. He coughed horribly, but the biker only twisted harder. “He didn’t,” Sahib choked, “he didn’t say—he didn’t say anything to me about— Vishnu, you’re hurting me!” “You’re a lying motherfucker!” the biker roared. He drew back his fist, aimed, and smashed Sahib in the nose so hard the older man’s glasses disintegrated. The Angel picked him up and hammered him in the face again, then took him by the hair in both fists and hurled him down. “You’re a liar!” the biker hollered. “You’re a motherfucking liar, you motherfucking liar!” He began stomping furiously on Sahib’s head with his heavy motorcycle boots. Kevin flinched at every bloody crunch of boots. Being a hero was out of the question. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that he and Janet would also be stomped if they were discovered, and discovery seemed imminent, for Janet was struggling fiercely beneath him. She seemed bent on chewing clear through his hand. Now the Angel picked Sahib up for the last time, grabbed him by the hair and throat, 191

Carnival People In Motion repeatedly smashed his bloody face into the wall. “You’re a liar!” he bellowed. Jennifer, who had swooned, came running up, beating at the biker with her tiny fists, wailing piteously. Without breaking his rhythm the Angel backhanded her across the face as hard as he could. He hurled Sahib down again, stomped him for good measure, and stormed back to his bike. He pulled an enormous chain off the sissy bar, turned around and began flogging Sahib, who was quite insensible, with all his might. At last he finished and got to work on the walls, whipping the chain around like a lariat. He brought it down hard on the thin wooden partition shielding Kevin and Janet from death, wound it back around the sissy bar and kick-started his motorcycle. He deliberately ran over Sahib’s legs, then roared out the doorway and down the drive to the street. There was the double kick and roar of his two accomplices’ cycles, the sound of garbage cans kicked over, a squeal of pain from a bystander, apparently also kicked over. Kevin carefully poked out his head, pushed away the door and wiggled free. “Sahib?” he heard himself whisper, unbelieving. There was blood everywhere. He crept over and slumped against the streaked and bespattered wall, cradled Sahib’s broken neck in the crook of his arm. Janet crawled out behind him, saw what had happened and promptly went into hysterics. Kevin ignored her. “Sahib?” he repeated. After a long moment Sahib’s bloody eyes opened. “How do you . . .” Kevin stammered, “how do you feel?” Sahib stared. “How do I feel?” he gasped. “How do I feel? I . . . why, just fine, thank you very much. Never better.” He blinked, and a long shudder rolled from his thighs to his shoulders, passed through Kevin, made the boy’s feet tremble and his toes cramp. Kevin watched Sahib’s facial muscles leap and subside erratically. Sahib shook throughout his final exhalation; a long, ghostly moan that was a shivering legato descent from tenor through basso profundo. Then Sahib turned to stone. And the garage was swarming with properly concerned people off the street. Kevin felt vomit rising, and a fury so great it drove him howling to his feet. As if cued, Spacer stepped back into the picture, pushed his way to Kevin’s side and looked down. “What happened?” he demanded. Kevin turned on him with eyes ablaze. “Some fucking bikers killed Sahib,” he sputtered, his whole body trembling. “Because of you, prick! They wanted their smack, and when Sahib covered for you they fucking killed him!” Spacer grabbed Kevin’s shoulders. His eyes looked like they’d blow out of their sockets. He looked down at Sahib’s smashed and gory body, then back up at Kevin. “Oh my God!” he cried, and covered his eyes with a hand. He looked back up, desperately. “They didn’t find my stash, did they, man? Tell me! DID THEY FIND MY STASH?” He tore himself away, burst into the kitchen area, and returned in a minute with an expression of immense relief. “Listen,” he said reasonably, “I think you two better split. The pigs ought to be here in no time, and the less people involved, the better.” Kevin gaped, his mouth working soundlessly. A woman off the street moaned and began retching, just as the distant wailing of a siren underscored Spacer’s forecast. Kevin shoved his way to Janet, grabbed a hold of her arm. “You motherfucker!” she screamed, and cracked him on the side of the head with a heavy glass ashtray. “You son of a bitch!” There was a sudden outburst from the crowd, a pressing of bodies. An authoritative voice began hollering for the instant dispersal of all persons capable of voluntary locomotion. From outside came the trilling of a beat cop’s whistle. The siren seemed closer. Kevin shook his head and brought Janet down with a flying tackle. He threw her over his shoulder and barged around the side of the 192

Carnival People In Motion garage to their bikes, trying to ignore the teeth at his back. When he set her down he was all ready for another barrage. But she was sobbing quietly now. Kevin shook her by the shoulders. “Get a hold of yourself, dammit! The pigs are coming. Now calm down!” She caught herself mid-sob and looked at him strangely, her complexion pale. “Are you all right?” Kevin demanded. She shook her head yes, her mouth puckered as if she’d just sucked on a lemon. “Are you sure?” She shook her head no. Then she was bent at the waist, vomiting, choking, vomiting some more, and Kevin was holding her up, trying to think of other things. The moment she was done he bent down and shakily unlocked their bikes. He had to practically lift her and set her on her seat, and then they were pedaling down the drive. They turned onto the street just as a police car pulled up, lights flashing and siren fading. Kevin made Janet ride double time, and soon they had turned the corner back onto Cole Street, where the flower children were dancing without a care in the world, singing of peace and religion, of love and hope. Kevin wanted to scatter them like tenpins.

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Chapter 17 Ungoodness Kevin gingerly lifted the cup to his lips. His hands were trembling so hard the coffee appeared to be violently boiling. Deep brown streaks laced the rose patterns on the porcelain. He sucked the hot coffee down as if it were cool, clear water. “I only wish you’d relax,” he said for the umpteenth time. Janet just blew into her own cup and glared. They were in a nearly deserted diner on Clayton. Kevin had been on tenterhooks for the past ten minutes—Janet’s aura was scaring the hell out of him. It was her second cup, Kevin’s third. He didn’t really care for coffee all that much, especially black and unsweetened, but little by little the brew was calming him. “You feel okay now?” he asked after a while. “Do you have to keep asking me that? Do you have to keep telling me to relax? Can you for five stupid minutes mind your own fucking business?” Kevin groaned. “Sorry.” He could feel another tantrum breaking. “What I mean is, I was only being conversational, Janet. I’m glad you’re feeling better. Really I am. And I didn’t mean to pry.” “Because maybe it never occurred to you that other people, real people, might have feelings and thoughts of their own. How would you like it if every time you tried to think for five crummy minutes some creep stuck in his big fat face—‘How are you feeling, dear’?” she spat. “—‘Is everything all right now?’ Calm down, calm down, calm down!” She stood up. “You’re right, of course,” Kevin gabbled. “Me, I’ll shut up for real, this very minute. You won’t even know I’m here, I promise. I mean, you can just ignore me if I start to get on your nerves, but I won’t, ’cause I’m gonna keep a lid on it beginning right now; you’ll see, you’ll see. And really I’m just like so super sor—” 194

Carnival Ungoodness “I’m sick of it!” she shrieked, and smashed her cup on the table. “And I’m sick of you!” She stormed past him and out the door. “I promise!” Kevin called. “Not another word, I mean it!” He gasped, pushed himself to his feet and made after her. The waitress jumped in front of him, her mouth working, pointing at the table. Kevin pulled a five from his wallet and stuffed it in her hand. He raced outside, catching hold of Janet’s arm even as she was straddling her bicycle. “I’ll shut up!” he wailed. “I won’t say anything else. Ever again. You can count on me because—” She launched herself on him furiously, swinging, kicking, biting. The boy wrestled her arms behind her back, wanting desperately to calm her, trying to be gentle. “Janet, I’m sorry, please . . . wait, just let me explain.” She spat in his face, stamped on a foot, kneed him right in the groin. “Get your hands off me, you bastard! Get your fucking hands off me!” “Please, Janet,” he managed. “I’m really sorry. Really. I promise I won’t—” “TAKE YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF ME!” Kevin released her and dropped to his knees in slow motion, fighting for air. The girl immediately pushed off and tore down Page Street, muttering the vilest obscenities she could muster. Kevin watched blearily for half a minute, at last heaving himself on his bike. He chased her down Page all the way to Pierce, where a mob of screaming freaks forced her to stop. Kevin caught up just in time to pull her clear of a sudden rush of flailing bodies. Janet, blown away by the emotional tempest, for the moment forgot her own crazy anger in the protective enclosure of Kevin’s strong arms. A dozen longhairs broke from the mob with expressions of outrage. Others were flinging themselves into the thick of it. Just as Kevin was melting in the embrace there came an explosive surge. Behind that blew a harsh scream, the squeal of rubber on asphalt, the sound of a store’s front window being smashed. A girl stumbled from the thrashing bodies with her fists clenched. She whirled and screamed at the top of her lungs, “You fucking pigs! You fucking pigs!” and burst into tears. A young man leaped out of the melee and pulled an empty beer bottle from a trash container. He hurled it without aim into the mass of waving arms. Kevin and Janet gaped at one another, and just like that one flank of the crowd burst like a wave. Kevin shoved Janet out of the way. He plunged back in to retrieve their bicycles. “Wow!” He ducked his head to avoid flying debris. “What’s happening?” Janet pointed at an open space near the crowd’s hub. There, adrenaline-crazed policemen in riot gear, just like the soulless berserkers Eddie had once described, were swinging their riot sticks indiscriminately. Kevin saw a Chinese student, bespectacled, confused, come staggering into the gale. Immediately a cop grabbed this young man by his shirt’s collar and cracked him across the forehead with his trusty stick. The student’s books and papers went flying, the papers showering all around in the manner of snowflakes. Thrilled camera buffs popped up like jacks out of boxes, recorded the event, crouched, and whirled to catch others. Litter baskets were blazing all along the sidewalks. Kevin saw a middle-aged beatnik-type, morphing out of the smoke, leap atop a battered automobile and heave a cinder block at a busy policeman. The cop spun and plunged into the shrieking crowd in pursuit. In a moment he reappeared with blood trickling down his face, manhandling a different individual than the offender. This man was windmilling his arms in desperate retaliatory punches, but the policeman had him by the shirttail, pulling him face down and forward. Another cop jumped in and tackled the helpless captive. The crowd roared hatefully as the policemen beat their prisoner senseless. He was dragged away by the collar. 195

Carnival Ungoodness There were whistles, shouts, bullhorn commands. At least a dozen more policemen breached the mob’s center. Kevin and Janet didn’t wait to catch the score. They zigzagged the streets, dazed and confused. Every intersection was a pocket of unrest. “Man!” Kevin gasped. “Was that ever hairy!” Eventually their luck turned. They chose streets that were calmer, calmer, and calmer still. On Fulton it was nice and peaceful. They dismounted and sat trembling together on the curb, like waifs. “Listen,” Kevin panted, “I think we should head for the park. I don’t know what everybody’s all uptight about, but my friend Eddie once told me it’s always totally together at the park, no matter what.” Janet draped an arm over his knee, rested her head on his shoulder. “You were so brave. Just like Clint Eastwood.” “John Wayne, at least!” “Okay, okay. John Wayne, then. Kevin, I think it’s my turn to apologize. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so rude to you. And back there, when you were protecting me, I started feeling really bad about how I’ve acted lately. I know I’ve been a bitch, but please don’t ask me to explain.” She smiled impishly. “It’s a chick thing. I guess when you start to really care for somebody you overreact, and you end up hurting that somebody when you don’t mean to. Thanks for putting up with me.” She gave him a maidenly kiss on the cheek. For no reason at all they both laughed. The spontaneity struck them as funny and they laughed again, mounted their bicycles and began to idly roll along, not realizing they were, by choosing their turns indiscriminately, gradually describing a rough square and so, bit by bit, heading right back to the hot spot. But Kevin couldn’t take his eyes off her. He almost spilled. Turning his head, he saw he’d collided with a crazy-looking longhaired man, a man reminding him strangely of a speed freak he’d met at Perky’s, millennia ago. The man looked at him angrily. “Gosh,” Kevin said. “I’m sorry.” The man grimaced. “Do you know we’ve got pigs in the White House? They’re drafting our brothers to go shoot poor Viet Namese mothers and children right now! For what? Can you tell me that?” Kevin shook his head. “To stuff their fat wallets, that’s why! To stop the Movement, that’s why! To stamp out peace and love; all we’ve worked for, slaved for, busted our sweating butts for! Would you like to see your kids sent overseas to get shot up? Huh? Is that what you want?” Kevin recoiled, not comprehending or caring. He looked around wildly. Janet was unseen in the crowd. A gargling sound rose in his throat. He pushed off frantically. The man grabbed him by the arm. “Huh?” he shrieked. “Do you wanna see your fucking kids get shot to pieces?” Kevin jerked his arm away. “I don’t have any kids,” he gasped. “For Pete’s sake, I’m only sixteen!” “Sixteen! Sixteen! Then you’ll be seventeen, before you know it eighteen, and the pigs’ll snatch you!” Kevin broke away, the man scrambling after him, still grabbing. And as Kevin penetrated the crowd’s perimeter he could hear the anguished screams— “Go ahead! Run! Run, coward! Run to mama’s skirts! Run and hide behind your Auntie Sam! You traitor, you fiend, you pervert, you faggot!” Then a haunted, bloodcurdling wail, issuing from a 196

Carnival Ungoodness familial gap left unsuccored somewhere between infancy and puberty, “You lousy motherfucking Commie-loving murdering son of a bitch!” Ahead a flash flood of faces turned to see who the murderer was. Faces became elbows, became backs, became a whole army of legs and arms as Kevin plunged deeper and deeper. He plowed into people, vaguely registered their curses, but was deaf to their grievances. She was gone; that was all he knew. A minute ago she’d belonged to him, and now she was aching memory. He began screaming her name, his eyes afire. But his was only one of hundreds of voices now, and he was being shoved and jostled by a nearly impenetrable sea of humanity, all crying out their empty threats and demands, their voices mingling as one universal, youthful plea for guidance. “Janet!” Kevin croaked. He was bounced from person to person, was rammed and jammed and caromed about. He’d instinctively kept his grip on his bike’s handlebars, and the continually hammering frame was badly bruising his legs. Then he saw, like a beacon in the night, his deliverance. Not thirty feet away the long chestnut hair beckoned, waving with the heaving human sea. He swam hollering through the arms and heads. Suddenly afraid the current would sweep him off, Kevin lifted his bicycle as an offensive weapon and began smashing his way. Faces looked at him in terror and pain, in disgust and surprise, but he just kept bashing and bashing until he was a few feet from his goal. But she was looking in another direction, was also being swept away. “Janet!” he screamed, in the confusion not even sure he heard himself. Panicking, he made a frantic snarling lunge and grabbed a shoulder. The chestnut hair flashed across his eyes, and he was looking into the angry face of a young man with long chestnut hair and a fine, sweeping chestnut moustache. “Hey man,” the guy demanded, “what the fuck’s your trip?” Instantly he was sucked away, and Kevin was again being pummeled by countless young people, people shoving in all directions. The passion out of him, he numbly allowed himself to be elbowed along, sucked like a bough into a maelstrom. Dozens of faces rushed by him strobewise; shouts and cries came as in a dream. The angry sea claimed him, engulfed him, made him a nondescript drop in a wave. And all at once the sea parted. Twenty feet away, in the partial shelter between two parked cars, Janet was leaning against a handsome, blond, athletic young man. Did she know him? Or were they strangers, finding each other in the whirling madness? There was no time to tell, no time. For his great brown arm was around her shoulders, and her eyes were shining in response to his amorous gaze, and now, and now she was looking up into his half-closed eyes as his handsome face came down and their open mouths met . . . Lingered. The fat boy stood gripping his bicycle, paralyzed. An excruciating pain began at the inner corners of his eyes and worked its way up his forehead, feeling like it was cracking his skull in two. Everything went black for a few seconds; the longest few seconds of his life. His jaw dropped to his chest. His eyes glazed over and his heart contracted. Then, in retarded time, the sea closed in and the bodies came crashing down. But he was rooted; he was fixed. He couldn’t be budged. An hour passed, and still the fat boy stood there, paralyzed. Young people plowed into him again and again, bounced away, and gradually the sea shrank until there were only a few people moving by in the mob’s wake, and voices were quite far away. And still the fat boy stood there, paralyzed. Throughout the barrage he’d clung instinctively, tenaciously, to his bicycle—the only 197

Carnival Ungoodness meaningful thing left. As a consequence there was hardly a square inch of flesh between the ankle and hip of his right side that hadn’t been deeply bruised. His vest and shirt were now tattered rags; the big felt hillbilly hat, still secured by its choking leather chin strap, was flattened and jammed down around his ears. One curious result of the battering was that the arms of his glasses had become so fouled in this strap that the glasses had not been dislodged; rather, the apparatus had become virtually implanted in his face, creating a raccoon-like visage of pallid cheeks and brow surrounding the broken red flesh about his eyes. Both lenses were veined with fine cracks from direct and indirect concussions. The bridge had cut his nose badly. A hilly, littered street stretched before him, but he couldn’t see it. His mind would admit only one event: A handsome young man was moving his head with extreme slowness. A sweetly pretty girl with chestnut hair was, also in slow motion, parting her red, red lips. It took ages for the lips of each face to meet, and when they did the picture froze. A perfect snapshot. Adam and Eve. And, beneath the photograph, an inscription containing a word he’d once heard and not fully understood. His mind, unbeknownst, had filed the word for future application, for a time when unbearable pain made precision vocabulary particularly useless. That word made perfect sense now. The inscription beneath the photograph read: SO FICKLE The boy kept repeating it to himself in his mind. So fickle. So false. So fickle and false and fragile. Somebody was speaking to him. Somebody was shaking him. The snapshot, fragile, shattered like glass, splintered and spiderwebbed and was replaced by a figure wearing a blue suit and blue cap. “I said can you hear me?” a voice was saying, clearer now. “Jesus, son, what are you high on?” “So fickle,” Kevin mumbled. “What?” The blue-suited figure had something bright on his chest which dazzled the boy. “Here. Look up here at my eyes,” said the voice. Kevin tilted back his head and stared at a similar bright light on the speaker’s cap. “Where are you going, son?” asked the voice kindly, sympathetically. Kevin dropped his head. “So false,” he said. “Son, you’re going to have to move along. There’s an awful lot of angry kids roaming around, and you could get hurt standing here. Can you ride?” “Fickle, fickle, fickle.” “Look, I want you to get on your bike and ride over to that café there. Can you do that? Get yourself a cup of coffee and something to eat. Do you have any money?” Kevin felt rough paper being pushed into his hand and two gentle-but-firm hands turning him so that he and his bicycle faced east. Obediently he mounted, found himself awkwardly moving forward. His body got into the easy rhythm of pedaling, and for a while he rode up and down the streets in a trance, unfeeling, wondering only how she could be so fickle and false, how love could be 198

Carnival Ungoodness so fragile and finite and feeble and finally he coasted to a stop, exhausted, played out. Along the sides of this street were endless chains of old and colorful shops. On the opposite side, one of the little shops had the word CAFÉ snarled on its front window in flaking red paint. Kevin, fulfilling some obligation he did not understand, stumbled over to it, dragging his ten-speed. He leaned the bicycle against the building’s side and, one at a time, removed his aching, swollen hands. In his right fist was a sweat-stained dollar bill. He pitched through the door. Chimes tinkled. He staggered into a counter stool and his body melted onto it. An exceptionally ugly old woman was scowling in his face. A half-full glass of dark water was smacked down before him, and a greasy rag went through the motion of swabbing the hopelessly filthy counter with one sweep of a deformed hand. “Well, if yuh jus’ come in here t’ gawk at me, yuh kin git yer ass back out the door.” “Huh?” Kevin said. There was a bark of laughter from the back of the café. Somebody said “Shit,” and spat. “What’ll it be, guru?” said the exceptionally ugly old woman. “Coffee,” Kevin muttered, “coffee.” “Thet it?” “Coffee and . . . and . . . and something to eat.” The woman slapped the scummy rag on the counter, turned her stumpy body away. “Hank!” she bawled. “Coffee an’ a hamburger fer the daffydil.” She whirled and glared at him suspiciously. “I’m jus’ supposin’ yuh got money.” “Money,” Kevin parroted, unclenching his fist. The tortured bill dropped to the counter, writhed briefly. He heard the woman curse, the ringing of a cash register, the sound of a few coins being slapped down. At length a rancid smell reached his nostrils, made his stomach turn. Time passed and his food and coffee went cold. Little by little he became aware of voices across the room. One, the cackling voice, he dimly recognized as belonging to the exceptionally ugly old woman. The others were unfamiliar. “If any of my kids ever turns out like that fat son of a bitch I’ll whip the shit out of him.” “Aw, leave ’im be, Ernie. Can’t yuh see he’s flyin’ high?” “Say there, hippie! You meditatin’ on Flo’s hamburger? Whaddaya see?” “Yeah, hippie. You’re supposed to eat it, not bless it.” “Hyaw-haw.” “Looks to me like he don’t appreciate Hank’s cooking none. Now I call that just plain bad manners. What do you boys think?” “Now, Ernie. Don’t be startin’ no trouble. C’mon now.” “No trouble, Flo. No trouble at all.” It occurred in a matter-of-fact way to Kevin’s crippled consciousness that at least a couple of the voices were approaching. “Okay, loverboy. Just take your dope and your fat ass out of here before I lose my temper— now, look: I’m not playing around. I said I’m not playing around! MOVE!” “Oh, Ernie, don’t hurt him overmuch.” Heavy footsteps. “Now what’s going on?” “Hank, this groover’s giving us trouble.” “What kinda trouble?” “Look at him. All doped up. Insulted your cooking. Won’t leave after we asked him polite.” 199

Carnival Ungoodness “Yeah? Listen, kid. You been served, nobody asked you in here. Go on, beat it. Damn you! Go on!” “Hank, yuh think we should call a cop?” “Hell no.” Two pairs of hands now heaved Kevin off his stool. He heard the door chimes ring a merry ta-ta, a burst of laughter, and then his face hit the street. The chimes rang again, followed by the slamming of a door. Kevin lay stunned for the longest while. Somehow he picked himself up. He wasn’t aware of any real pain, nor of any sense of humiliation. And he really wasn’t surprised to find that his sleek ten-speed Peugeot, his pride and joy, had been stolen—that the last of his treasures was history. Now the world had just about picked Kevin clean. Yet the web was still becoming.

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Chapter 18 Man Down The day was on the wane. For hours Kevin sleepwalked the city, climbing up and up and up the interminable hills, flowing down down down and climbing again; around corners and across brightly lit streets choked by traffic, drawing off some bottled-up reserve energy that allowed him to run on automatic pilot— effortlessly, endlessly, miraculously unscathed. He never tired. Those pedestrians he actually blundered into tolerated his stupor with mute resignation. And his absurd costume, which in the daytime might have triggered bitter and drastic retaliation, somehow complemented the festive atmosphere of the city’s famous nightlife. It was a mild, gorgeous evening, the sky crisp and marvelously cool. Cheery, tireless windowshoppers were out in droves, laughing and raising hell, noisily killing time while Kevin parted them like a cable car, following a definite, albeit roundabout, route. The current which drove him on and on appeared to be inexhaustible, his private track stuck to the sidewalks, and eventually his bounds narrowed as his center of gravity stabilized. He bobbed along in a fairly straight line and, except for those occasional collisions, went largely unnoticed as the night progressed. The safety valve that kept him from shattering—by letting energy escape in this walking and walking and walking—was closing by the time he reached the downtown financial district. For a while he followed Pine Street eastward. He turned left at Kearny and, before turning, glimpsed for a second the lights of the Bay Bridge crossing placid inky water, and beyond that water the glow of Oakland. Kearny Street was jewel-lit, blinding, boisterous and confused, and now Kevin’s legs were faltering, his arms dangling at his sides. He was winding down. He stumbled through jabbering Chinatown, where the clamor and bustle turned him on his heel, sending him south back down Kearny all the way to Geary. Here his automatic pilot decreed he perform a right-face and pitch westward to Union Square, where the movements of the crowd milling round the monument 201

Carnival Man Down commemorating Dewey’s Manila Bay triumph got him orbiting the slender spire in steadily narrowing circles, tightening the loops until his foot at last struck the pedestal. He rested his forehead on the cool stone for the briefest moment, only to abruptly rebound into an orbit running counter to his original, backpedaling until his dizzy brain objected and turned him about. He staggered west on Post Street, stubbing his clumsy hooves on curbs, becoming increasingly maladroit while drawn the mile and a half to the color and hysteria of Japantown. He was weaving across Van Ness Avenue when there was a click in his skull, and he performed an awkward left-face. He shambled down Van Ness to the maze of Civic Center, circumnavigated City Hall, plowed through the hedges in Fox Plaza and rammed into the flanks of the Civic Auditorium, where the mercilessly jostling crowds sent him off reeling, zigzagging down Grove Street to Market, down Market to Seventh, at last stumbling through the mob outside the Greyhound Bus Depot. Kevin lurched into the great vault of the depot, barking his shins and bashing his elbows, at last collapsing on one of the cushioned benches. Instantly he was back on his feet, wobbling through the crowd. By chance he wandered to the very bench he’d so recently vacated, and when he crumpled down this time he remained crumpled, drained. His face trembled with dry sobs, the remaining junk beads on his eyeglasses clattering along. And the diaphanous image of a pretty, fickle girl with fine chestnut hair shimmered before his eyes, her lips parting for a silent laugh at his gullibility. Kevin’s jaw dropped and a gut-deep moan of utter despair, of groundless apology, passed from his throat like gas. He granted this apparition exclusive possession of his body and soul; to succor, to trash—to do with as it would. And she laughed again, soundlessly, waxed opaque, offered a slender, ethereal hand. He groped to his feet, lunging for the hand. But she teased him, floating away, her body rippling like a banner in the softest breeze. Forever just beyond his reach, she grew wispy, becoming fainter and fainter as she carefully guided him through the crowd. He followed her back out the depot’s giant main entrance, where she glowed angelically in multicolored streaks of neon, grew dimmer in the night, laughed silently again, vanished. Kevin cried out and stumbled off the curb, his arms spread wide. There was the harsh blast of a car’s horn, a shriek of rubber on asphalt, and something struck him a terrible blow on the left hip, knocked him ten feet to crack his temple against the bumper of a parked car. Searing pain rocketed up his left side and passed. Absolutely numb, he pawed at the car’s fender, fighting to stand. His left leg refused to respond. Frantic voices gathered round. A woman screamed, a man grated “Jesus, Jesus,” over and over. A wild pain blasted his hip when he tried to rise, unlike anything he’d ever imagined. Hands strove to hold him down, but he lashed out and lurched screaming alongside the parked car, the lifeless leg dragging behind. Other voices pursued him, more hands seized his shoulders and arms. He whirled snarling, pitched between two parked cars and across the sidewalk, slammed against a brick wall. To his left rose the urgent howl of a siren. Kevin, using the wall for support, scratched and scraped away. The siren stopped half a block back and the wall ended abruptly. Kevin hopped down an alley gripping his leg, made a left turn down a smaller alley, and burst out into the thinner crowds of Mission Street. The pedestrians moved aside and watched him pass; some frowning, others with laughter. Still gripping the paralyzed leg, he zigzagged the streets again, up Ninth to Market, up Market to Page, up Page to Gough, down Gough to Haight, throwing quick glances over his shoulder. Haight Street. He stopped and slumped against a storefront, wincing, gnashing, hammering a fist on his leg. But the leg might as well have been severed at the hip. A sick pain pulsed at his temple. Haight Street was darker and less crowded, populated only by shuffling shadows. Kevin fell in 202

Carnival Man Down shuffling, throbbing along darkly until he reached the great green expanse of Golden Gate Park. The park and surrounding area were inundated with people, and the noise was terrific. Powerful emotions conflicted in his heart when he realized where he was, but the racket drove him away. And besides, the thing in command of his actions didn’t want him to enter the park—not yet. It wanted him to follow Stanyan, to stumble across the brief verdant loveliness of the Panhandle, to limp all the way to Geary, to reel westward on Geary to Twenty-Sixth Avenue. At Twenty-Sixth the autopilot grew flustered at a flurry of sensations originating somewhere behind Kevin’s eyes and racing through his brain, turning out all the lights inside. The autopilot aborted, dumping the boy on some bags of garbage a few yards into an alley. The seizure rocked Kevin with varying degrees of violence for five long minutes, and during that span at least a dozen people passed by the alley’s entrance. Each made a valiant effort to not notice him, moving along hastily, observing their wristwatches. The boy lazily swam back to consciousness. His perception became crystal clear. Where he lay his view was quite limited: only the brick wall he was facing, the sudden harsh double glare of passing headlights, a smattering of frosty-looking stars in the black wedge of sky above. Still, things were amazingly well-defined, from the pocks in the mortar between the old bricks, to the spiked green halos ringing the headlights. The sounds of traffic grew oddly muffled, the noise of approaching and retreating motors made him grow drowsy. And the drowsiness burned his eyes, and the burning grew hotter and hotter until at last a large round tear formed under his eyelid and made its slow rolling way over his cheek. In quick, scalding succession the tears tumbled from his eyes, rolling down his face to draw dark stains on the front of his shirt. How could she be so heartless, so blind to love? How could she just use him, lead him on so insensitively? How could she just toss him? So fickle, so manipulating and selfish. As if drowning, as if going down for that last gasp of water, he saw her face flash by in a fat, flapping portfolio. In what may have been minutes or hours he relived their entire story, from his first impression of her sitting alone by the highway, to the final crushing image of her standing engulfed in the arms of Adam. At last traffic ceased, and with the ominous silence Kevin’s whole world froze. His only observation was a projection that seemed to be dancing on the wall: his burned-out God was cruelly replaying the slo-mo film of Adam and Eve over and over for a one-man audience. Kevin could even hear the steady hum of the projector, see its light hitting the wall from somewhere to his right. No, it wasn’t a projector after all. Kevin’s lolling self-preservation instinct let him know the light came from headlights, and the hum from the idling engine of a vehicle that had apparently been motionless down the alley for a few minutes, its occupants observing. He thought he heard something like dogs whining nervously, but the sound didn’t jibe with the sadistic film on the wall. There came the grinding of a transmission’s gears being changed. The vehicle slowly moved away in reverse as the light grew dimmer and dimmer and the film faded and faded and faded until he lay alone in the blackness of space and limbo. No getting around it—it’s better to have never had than to have had and have lost. Or, better still, it’s better to have had and still be indifferent. And yet . . . what good is having; what good is love if it isn’t of desperate importance? But that means being desperately dependent, desperately vulnerable. Old child, young child, feel all right On a warm San Franciscan night 203

Carnival Man Down Kevin imagined he heard Sahib’s voice, saying, “The joke’s on us all,” but only a masochist could find humor in this pain. Silence swallowed him whole. He became insensible to the large and minor sounds, the heartbeat of a great city, and some time passed without his blinking an eye. Then the projector’s light was once more mysteriously playing on the wall, and Kevin again heard the whining of dogs—what sounded like big dogs. I wasn’t born there. Perhaps I’ll die there— There’s no place left to go . . . San Francisco. A truck door slammed, Another. In the frozen, eerie night, just above the background sounds of kennels and movie houses, Kevin numbly made out the voices of approaching intruders. Shee-it! What Ah tell ya. Dat hippie ain’t dead. He jes’ shammin’. A second voice, closer: “Hey! Homeboy! What ya doin’ in da gahbage?” Hee-hee. Git yo’ ass up when Ah’m talkin’ at ya, foo’. C’mon. Git up! Kevin was vaguely aware that his foot had just been kicked, but his whole body was numb, and the kick was no more concrete than a nudge in a dream. He was kicked again, harder, and now there was excited yammering above him. Le’s check ’im out. Mebbe he gots some dope. He sho’ look like he be trippin’ on sumpn! Hands yanked him roughly to his feet. Kevin found himself looking into the faces of three black toughs. Say, boy. You gots any dope? You gots any money? Kevin stared blankly. A sudden fist to the middle doubled him over. Hands began going through his clothes. At their touch something finally penetrated his stupor, and he began to half-heartedly struggle. Fists and feet tore into him, clubbing his skull and ribs as he fell sprawling on his face. The toe of a boot found his chin, heels came stomping down on his head, and all he could do was throw his arms over his face and take it. In the glare of the headlights he had a quick, blurry impression of a young black holding back two huge frantic Doberman Pinschers, and then he was kicked hard and deliberately in the teeth. There was a splintering of bone. That one act of brutality was a trumpet call. The fists and feet came down in a psychotic hail. Kevin was now treated to a strange out-of-body vision—he was watching a separate self lying motionless as six eager black hands ran over its broken splayed form. Ah gots his wallet. Shee-it! ’most a hunned dollahs! Still! Remain absolutely still! Kevin passively examined the hands scurrying over his deadlooking double, tearing open its shirt, yanking down its pants. He very clearly heard the assailants’ lusty breathing. Nuthin! Le’s git da fuck outta heah b’fo’ da poe-lice come! Check out dis belt! Kevin’s gorgeous snakeskin belt was ripped from his pants. The buckle slashed his face wildly, over and over, until the letters GNIHT NWO were plainly dug across his temple and cheek. A boot slammed into his nose. Arms of radiant light shot from his eyes and passed. Blood began to pool around his head. He gonna git da license numbah! 204

Carnival Man Down No he ain’t. Where his glasses lay six inches from his gushing nose Kevin saw a shoe come stomping down. His glasses disintegrated with a crunching, kaleidoscopic explosion. Le’s split! The oddly muffled sound of doors slamming shut. The piercing raw-raw-raw of Pinschers. The pickup tearing by, narrowly missing crushing his leg. An elongated screech of brakes, then a howl of tires burning as the truck roared away. The sound of the truck’s engine became a growl, a hum, a whisper, a memory. And the night caved in, claiming one more statistic for the city.

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Chapter 19 Be Stupid And Multiply Kevin’s eyes burned. Though very nearly blind without his glasses, he was alert enough to realize it was no longer night, and that he was no longer alone. He was still collapsed on his side, and could dimly make out a figure sitting in a slump beside him. His nostrils relayed to his brain the presence of a nauseating stench. The figure made a sound somewhere between a belch and a sigh, thrust a bottle of cheap wine in front of Kevin’s livid, terribly swollen face. “’ere, par’ner,” a voice slurred. “Nothin’ like wakin’ up to a good snort o’ vino.” The figure began to hack repetitively—ack-a, ack-a, ack-a; little coughs that were so weak they were almost dainty. Finally he moaned, “Oh, mama! Oh, please! Oh, Jesus!” and closed his eyes. A thin stream of vomit rolled out his mouth and down his arm. The terrible smell and this vague impression of a sick form lasted a while. It grew dark again, light again. Dark once more. Eventually Kevin became aware of a very loud, very scornful voice. Hands hauled him to a sitting position. Bit by bit he was yanked to his knees, to a half-standing slump, and finally upright. The outline of a thin woman’s face, laden with huge black-rimmed spectacles, was all he could make out. “Shame!” her voice rang out; undulant, overwrought, and disgusted. He saw a jaw drop. “Look at you!” She slammed his back against the wall to keep him propped while she pulled up and snapped his Levis. “Just look at you! Laying in the gutter drinking wine! Just. Look. At. You! And look at that man. Do you want to end up like him?” Kevin gaped at the sprawled and unconscious blur. The hands, locked on the front of his shirt, rocked him with hopeless urgency as their owner strove to get her point across. “Oh, why do you kids do it to yourselves? Why? What is it you want? Do you want us to listen to you? Well all right, we’re listening! Do you want us to see it your way? Okay, then, we’ll give it a 206

Carnival Be Stupid And Multiply try. But why do you have to do this to yourselves? Look at you! You’re all filthy and sloppy. You’re drunk and on dope. You just don’t give a damn, do you? And you’ve been fighting, fighting, fighting! All this high-horsing about love,” she mocked, “and peace,” she spat, “and then you go out and street fight and drink wine! Oh, you kids aren’t fooling anybody! Only yourselves, only yourselves!” She shook him and shook him until his head rolled like a dashboard toy with a spring neck. “Jesus God! Why won’t you kids listen!” The hands shoved him away with failure and disdain, with wasted appeal. Kevin, staggering from the alley, went reeling down the sidewalk under the impetus of that shove, his head bobbing and weaving. He ricocheted off lampposts, wobbled into buildings, careened among quickly parting, cursing morning pedestrians. A bus bench checked him. Stumbling into it from behind, he was doubled at the waist like a switchblade. Kevin very nearly did a complete flip over the thing, and remained in check: weight supported by the wood backing, knees slightly buckled, torso bunched on the other side, arms splayed, head pressed back against his neck at an awkward and painful angle on the bench seat. The picture of Adam and Eve mugged him; quick-punched his unblinking eyes, pinned his head with a vicious iron heel. His brain turned on a spit as memories seared it like tongues of flame . . . her sleeping face, inches away, framed by the powdery dawn. Her silly tears as she soothed the Afghan on Haight Street. Her eyes wide on the side of the coast highway, forehead pale from resting on her arms. And the ugly truth burst like a wave: He’d been tricked, suckered. Played for a fool. She’d never cared for him, the bitch; she’d been leading him on. Played for a fool—the whoring cunt had played him for a fool! Kevin, his wasted face purple with fury, summoned the strength to rise with savage images: he slapped her silly, he beat her senseless, he hurled her into her grave. He buckled in remorse. A bus rolled up with a fart of pneumatic doors and immediately roared away. A cloud of black diesel drove him choking to his feet. Kevin whirled along, his arms before his face, doing a mad pirouette in a world that was a fluid blur; a world teeming with cursing and dodging shadow people, swimming with vague lumbering machines that honked and screeched as he danced among them. And a blue field was filling his vision, darker than the sky and nearly as immense. This body of water was impossibly placid, shimmering with fuzzy sunshine. Something resembling a serpent spanned the water in roller coaster swoops and climbs. Tiny jewels of bugs swarmed to and fro along a belt running just below the serpent. Toward this gleaming display Kevin was irresistibly drawn, as an infant is drawn to trinkets. The metal-and-rubber boxes and the shouting flesh dolls grew more numerous as he neared. He shouted back, waving his arms, and somehow they parted. The waving of his arms deteriorated to a spiraling: Kevin whirled round and round, round and round. In this manner he proceeded across the bridge, twirling and dipping until his hand struck a cable and clamped a firm hold. His body was jerked to a halt, but his brain kept spinning; slowing, slowing, at last coming to a smooth merry-goround rest. Kevin climbed over the railing. Everything was cool. By simply placing one foot before the other and hanging onto these sweetly vibrating strings he found himself perched on a gilded platform, a cotton-soft catwalk. Far below lay the luscious bed 207

Carnival Be Stupid And Multiply of the bluer-than-blue bay. Kevin saw its warm heart concavely, so that the water seemed to reach up round the rim of his vision. He felt that if he let go he would not plunge—he would drift lazily like a dead, disengaged leaf . . . down down down to the blue water’s forgiving, all-encompassing bosom. Like such a leaf, the chorus to a popular song by Donovan Leitch floated into his thoughts, the lyrics contorting his lips: Way down below the ocean Is where I want to be She may be . . . A strong hand seizing his forearm aborted his graceful planing descent. The hand jerked him so roughly he almost pitched back over the railing. Inches from his nose Kevin made out the pale, worried face of a middle-aged man in need of a shave. This man’s eyes were dark and sunken under oblique brows, as watery and illustrative of pathos as the drooping eyes of an aged bloodhound. The pinched mouth was formed into a perfect O of dismay, and emitted a rhythmic garlicky blast. “Whoa, son. I said a-whoa there! That’s no way to solve your problems. That way lies nothin’ but sorrow and the forsakin’ of your immortal soul.” He hauled Kevin completely over the rail. Gripping the boy’s shoulder with one hand, he brandished a ratty copy of a familiar book in the other. “The Bible says you’re God’s temple, son; it says so right here in this glorious book in glorious black and white, and I can see it wrote in your eyes. And it goes on to say that if anyone destroys God’s temple then God’s gonna get mighty unhappy and destroy that sinner, just as sure as I’m standin’ before you now. And to that I say Hallelujah! I say Hallelujah, son! And mighty is the hand of God!” Kevin groaned and let his chin fall to his chest. Another one! Was the world really so full of them . . . could this dynamic, star-bound species—could this incredible animal that had produced everything from poetry to philosophy to telecommunications—really be, at heart, so intellectually infantile? The intruder looked on Kevin’s bowed head with keen concentration. “So you repent, do you? And just in time, I’d say. Glory in the wisdom of God! And Hallelujah! All thanks be rendered unto God Almighty, who in Christ always leads us in triumph!” A number of pedestrians had been drawn to the commotion. The soulsucker whirled on them, holding Kevin’s shoulder like a slave auctioneer. “Do ye all come to witness the salvation of a sinner in God’s eyes? Do ye see in this child’s pain sins native only to his own miserable soil? Well then let me tell you something, my friends, and that something’s that there ain’t a man amongst you any less guilty of sinnin’ before God. Oh, I know you may take the kiddies to church on Sundays, I know for the most part you many be decent enough folk, but I can see it in your eyes—you been fornicatin’ and covetin’ and carryin’ on and hopin’ the good Lord’s been lookin’ the other way. But let me tell you this: Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light!” He released Kevin and pounded a fist in the air for emphasis. “I can see you snickerin’ an’ all, but I’m tellin’ you, if you don’t accept Christ as your healer your soul ain’t gonna be worth a damn. Not a damn! You’ll rot in Hell, just as sure as I’m standin’ before you now.” The groaning audience broke up and began to drift away. The street preacher took off after those making the long trek across the bridge, as the duration of his soulbaiting would be extended, unless his victims decided to toss him the two hundred and fifty feet down to the water, by well over a mile. “Hear my prayer, O Lord! Let my cry come unto thee! That’s all you got to do: jus’ get down on your ever-lovin’ knees and ask the Blessed Lord to accept your sinful soul. Is that so hard? Are you all that busy? Well, don’t be! Don’t let Satan get away with it no more! Let ’im know they ain’t no fun in fornicatin’, they ain’t no hope in covetin’, and they ain’t no time for philanderin’. And,” he railed, his own worst enemy, “they ain’t no sense in carryin’ on!” 208

Carnival Be Stupid And Multiply Kevin limped off the bridge the way he’d come. The sun imploded, the sky went black, a dizzy rain lashed his hide and passed. Something oblong cast a stark shadow upon him. He raised his heavy head, peered through blackened eyes. A yellow sign on a slender pole looked down on him sternly. State Highway 1 said the sign. Kevin trembled all over, his breath rattling in and out. In a trance, he began taking faltering, rusty steps; the tin man following the yellow brick road to Emerald City, but with no sweet smiling girl to hold his big rigid hand. It was a long walk. He reeled through a dark tunnel, groped along a darker wall as traffic whizzed by, passed the Presidio golf course, and so came to the city streets. Far ahead he could see a green expanse capped by the tops of sycamores standing like sentries. As he drew nearer he made out the blurry figures of policemen. These policemen meant to prevent access to the park, but Kevin’s automatic pilot, by now a master of timing and obstacle skirting, took over in time to prevent his blundering into their clutches. When they moved down Fulton Street the boy stumbled into a wonderland of cherry trees peppering an endless spread of rolling lawn. He stepped through dainty Tea Garden streams with clumsy brontosaur feet, plodded mechanically over sunny flower gardens, kicked a meandering swath through the John McLaren Rhododendron Dell. Everywhere was a foreboding stillness, a nightmare world of silence punctuated only by the cooing wind and the redundant quacking of ducks at Quarry Lake. Kevin stopped. Where were all the people? There was only the dimly seen, unending panorama of the park, and this silence heavy as water. The hillocks and roads were littered with every imaginable form of debris, from beer cans to cellophane wrappers to abandoned sleeping bags to used condoms. It was as if a city had stood here, lived and breathed and fought and fornicated, and then suddenly been wiped from the face of the planet with only its waste for an obituary. Kevin stood hearing his stumbling heart, and taking deep gulps of that silence. Now the silence was breathing with him. He stood watching over the mounds of garbage for what seemed hours, waiting with the silence, waiting for Death to step onstage. And from deep in the quiet came muffled rumbling, a tap dance of vibrations underfoot. The rumbling became the ominous clopping of a horse’s hooves, with the chill implication of carriages and headless riders. From the foggy corners of his vision the gloom condensed into a central shadow, the shadow into a huge dark form galloping up on a black steed. “All right, clear out,” the rider called with an unconcealed nuance of menace. “The concert’s over, so beat it. The concert’s over.” Kevin threw his hands over his head as the rider approached. Just before the stick came cracking across his knuckles he saw a cop dressed in riot gear on horseback. Mounties! Saddlepigs! Real fear rattled him right out of his trance. “Out of the park, fucker!” the cop was spitting, swatting at Kevin’s shoulders and hands. The boy could only protect his head with his arms and gallop Quasimodo-wise as the cop whacked him and the horse’s hot foul breath lashed the back of his neck. “Move it, fucker, move it! And don’t kick all the shit you left behind. Have a good party, prick? Huh? Whose cock did you suck? I said move it, fucker, move it!” Kevin moved it, screaming, hobbling along like a bike with one training wheel. He felt his face raked by branches, felt his right foot encounter only space, felt concussions on his knees and elbows as he tumbled head over heels down a rocky grade, screaming bloody murder all the way. At 209

Carnival Be Stupid And Multiply the bottom he picked himself up and staggered down a rose-bordered walk. He brought a hand close to his streaming eyes. The hand was swollen and throbbing, discolored in half a dozen spots. He tried to flex his fingers but could manage only the pinky and thumb. He tried to swivel his head, but his neck was bruised and stiff. He shuffled along, a creature articulate in limps, stumbles, heaves, and spasms. The park, as far as he could tell, was still deserted, but occasionally he heard the cries of wild humans, whooping, shouting, upending trash cans. There was a hint of smoke in the air; the burning of scrub far away in the park. To Kevin’s left rose the sound of humans stampeding in terror. A moment later there came a quick-flight clopping of hooves. A small explosion to his right was followed by the distant scream of an automobile’s engine at high revolution. One by one the noises sorted themselves out and left him alone with the silence. Kevin strained his neck. Several bulges decorated his misty world, but nothing presented itself as a possible mounted policeman. After a minute he leaned against a tree, slid slowly to the ground. He was undoubtedly still in the park, for all this green could only be trees and grass. Ahead, a flat stretch of blue pond reflected the sun. Kevin was sedated by a feeling of completion, of finality. The peace and this green expanse reminded him of cemeteries he had explored on happier occasions, when the world’s deceitfulness had been veiled by his simple trust and basic decency. And suddenly he knew why Fate had aspired, from the beginning, to lead him here, and prevented his meeting his end in a hundred less creditable places. There was a real beauty to abandoning the flesh in such a garden of truth and human awakening. Eddie would gladly have chosen this very spot, but poor Eddie had most likely met his demise in an appalling barred pit under the gloating scrutiny of the Government. Kevin was ready, then. He knew he was ready to die. No. Not all was sickness and perversion. Somewhere out in the thick of that warped serpentarium we call society there walked a slender goddess who had taught him love, although she had, almost casually, also taught him despair. Everything was in apple pie order. There’s no mystery to it at all. Love is fool’s gold. And he was a fool. But love is all gossamer illusion—according to Eddie it didn’t exist at all. Then what, Kevin found himself wondering, was this special feeling he was experiencing? What was the name of the emotion that had crippled him? He felt cheated. Betrayed. Abandoned. And coupled with these pains was the awful knowledge that he would still risk even greater pain for the one who had abandoned him. Just to touch her face, or smell her hair. For these little things Kevin knew he would willingly, would gladly allow himself to be wounded anew. “Hello?” The voice sounded strange, hollow. Kevin slowly, expectantly raised his head. Distinct within the blur, he saw that his angel had come for him. “Hello,” he replied. “I’m ready.” The angel had very pale skin. Her figure had a Renaissance chubbiness, her face a rosycheeked fullness, and she turned her head a little in confusion at the boy’s reply. Then she beamed. “I’m glad,” she said. “I wish the whole world was ready.” Kevin sighed, saying with difficulty through swollen lips and missing teeth, “Why not? I lost the only thing that really mattered. There’s nothing left to live for.” Now the angel came down on one knee, moving her face close enough for Kevin to see her concern. 210

Carnival Be Stupid And Multiply “Oh, you mustn’t think that! There’s just so much to live for. Why, I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t laugh, or thank God how lucky I am to be alive on His wonderful Earth.” Kevin sighed again, a deep, autumnal sigh of resignation. “Then you are lucky. You must be the only one in the world who thinks like that.” Kevin felt a hand clutch his. The angel said, very softly, “Would you like to meet some more lucky people?” He couldn’t answer, baffled by the no-nonsense reality of her grip, paralyzed by her nearness. She tugged gently, but persuasively. “Come on. And don’t be afraid. Salvation is waiting for you with open arms.” The boy stood and hobbled along beside her, allowing himself to be led. Now he was limping closer, and could hear she was humming an oddly familiar tune in a carefree young manner. He said gropingly, “I—I don’t even know your name.” “Rose,” she said, beaming again. “My friends call me Rosy.” “I like Rose better . . . pretty name. I’m Kevin.” They stopped. A huge yellow school bus blocked their way. Religious graffiti seemed to take up every inch of the old vehicle, and the two words—JESUS SAVES —nearly an entire side. The angel led him up steps into the bus. “Hi Jerry, hi Mark, hi Brenda. I want you to meet Calvin.” The guy sitting in the driver’s seat spun around and pumped Kevin’s hand exuberantly, presenting him with the most psychopathic smile the boy had ever seen. “Calvin, the man! I love you, brother. I love you!” “You do?” Kevin turned to the angel. “I—I don’t understand.” He felt another soft hand placed gently on his arm, and a different girl’s voice ask, “What don’t you understand, Calvin?” “He said—he said he loves me.” “We all love you, Calvin.” Kevin’s confusion was so great his first instinct was to flee. Before he could do anything to prevent it, he felt tear after tear roll saltily down his cheeks. He swayed. Hands helped him to a place in the back of the bus. Kevin sat heavily. “I’m—I’m sorry to act like this,” he bubbled. The angel patted his hand. “You don’t have to be ashamed to cry, Calvin. Jesus wasn’t ashamed to weep for our sins, and, bad and wicked as we all are, he loves us anyway.” Kevin shook his head slowly. “I don’t see how you can talk about love like that. I was in love, and I gave, and she just chewed me up and spitted me out, and love is phony and she was fickle and—and . . .” his rambling words ended in a gasp of exhaustion. Amazed, he felt his head eased to rest against the angel’s warm bosom. He heard her pure heart beat regularly against his ear. “There’s a bit of Judas in us all,” she whispered. “But the only way to show them is to love them, and to turn the other cheek.” She paused. “What was her name?” Kevin sank deeper into the fleshy warmth. “Rose,” he mumbled, “oh, Rose.” The angel giggled. “Not me, silly. What was your girlfriend’s name?” “Name? Her name was—was . . . gosh, now I can’t even remember.” “See?” said Rose. “See how silly it is to worry?” A close scraping sound. A quiet voice asked, “Is he ready?” Rose tested Kevin’s temple with a forefinger. “Nice and soft.” He heard the old engine kick over and die. There was laughter up front, the sound of a cheap guitar being tuned. The driver tried twice more. The engine turned over wearily. 211

Carnival Be Stupid And Multiply “Hallelujah!” came a chorus from all around. “Praise Jesus!” “Praise Jesus,” Rose echoed. “Where’re we going?” Kevin asked. “We’re going to heaven, all of us.” Kevin sighed and let himself lay full-out, his head on the angel’s lap. She very gently eased the hat’s chin strap about his jaw until it was limp in her hand, then carefully removed the hat. Slowly a smile grew on his battered face. He closed his eyes. One of the girls gasped. “Look! Look! Look at Rosy and Calvin! It’s the Pieta. The La Pieta!” There were several gasps of awe. Kevin sighed again and nestled even deeper in the warmth, unashamed. “Praise Jesus!” The guitarist strummed a wobbly chord, but it was the sweetest sound Kevin had ever heard. Then the whole busload was singing: That’s the way God planned it. That’s the way God wants it to be. The angel’s warmth became his universe, her heartbeat his, and Kevin was unaware that the gears of the bus had changed, that they were slowly rolling along. That’s the way God planned it. That’s the way God wants it to be. Jerry steered the bus over Golden Gate Bridge, up Highway 101 to Mill Valley, then caught Highway 1 to the coast. On one side of the road a couple of Highway Patrolmen were sitting on their parked motorcycles, sharing a thermos of lukewarm coffee in the shade of a billboard. They both saw the bus coming, and their groans were simultaneous. Over the gargling sound of the engine they could hear laughter and voices ringing: That’s the way God planned it. That’s the way God wants it to be. “Well, well,” said one of the officers in a resigned undertone. “The carnival’s in town.” Jerry, grinning insanely, noticed the patrolmen and leaned out the driver’s window, flashed the peace sign with his left hand. The other officer cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted, “Jesus saves S&H Green Stamps!” Jerry honked and waved. The officers laughed and waved back. The bus continued lumbering up the road, seemingly dwindling in size. The laughter and singing grew fainter. The bus rounded a bend and vanished. awgus 18 1967 jime 212

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The Other Side The whole gang pressed in when Michael began foaming. His eyes rolled back, flickered a bit, and seemed to squeeze into his skull. A great breath filled his lungs. Sherri and Whiz grabbed the arms, Dale and Cindy the legs. Michael’s back arched and his hands clenched. Two seconds later he was thrashing wildly. A long shudder worked up from his toes, tightened his sphincter, and snapped back his head. He lay absolutely still. No one said a word; all eyes were on that wracked face. Slowly a bloody spume formed at each corner of the boy’s mouth. A red ooze broke from one nostril and rolled down a cheek, shiny in the amber haze of streetlamps. The gang looked up simultaneously. Their eyes all flashed, and their common sentiment was spontaneous: “Cool!” “So tell me what it was like,” Sherri prodded. “I mean, tell me what it was really like.” Michael hemmed evasively. But he’d always been shy; a distant boy with a sweet interior. Sherri liked him that way. The other girls went for the jocks and the jerkoffs, but Sherri found it more fun cracking the shell than buffing the surface. “It was like they say,” Michael mumbled. “‘You’ve never really lived’—” Sherri completed Morté’s most popular catch phrase, “—‘until you’ve seen the other side.’ So what was it like? The other side. Were you dead?” Michael turned. “I couldn’t have been, Sher. Or I wouldn’t be here. Nobody comes back.” “I know, I know. But what was it like? Did you feel you were dead?” She giggled at her own notion. “Dead people don’t feel.”

The Other Side “I felt . . .” In the car’s half-light Michael’s face was not unlike that rictus under the streetlamps. “I felt . . . things I wasn’t supposed to feel. I saw things I wasn’t supposed to see.” “Like what?” “Like . . . things.” “Okay, Mikey.” At that most unmanly nickname the blue hollows of his face turned purple. “Okay, Michael. I’ll just have to find out for myself.” “No, Sherri. You can’t do that. You mustn’t!” She gave him her patented peeved look. “Don’t play control-freak with me, Michael. Everybody’s doing Morté. ‘What’s good for the goose,’ right? Why should guys get to have all the fun?” “It’s not fun! Not fun. Only . . .” Sherri turned away. “Christ, Michael, you look like something out of George Romero. If it’s no fun, the hell with it.” “Only . . .” “Only?” “I’m going back in.” “Michael.” He kept his eyes shut. There was no way to close his ears. “Michael.” That was what he hated about life. How do you tell an adult, before he gives you all that crap about having so much to live for, that there’s just so much to die for— “Michael.” He opened his eyes. The stupid shrink was watching him as though he were a fish in an aquarium. Stupid pince-nez. Stupid little goatee. Stupid folded hands in a stupid brown suit. “If these questions are making you uncomfortable, we can start with something fresh. But you should know your father is paying a lot of money for this session, and will only be that much harder to live with if he feels we didn’t make progress.” “I realize that, sir.” “Now, Michael . . . peer pressure can cause youngsters to make decisions that are not in their best interest. This drug, with its ability to temporarily mimic the cessation of life, is achieving notorious popularity among the young.” Dr. Vies closed his eyes and drew his sensitive fingers to his lips. He rocked his narrow head and those arched fingers like joined pendula, saying, “Tch, tch, tch.” It was an effete move. A stupid move. “Interviewed participants invariably describe an episode of complete darkness, soon followed by a gradual, and most agreeable, return to full consciousness. They claim a profound and powerful sense of resurgence, of being born anew. They claim, too, that this interlude of mock demise is without sensation, and figureless. But you, Michael, according to your father, girlfriend, and two paramedics, claim to have experienced a sort of visitation, which you have difficulty depicting verbally.” Vies’s Mona Lisa smile fell flat. “Now, I have always found the argument for an afterlife, or an out-of-body experience, intensely provocative. I’m sure you have too; you are an intelligent young man. You need not feel pressured here; not in this private room, not with me. Understand that my profession’s ethical code ensures complete confidentiality between doctor and patient, or, as I like to portray the relationship, mentor and friend. So please feel free to be just as forthcoming with me as with your young comrades. Our conversation, I assure you, will not leave 2

The Other Side this room.” He leaned forward, causing Michael to just as levelly lean back. “So what did you experience, son? What did you see or feel? In your own words, please, and take your time.” Michael froze, weighing his options. He could stall, he could lie, he could tell someone what he’d been through. Someone who wouldn’t laugh. He licked his lips and leaned forward. “First I got real sick,” he whispered. “Then I felt cold and numb; I couldn’t move, sir, not at all.” Vies nodded. “The drug’s effects impersonate rigor mortis, but with a semi-conscious twist.” Michael relaxed his shoulders. His voice approached normal volume, and Dr. Vies leaned back. “Everything stopped. I was dead, sir, not ‘like dead.’ It was over. I stopped being alive.” “Yet you perceived this. You were ‘aware’ of being dead. Do you not see the contradiction?” “Of course. But I still died. I mean, the conscious thing you’re talking about was the old me. I left that. Honestly, sir, I couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t see anything, couldn’t smell or taste anything . . . what happened was different. But it was still happening.” Vies removed his pince-nez and fastidiously polished the lenses with a silk-embroidered kerchief while staring at his knees and nodding apologetically. Worse than effete. A nancy-boy. A damned fruit was trying to get inside his head. It was obscene; more obscene than the stickiest locker room banter. Good old life, right back in the saddle. It became important to keep talking before that horrible anal-retentive cartoon resumed control of the conversation. “There was someone else in there . . . over there . . . wherever. Someone who was talking to me—but he wasn’t speaking. It was scary, but it didn’t matter, because I wasn’t there. I mean it wasn’t there. Am I making any sense?” Vies’s nod was encouraging. Michael’s narrative had achieved a monotonic caliber, a quasihypnotic state clearly suggestive of catharsis. At this point it’s important an analyst become as motionless as possible, prod only in the affirmative, and fade to black. Teenagers like Michael— insular, diffident, sensitive—are excellent subjects when afforded retreat. “I knew he—it—was speaking to me, because he called me by name—even though I didn’t actually hear him. He didn’t want me to come in. He said—he said when the body dies the consciousness goes on, but it’s not like what everybody says it is.” Vies was careful. “You were encountering a ‘soul,’ then? An angel, perhaps, come to lead you to the afterworld?” Michael jerked back to the real. “No! What did I just tell you, doctor? I said he didn’t want me to come in. I said it was different. I’m not talking about some white light at the end of a tunnel.” Vies sat perfectly still. The room submerged imperceptibly, the air seemed to clot, the tension was gradually replaced by that same low hum of subtly intimate pause. “Michael. I would like to perform a kind of experiment now. Do not be alarmed. I am going to diminish the amount of visible light in this room. The purpose of this procedure is to reduce distraction, thereby enabling your closer approximation of that state you so urgently wish to recover.” The phrase urgently wish was a seed, planted with an almost sultry undertone. “I’m . . . I . . . I don’t want to be in the dark . . . not with another man.” “Do not be alarmed,” Vies repeated. “I shall remain seated, and so shall you.” He rose and turned a dimmer behind the bookcase, returned to his chair. “There. The atmosphere is much more amenable to free speaking.” The room was bathed in a sedative drear. Michael could still see, but Vies was more like a ghost than an analyst. Now they were both dead men. “He said,” Michael went on, in that prior drone, “he said that being on the other side is an elecatro . . . eleckamagnets . . .” 3

The Other Side “Electromagnetic?” Vies wondered, one nancy brow arched. “You are a student of physics, then, Michael?” Michael appeared to wince in the dimness. “No. He said it was that electric magnet jive you just said. A phenonemon, if I got that right, that was the opposite of life—negative activity, he said. I don’t know science junk, sir, I can only tell you what he told me. And that was that when the physical body dies, the electrical stuff that kept it going ends up in another place; a place where regular-life things don’t apply. You have memories, you have feelings, but you don’t have thoughts or goals or anything like that.” Vies’s voice was soft and even. “This is most understandable, Michael. One would have little use for goals without a corporeal vessel. But you speak of feelings. They were warm? They were peaceful? What did your friend have to say about feelings?” Michael’s mouth fell open and his face took on a ghastly pall. “Not my . . . friend.” Vies wanted to kick himself. “This visitor; the apparition. What were its feelings, its impressions?” “Worms,” Michael intoned. “Worms and maggots, eating you . . . forever. Horror. Pain. Sickness. Screaming all around. But no sound. Worms. Always worms . . .” The youthful contours passing from his face were just as steadily replaced by planes and crags of an indigo hue. The eyes now goring Vies were arid and fixed. The analyst’s nostrils twitched at a nauseating odor. Vies tore at his collar. He coughed, rose, and stepped to the dimmer. Michael’s body was stiff and scrunched in his chair, his face drawn, his eyes hollow. “Michael.” The boy didn’t respond. “Michael!” Vies opened his office door and leaned out. “Miss Carter. I would like you to dial 911, please.” He looked back into the room. Michael appeared to be surfacing; the blast of light was calling him back. “Hold that command, Miss Carter.” Vies reached in and turned the room lights up to full. Michael blinked rapidly. A moment later he was looking all around; a nervous teen unhappy with his surroundings. Vies stood thoughtfully in the doorway, caught between two worlds. “Michael.” The boy looked up. “Your session is over, Michael. I told your father you would call him at home when we were done. He is understandably anxious. I would like you to make that call now. Miss Carter, will you please buzz the door so Michael may phone home.” He allowed a lot of elbow room for the boy’s exit. “Do not be worried, son. Your father loves you very much, and agrees it is best you have plenty of space after this session. You are free to walk home rather than be picked up. He only wants to hear your voice, and to know you are feeling better. As do I.” There was a long electrical buzz. Michael hesitated, took a few steps. The buzz was reprised. Michael stepped into the receptionist’s office. Miss Carter looked through the glass. At a nod from Vies she walked into the back room and made for a file cabinet. Vies gave Michael a little nancy smile before sliding into his office. Michael dialed the number and cupped the mouthpiece with his free hand. “It’s Michael. I know you are. But I can’t talk now. Just be at Cindy’s in ten minutes. I’ll be on foot. Yes. Bring me a hit, man, and I don’t want to get burned. Yes, yes, yes. I’m going back in. Yes.”

4

Norm Nothing like thrill of hunt. Nothing. When Cerebralist run, Norm run faster. Simple math. When Cerry get all talky and make want deal, Normy get all angry and make want kill. Easy Reason. I know this. All Norm know this. But I know better. I see light in Cerry eye show fearblaze and I cut out eye happy. No hesitate. No oh-me-sosorry Cerry. I strong Norm. I tough. I on Way Up. All other Norm see this, know this, fear me. I know this. I know. I knowIknow. Gool know I know. He sit and watch and wait. He think I go soft, right here in cave. He think I panic at kill. He think I turn-find him all teeth and gory eye, and then I run. He think he more on way up than me, that all he have do is wait. And so all he can do is wait. Because Gool afraid to face me. He know. Gool know some day I eat his face alive, and taste his blood run hot and sweet, and then I feelgoodfeelgood. Gool watch me now. Gool watch me walk tall out cave, at front of all Norm, and know his place behind me, with average Norm. Gool know I kill more Cerry at yesterday hunt than all Norm put together, and he worry. He know I watch him back as we cross field, and he see me laugh harder, jump higher, scream louder. Gool hear Norm scream response and know he must echo or be

Norm suspicioned. But Gool voice catch in throat. He know I on way up, and he snarl. But not at me. At self; at Gool. All Norm excite behind me. All Norm know yesterday big hunt day. Norm almost find Cerry camp deep in wood, because of me, because I smart and follow clue. I on way up; I try harder. I remember. Norm know this, and Norm follow me. Gool know this, and Gool try sidetrack Norm. I see more clue now; broken branch, flattened patch, piece of cloth. Cerry try cover, but Cerry not smart. I whoop and whistle. All Norm talk excite. I break into run; run like leader, run like king. Norm cry out and I stop, raise arms. All Norm stop. I see crowd of Cerry hide in trees. I scream happyhappy. Norm scream response. One Cerry walk out from rest. Cerry hold white rag over head as he walk. Now he wave rag slow, back and forth. All Norm crouch, ready for kill. Cerry walk in fear, come very close. I stand tall. All Norm growl. This it! I make king-bid. I show all Norm I leader! I leap on Cerry, grab throat in both hands and squeeze. Feelgoodfeelgood. Cerry gasp very hard, but I hear his filthy Cerry-talk. “Please, before you kill me, listen for only a minute. The debilitating effects of M117 were entirely accidental and are completely reversible. Your mind, and the minds of all Norms, are perfectly healthy. There is a chemical block; a simple focal screen located, in a virtual sense, somewhere in the midbrain. It prevents the evolved aspects of abstract consciousness to perform; those aspects are overridden by the baser, deeper functions of primitivity—but they are present, and functioning in real time. They’re just obscured.” I make grip more tight on skinny Cerrythroat. “I ‘obscure’ you!” “Yes!” he gasp. “But precedent to that act, I beg you, ingest this capsule.” He hold up funnypill. Green. Red. But not pretty greenred. Ugly. Ugly like Cerry. “We have been diligently working on this problem. The Block is fluid. The biochemical reversion is absolutely effective, and it is permanent. Your recovery should begin almost immediately. You . . . all of you . . . all of us . . . can be saved.” “But not . . .” and I squeeze tighter, “not you!” “Swallow the capsule!” Cerry fading; I feel it. “It good!” he croak. “It make you happyhappy! Make you feelgoodfeelgood!” I stare in suspicionness, but not let up on squeeze. “Make me feelgoodfeelgood?” “Yes! Oh, for the love of—take the capsule! Make happyhappy!” Cerry go purple. Blood show in spit. Happy purple. I squeeze all more tight. Tighter. Tightertight, tightest-tight. And I see redred, and I go crazygood, and I look up. All Norm watching, careful. I know, they know, they knowIknow. Gool watch close, watch low. He know, I know; we knowIknow. This my time; I show tough. I look past Gool, I look all around and shout: “I make happy! I go sickychew! I go Norm on Cerry!” And I bite Cerry nose, twist in teeth, feel flesh come off goodhappy. “Oh dear God!” Cerry scream. “I—take the gack—mother of mercy, please, kill me, please do it, please, take the caps—” And Cerry shriek like woman as I scoop out eyes and smash head on rock, over, over, overoverover, smash blood happyhappy, kill Cerry and stand up with nose in mouth to smile, and Gool look on with jealousfrown. All Norm know I king. They know. I know. They knowIknow. 2

Norm Gool quiet now. Gool sit on rock by cave front and pretend he not care. But too late. All Norm dance around me! They know, they know! They knowIknow! I show no fear! I king of all Norm! I turn to Gool and laugh, and all Norm turn and laugh too, and it feelgoodfeelgood. And Gool hang head as I chew Cerry face and spit at feet. I laugh and hold up Cerry uglypill, and all Norm know I not afraid. I show them! I show Gool! I show them all! I hold up pill and open mouth wide. And I laugh as I swallow, and they know I up, I up, I all the way up! I king, I king, I king! They know, they know, theyknowIknow! Gool pretend sleep. But he watch me close. Very dark in cave; no moon tonight. No Norm see me kill, no Norm see me make happyhappy. No matter. Gool scream when teeth find throat. Norm will hear, Norm will know. Then I eat Gool heart, then I smash Gool brain. He very still now, he feel my footstep. One eye gleam in dark and he freeze. I bend over Gool, I show fang of king. Dizzy. Dizzy. Cave go darker. Stomach kick and I sick. Back off, back off. No Norm must see me weak. Gool must not see, Gool must not know! Sick. Back off, lay down. Rest. Pill . . . pill! Poisonpill! Cerry trick me! Sick, sick! Rest, die, throw up. No, no . . . sleep. Dizzy. Black. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Cave bright. Light hurt eyes; I close eyes, I listen. Gool talking all Norm. He sounds more aggressive than yesterday. He see me sick, know I down. I can’t let him see me weak; must not make puke or show cry. I’ve got to sit up, make laugh maybe, show all Norm I only play sick so they’ll stop listening to Gool. My stomach. The sickness passes when I sit up. Now all Norm look hard; I laugh, must laugh, must look nonchalant. They’re all just staring, Gool hardest. Smile back at Gool! Smile! Laugh! Show happyhappy. Stand up; you can do it. Avoid daylight; you’ll swoon. They’re still watching me. I can feel it. Breathe deep. Slow. Monitor your respiration. Act feelgoodfeelgood. That smell, that taste. Oh, God. Charnel. Remain upright. Gool stand up, Gool narrow eyes. Gool look for support from all Norm. My stomach! I’ll heave. No! Don’t show sickysick. Get out of here, fast. The daylight. The field. Run like hell. They’re chasing me; all Norm run hard. Gool first, on way up. Christ, faster! They’re catching me. The camp, the Cerebralist’s camp. They’ll take me in, they’ve got to. I remember, I leader, I smartest. Faster! Run! I feel all Norm breath. There! That’s the killing field. Go, man, just go! Through the trees. My ankle—ignore it. Run! Make faster-fast. Farther, deeper. I lose all Norm, but they find me. Run harder, push deeper. Show tough. I can outrun them, I can outthink them. Deeper, faster. Sprint, man. Go! A fort of some kind. Run! Log walls and rickety sentry stations. A wood door cracking open. Help! Men peering out. Call to them! “Help!” Damn it, scream! “For the love of God man, let me in! Help, help!” Confusion. “Help!” Hesitancy. “Help!” Hit the door running—I’m in. A face leaning over me, the expression distraught. “Get him to the circle and find some restraints!” Another voice, nearby: “He was coherent! Did you hear him? That was straight English!” “I don’t give a damn. He’s a savage.” 3

Norm My wind is coming back. “No . . . I’m free . . .” A new face, and an elderly man’s voice: “I recognize him—I think. Yesterday. The one who murdered Michael. He gave him the pill.” “Yes,” I manage, and sit up. “He’s curing!” someone cries. “He’s brought us all the proof we need. Get Daniel.” A hammering and hooting outside. The elderly man looks up darkly. “He’s brought us our extermination.” He helps me to my feet. “Come, son. Follow me inside.” The ruckus picks up as I limp along beside him. “They’ll breach the barrier soon,” he pants. “We don’t have much time.” I clutch his arm. “Don’t you have any weapons? We are . . . they are just flesh and blood. And teeth—watch the teeth.” “Oh, no,” he laments, as we pitch into a dark little room and fall round a homemade table against the wall. “All technology went down with the cities. Those of us bearing weapons soon found our ammunition expended in the hunt to survive. We’ve had to rough it, I’m afraid. Our spare energy has gone exclusively into researching a cure for that damnable M117 mistake.” He smiles wanly, as though I’m still too regressed to appreciate the irony. “So much for the chemical engineering of intellectual growth spurts.” He raises his eyes at a scream outside. “There is no information you can give us? To stop them?” I wag my head. “They won’t stop. This moment is a long time coming.” And he smiles, and he leans over, and he holds my stinking head against his chest. “No matter. The cure is effective. Daniel has a small escape door readied, and he is very fast and very clever. There are many more outposts like ours, and he will inform them of the cure so that civilized man may take back what is lost. Science has, once again, triumphed over the dark.” Shouts and screams. A great deal of commotion outside. A shape eclipses the doorway and I look up to see the looming form of Gool. And the old man pulls back my face and kisses my hair. “Sleep now, son,” he whispers, “as sleep we must. Close your eyes and think of all we have accomplished.” His voice is tremulous and his fingers tight. “Look to the stars, son, trust in man, and dream.”

4

The Fartian Chronicles 1. Sympaticus Mondays are always the worst. In any occupation, white collar or blue, starting the work week means dying anew. Those urgently needed extra hours seemed only to rip off Saturday morning, and Sunday, far from being a day of rest, quickly became a grueling countdown to tomorrow. Weekends are over before they begin. And for Fartian counselors beginning a new week at the Bureau of Terran Grievances, Monday’s just the first bump in a long slide to nowhere. The waiting room is always full, the clientele never pleased. After courteously blowing their minds trying to figure who should get to watch what, Fartians had magnanimously overhauled the entire building, adding sets, satellite dishes, and routers, so each Earthling could channel-surf to his or her heart’s content. But Number 231’s TV got better color than Number 175’s, Number 19’s was way too loud, etc. EatThis and UpYours, two of the kindest and most amenable Fartians to ever wait on a crowd, were recently roughed up over an improperly heated croissant, so now, with two staff in Recovery, YoMama was responsible for Monday’s first shift all on his lonesome. Patience is not just a Fartian virtue; it’s a way of life and manner of thinking, as deep and irrevocable as the urge to assist and comfort. Earth had to be appropriated. Had to. After making their own solar system an atomic junkyard, Terrans had set about turning the rest of the quadrant into a radioactive wilderness. The first emissaries from Fartia, coming in peace to beg for reason, were blown to smithereens by a quickly assembled International Guard, forcing the Fartians to subdue the planet by nullifying long-range weapons via microwave transmissions. They had to. It was that or write off the quadrant. After accepting effusive apologies, the United States president gave the conquerors the keys to the planet, free season tickets to Annie, and a signed CD of Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA. It was YoMama’s practice to play a loop full blast whenever

The Fartian Chronicles jingoism transported the clients. “Number One,” he said pleasantly. “Serving Number One.” Number One was a scrawny old woman with hair dyed the color of mercurochrome. YoMama recognized her from last week; he still suffered auralaches and an occasional nasalbleed. Number One immediately jumped on a table, lifted her skirt, and began thrusting her pelvis in YoMama’s direction while clacking her false teeth and wiggling her tongue. The grievance made no sense to YoMama, but the roaring clients, banging their foreheads on chairs and tables, were clearly pleased by the gesture. YoMama, nodding and smiling, reached down to switch on the CD. “Bohn in da USA,” the Boss sang, right on cue and over and over and over and over. “Bohn in da USA! Bohn in da USA!” The crowd went wild. A youth with purple and green spiked hair smashed his face into the unbreakable glass separating YoMama from an imminent, much-supported, and long overdue Earth-whooping. “You got that?” the youth screamed. He raised a victorious middle finger. “Number one, farthead, number one!” “Serving,” said YoMama. The woman pulled her dress completely over her head, did a rapid stuttering flamenco on the tabletop, and spun onto the floor. “Number Two,” YoMama called. “Serving Number Two.” There was a terrible biting scuffle to his right. YoMama raised a flipper and hesitated. He prudently switched off the CD player. A raggedy man stepped free of the raggedy tussle and made his raggedy way to the window. “That’s me, man. What I got to do around here to get some bus tokens? How’m I suppose to find a job walking all over the city? You wanna see the blisters on my feet, man?” He hauled a half-shod horror onto the narrow shelf beneath the glass. YoMama pouted compassionately. “An abundance of jobs are to be found right here at the center, Number Two. Merely fill out this form and you will instantly be eligible for the occupation of your choice.” Number Two let his foot slide off the shelf. “I knew it, man, I just knew it. You had to get personal, didn’t you? What you gotta know all about me for?” “Merely for records, sir, and for the processing of payments. Your government insists that all accounts be scrupulously itemized.” “Who are you, man, the flipping F.B.I.? Jesus. A guy comes in asking for a little help, and you give him the third degree. And what’s all that got to do with tokens, anyway?” YoMama pulled out a roll of fifty. “Here are your coins, sir.” The man licked his lips. His eyes rolled back up. “What’m I gonna do with tokens, man? My car’s sitting outside, and it’s dry as a bone. You’re telling me you want me to put a bunch of damn tokens in my gas tank? Ah, for the love of—” YoMama placed the roll back in the drawer and pulled out a twenty. He slid it through the small opening at the bottom of the glass. Number Two snapped it up and raised it triumphantly. He was mobbed before he made the door. “Number Three. Serving Number Three.” Number Three rose with the deadly certainty of a cornered cobra. Not since Betelgeuse had YoMama witnessed eyes so fixed and intense. Three wore an ankle-length mop of a trench coat over God knows what, and his hair and beard were so long and tangled it was difficult to tell where one began and the other gave up. Three’s eyes held YoMama’s all the way, his right hand repeatedly hurling down something unseen. When he reached the window he looked the little Fartian up and down before heaving a breath that fogged the glass lichen green: 2

The Fartian Chronicles “He-e-e-e-e shall riseth for your sins.” YoMama nodded energetically. This would be one of the messenger Terrans, come to retell the fable of the man who flew up into a cloud. The Fartian pulled out a twenty and slipped it into the stainless steel tray. Number Three, gravely insulted, snatched up the bill and stuffed it in a pocket. “Render unto Caesar . . .” he muttered viciously. “Yes, yes,” YoMama breathed, “that which is Caesar’s!” He placed his chin on his folded flippers and looked on dreamily. Number Three seemed to swell in his rags. “Let His Word come unto thee, that the inequities of the righteous brothers shall not be laundered in vain!” YoMama sighed, gazing up at Number Three like a schoolgirl admiring a bubblegum dreamboat. The messengers were some of his favorites. They had the uncanny ability to orate for hours on end, reaching dramatic peaks and building again, never tiring, never varying. But after thirty-five minutes YoMama realized his hour was almost up; YouPrickYou would be coming on shortly, and YoMama was one-shy of his four-Terran first shift quota. He hated to do it, but it was unquestionably cut-off time. “That was absolutely lovely,” he said. “Thank you so very, very much. The universe is actually a boundless entropic abstraction containing only polarized impulses in equipoise. The resultant impermeable electromagnetic spheres aggregate to a density appreciated by the senses as matter.” He blinked affectionately. Number Three’s piehole worked round and round, seeking a center. His eyes gradually clouded, and his hand again hurled down the unseen; first with uncertainty, then with vicious comprehension. “Number Four,” YoMama called. “Serving Number Four.” From the corner of his eye he saw an identical Fartian through an adjoining door’s glass. YouPrickYou smiled encouragingly. YoMama returned the gesture. Number Four was a giant of a Terran, with an arid and inflexible expression carved by years of loitering in the victimhood. He came, bless him, right to the point. “How many hoop you spect me t’jump troo t’claim mah benefis? Ah wantsa know why Ah don’t get no specs round here, an don’t you be gibin me no innastella jive bout fillin out no goddam foams neither, cause Ah’ll kick yo little greenman butt alla way back to da little greenman projects, an Ah ain’s gonna need no Blew Crue to do, too, so you, foo, kin jus be gibin me mah benefis, right now, cause Ah ain’s gots time to be playin yo spacemans games. Now you jus opens dat funnymoney drawer, sticks in yo little retard flaps, and Gib—Me—Mah—BENEFIS!” YoMama, smiling graciously, killed the speaker. One hand fell on the CD player, the other on his cubicle’s mental survival kit: a microdot copy of the Fartian Ethical Code, a Sav-on photograph of a mindlessly cheerful Earth family, and a glowing lozenge-shaped vial containing the only dose of Infinity a self-respecting Grievance counselor would ever need. They say the sentience continuum’s severance is instantaneous and painless. The original producers even claimed a kind of fuzzy ecstatic release. YoMama tapped twice on the kit’s lid, the corners of his perpetually-cherubic mouth rising. He genially flipped the OPEN sign to its sweet dorsal side and hit the PLAY button. The Boss laid it down: “Bohn in da USA! Bohn in da USA!” YoMama beamed patiently at the contorted faces and deflected spit, his head gently rocking side to side, his whole damnable countenance an infuriating beacon. There was a soft tapping on glass. YouPrickYou was smiling charmingly while pointing from his left flipper to the wall clock and 3

The Fartian Chronicles back. YoMama rose and eased open the door. The two embraced with extrastellar tenderness while the crowd blew kisses and showed limp wrists. YouPrickYou took the vacated seat, switched on the speaker, and turned the sign back to OPEN. One flipper killed the CD player while the other caressed the survival kit. A Terran hurled a folding steel chair directly against the unbreakable window. YouPrickYou smiled raptly through the glass. It was, after all, only Monday.

4

The Fartian Chronicles

2. Pluribus “Ladies and gentlemen . . . the Fartian Ambassador!” Spotlights searched wildly while the orchestra struggled through the Fartian anthem. It was a tough work, written as it was for a seventeen-piece ensemble of bowed genitalia and wind-breaking choir, but the theme had been transposed by the Pocoima Pops to an arrangement featuring synthesized piglets over symphonic kazoos. The strutting Ambassador appeared genuinely rapturous, while the Terrans had difficulty humming along and feigning enjoyment. But the audience got positively silly as soon as the orchestra picked up that good old English drinking song, the American National Anthem. So ugly was the Fartian Anthem, in fact, that our own agonizing anthem seemed downright lovely by comparison. The Ambassador slapped his flippers up the podium’s concealed steps, cleared his gasbox, and pressed his rubbery lips right up against the microphone. “Gerkils and plissyfogs. I deeply thank you for your attendance. As arranged by this forum’s coordinators, the program will proceed as follows: a brief statement composed by our First Fartian, a regulated interrogation from the esteemed panel, and a question and answer session with the audience. “Now to the First’s Address, in flubschaum may he bifurcate. “‘Wonderful people of Earth. It has been our great fortune to serve you, and with boundless excitement we look forward to your continued ridicule and abuse. However, there remain wide dissimilarities in our cultures, and we therefore humbly and repeatedly beg forgiveness for any and all trouble we may have caused. Assimilating as your grateful slaves requires an adjustment to Earth 5

The Fartian Chronicles customs we still find puzzling. Like your practice of treating restaurants, cinemas, sidewalks, and roadways as personal living rooms, bedrooms, and lavatories; this strikes us as most peculiar. We Fartians behave respectfully in public, and are literally incapable of giggling, guffawing, or bellowing in the faces of strangers. But we are working on it. Your diversity astonishes us; you come in so many colors and types. Speaking frankly, yet with the utmost admiration, we must inform the host nation that we do not understand how this “melting pot,” as you call it, can contain so many persons, with so much good fortune, who nevertheless voice a common plaint of victimhood—but rest assured that our interstellar convoys are even now bringing vast cargos of wealth and luxuries beyond your imaginations. We can only hope it will be enough. Then there is your Earthling insistence on a cosmological creator, who made you, us, and everything else . . . honestly, people of Earth, we look and we look and we look, but . . . nothing. We simply can find no trace of this entity. There is almost too much to ponder. Such as the predisposition of your females to paint themselves like circus performers, run around near-naked in public, and titter in the manner of developmentally challenged children; this is most foreign to our way of thinking. Yet you will be quite pleased to learn that our Fartian plissyfogs, in an attempt to emulate their astounding Terran counterparts, now proudly flaunt their danglepumps and viletrenches, and perform slop-and-pierce operations wherever and whenever possible. And thank you again and again, but we sincerely do not urgently require, as you so earnestly reiterate, insurance policies and monster wheels for our spacecraft, additional toner for our nonexistent printing equipment, in-vessel family tanning spas, or one-of-a-kind, won’t-lastforever, get-it-while-it’s-hot lakeside acreage smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Your Terran consideration for our well-being never ceases to amaze us. And your leaders! Most regal they are, to be sure, and most gracious . . . yet, on our home planet, leaders are selected for their wisdom, compassion, and eagerness to serve. All over this gorgeous globe we encounter premiers, kings, and presidents, all chosen for their photogenic qualities and ability to intimidate. Most peculiar. Also, there is this ubiquitous and absolutely mystifying Terran preoccupation with cell phones. The ability of humans—even adult males—to “make chitty-chat” ad nauseam, in restaurants, in automobiles, in hospitals and morgues, originally struck us as so rude and unbecoming even a Fartian slimeswiller would flumpergaggle with shame. Thankfully, our Department of Terran Analyses has reached its long-sought conclusion. By noting the striking similarities between social humans, dung beetles under duress, and Fartian spore squatters in heat, we have inferred a biochemical catalyst causing a kind of brainleak only remedied through electronic venting. So you will surely be pleased to learn we are responding to the eighteen billion-plus tally from your famous WishList Foundation; the identical wish from everybody from little Suzie Sunnymuffin of Clinton’s Folly, Arkansas, to Muhammed-Mash Muhammed Muhammed Comma Muhammed Osama-Obama Muhammed Comma Ramalama Muhammed Slashan’ dash-Muhammed Muhammed Muhammed of New Rubble, Iran. And so-o-o-o . . . (here the orchestra recreated a Fartian drum roll using perforated mahogany oars on vats of semi-congealed oatmeal)—stereo cell phones for everybody’!” The crowd’s roar made an instant celebrity of anybody green, rectally-gilled, and multiflippered. Terrans, immediately dialing up audience members to either side, slapped their personal cell phones temple-to-temple in anticipation, launching endless urgent dialogues on everything from American Idol to Wheel Of Fortune to just whose turn is it to take out the garbage, anyway. Women glazed and ran on and on without breath or forethought, men squealed and stamped their clodhoppers with delight. A great “chitty chant” began in the front rows, picked up quickly by the room: “Chittychat! Chitty-chat! Chitty-chat!” The beaming Ambassador gave a downstroke with his flipper. The Fartian Anthem began and the crowd died on a dime. The orchestra shrieked and farted to a close. 6

The Fartian Chronicles “Thus ends our First’s Address.” The Ambassador, looking to the monitor with embarrassment, raised a flipper to his forehead before placing it politely on his chest. “It states here that, having reverently saluted this forum’s host nation, I am to gratefully gush green over . . . Exxon, a distiller of liquid carcinogens . . . Avis, a noted hard-trier . . . and the McDonald’s Corporation, proud purveyor of the exciting new Flavor-Free® McMulch Burger and sucrose-smothered McGooey Pie. In flubschaum may they liquefy.” The Fartian turned to a trio of podia on his right. “I will now joyously accept questions from our sincere and erudite panel.” Moderator One’s question was up and out before his colleagues were halfway through their “Mister Ambassador”s. “How long have we been promised this convoy, Ambassador? And why the big secret about its contents? You are obviously aware of our trepidation concerning the possibilities of an insidious takeover.” The Ambassador raised a hand, though the audience was hushed. “Kindly allow me to entertain your queries in the order they were delivered. According to my Terran chronometer, the duration of this promise is, as of this check, two minutes and thirty-two seconds. Secondly, there are no secrets regarding the convoy’s cargo; as usual we are importing precious stones and metals, with an accent on diamonds, gold, and silver as per your demands, along with an abundance of the Fartian schlemburgers and fizzpops your people so urgently crave. And as to your charming notion concerning a ‘takeover,’ as you term it, our vessels, officers, and records are entirely at your disposal, as always.” He smiled angelically. The center moderator, a hard-boiled lady anchor from Earth Only News Network, raised her voice so stridently the first moderator was forced to back down. “Mister Ambassador! These are simple questions; there is no need to be evasive. Furthermore, I have irrefutable data proving children at Obama Elementary were taken ill after gorging on these ‘fizzpops’ of yours. How do you answer this charge?” The Ambassador’s whole face pursed. “This is unbearable news! They will be all right? Certainly we will recall the fizzpops.” “I hardly consider tummy aches and missed classes ‘all right,’ Ambassador!” There was a scuffle in the audience, and a man with a bullhorn called out, “Indian giver!” Immediately a nearby party of Native American businessmen began hacking at the troublemaker with pickets. Secret Service agents mauled their way to the spot. Pockets of unrest formed rapidly in the crowd. “Please . . .” the Ambassador tried. “We are doing our very best.” Moderator Three thrust forth an accusing forefinger. “The market will not bear a glut of gold and silver! How long, Ambassador, before these precious metals are no longer so precious?” “Forgive us,” the Ambassador wept, “for our unconscionable insensitivity and egregious misinterpretation of your magnifi—” “Ladies and gentlemen, the Fartian Ambassador has been shot! Ladies and gentlemen, the Fartian Ambassador has been shot! This is Dick Strickly on your morning driveby with the news, weather, sports, and a crib full of goodies. Apparently a heckler at the Schwarzenegger Convention Center splattered the Fartian Ambassador from here to Andromeda before being taken down by a drunken contingent of Secret Serv—HONK HONK—what’s that? Appears we have a winner on Strictly Dick’s Gangbanger Gazebo. It’s Li’l Snoop from Compton, California. How they hangin’, Snoopster? Get off your feet, grab a ho and a seat, ’cause you’re the eighty-seven thousandth caller 7

The Fartian Chronicles to correctly identify Hillary and Bill Clinton as a couple of complete—hold on a second, this just in. Ladies and gentlemen, the Fartian Ambassador wears a shirt! Ladies and gentlemen, the Fartian Ambassador wears a shirt! We go straight to our live feed with Rusty Carbunkle at the Center. How they hangin’, Ruster? Dick, it’s pandemonium here at the Schwarzenegger. Apparently an Art Bell devotee, claiming his gang-raped great grandmother was teleported into a Fartian wormhole, produced a handgun, shouted “Bring back the King Sisters!” and took out all mankind’s frustration on that little girly worm from the big green apple. Panic swept the Center. Don King threw in the towel, Stephen King spun off a pointless Haunted Convention Center trilogy, guest speaker Rodney G. King broadsided the ambulance rushing Larry King and B.B. King to Martin Luther King Hospital, and the Gay Scouts Marching Band has been postponed indefinitely. The city is in flames. Right now Bono is furiously organizing the entire Western hemisphere for a Full Day Of Really Bad Music, Donald Trump is urging the Fartian Four Hundred to join him in a Sweet Deal Seminar, and, and . . . I can see Paris Hilton fighting off her admirer, Dick, and it looks like she’s heading our way. Paris! Paris! How do you think this bodes for world peace? Can we get your thoughts on the obtuse ramifications of intergalactic telemetry when digitized according to Euclidian—Dick? Dick? The crowd is taking the stage! I see flags, Dick. Old Glory, the Blue-Green Globe, the Turkistani National. I think this is it, Dick. We’re coming back! There’s Gallagher and Oprah and the Hulkster and Stallone, fighting for the camera. There’s Imus and Rush and Leykis and Stern, fighting for the microphone. This just in: Governor Schwarzenegger is riding his stationary bike down from Sacramento, and President Bush has declared complete victory for Fartia. Oh my God, Dick, here come the big guns! There’s Siegfried and Roy with the ghost of Liberace. Sharpton and Sandler and Big Bird and Barbra. They’re holding hands, Dick, it’s working—no, wait; there’s a roundhouse from Oprah to the chin of Rickenbacker. Orville’s down, but he pops back up. Now it’s all Pauly paling in the spotlight. A ruckus to his left and—No! Mike Tyson just bit off Pee Wee Herman’s ill-used body part. They’re carrying him off screaming. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! It’s Michael Jackson, leading an entourage of little blond boys in fishnet! The crowd’s going insane! Oprah and Sally, scrabbling to meet him. Carrot Top and Potato Head, struggling to be heard. There’s Marcia and Johnny and Goofy and Waldo . . . the audience erupts—it’s a mindless rush; a mad river of posers and wannabes. I can’t see what’s happening—the multi-talented Moonwalker is being mobbed. But there’s Stern, towering obscenely. He shoves his way through, and now it’s King meets King, Dick! Stern grabs The Glove and jealously guards his prize. What’s he doing with it? He’s pulling down his pants and—dear God, Dick! They’re calling out Security! Now they’re hosing him down with fire extinguishers! The show can’t go on! But put away those remotes, people, ’cause here comes Gilbert and Bobcat and Tyra and Star. Ryan and Rosie and Rodney and Regis. The Verizon Geek, Mr. Rainbow Wig, Subway’s Jared, and Shrek in drag. They’re line-dancing, Dick, they’re kicking up their heels—it’s Earth’s finest hour! Paparazzi swarming like flies on doggie don’t! Cameras flashing! Spotlights spinning! Mother of Mercy, Dick—Tyson’s gone bananas! He’s snapping at Snoop Dogg, spitting on Spike, stomping on Stevie . . . he’s breaking his chains! No more cameras! No more cameras! Somebody kill those lights! Somebody call the Air Force! Oh, the humanity. The stage is collapsing, the curtain’s coming down. Wait! Wait! There’s an enormous gasp from the crowd. The spotlights swerve, the cameras swing . . . it’s Elton John, dressed in a stunning rainbowpatterned mink-and-nylon body stocking with rhinestone-studded peacock feathers, floor-length seethrough diamond-dusted condom hat, platform-heeled pink suede elf boots, and swirling gold lamé 8

The Fartian Chronicles bridal train. He waddles across what’s left of the stage to Jackson’s side. Their eyes meet and sparkle. Jackson drops his best boy, John’s glasses fog over. They throw out their arms. They reach in and embrace . . . and now they’re . . . they’re . . . oh for the love of—who knew two people could actually do that . . . but these aren’t just regular guys, Dick. No-siree, Betsy. This is talent at its most entertaining. The crowd whoops and whinnies. They want an encore. But how do you follow a performance like that? Well, color me crimson and kiss my fat aunt Fannie—here come the Rockettes on walkers, the Spice Girls in straitjackets, the Blue Man Crew on unicycles, butting their heads and slapping their thighs. I’m more than proud, folks, I’m patriotic-proud. And it just makes you want to shake your head and ponder your—Dick! Dick! There’s a fanfare from the pit! The giant TV screen’s coming down! I can’t believe it—it’s live from the White House. The crowd falls hushed. The whole world holds its breath. There’s the Oval Office, and the Stars and Stripes. The President’s at his desk. He’s looking around. He’s staring at something on his hand. I’m not sure he knows he’s on camera, Dick. Mr. Bush! Look straight ahead! No, over here! Mr. Bush . . . they’re going to commercial, Dick. But that’s okay; who could ever get enough Cal Worthington. And the crowd is definitely in favor of the moment. It’s toy flags and cell phones, it’s corn dogs all around. There’s Latifah and Latoya, Osama and Cher, Milli and Vanilli with Mr. Bean in between. The crowd is just ecstatic. They’re flicking their Bics in acknowledgement. What’s that? A commotion in the back . . . it’s O.J. and Tyson, Dick; they’re going toe to toe! Kill those lighters! Ban those Bics! A roar and a scream—dear God in heaven—somebody call a veterinarian. It’s on, it’s on—the screen’s on again! We’re back live at the Oval Office, Dick! They’ve fixed the problem. There’s the Stars and Stripes. There’s the President at his desk. He’s looking all around. Now he’s staring down at the carpet. He seems to have dropped his cookie, Dick. The camera zooms in. The President raises his head and knocks himself sillier. He stares at his hand. Now he’s looking all around. They’re going to commercial. But that’s okay; who could ever get enough Larry Miller. Rosanne grabs her crotch and makes for the mic! The band breaks into To Hell With The Chief. It’s toy flags and cell phones, it’s Slurpees all around. What an inspiration—the whole crowd’s standing at attention; they’re making chitty-chat while saluting the screen! We’re back, baby, we’re back in control. Do you hear that great big cheer, you puny green invaders? Are you following this? Well, you’d better get ready for Round One, because, damn your nasty little hides, the Fartian War has begun!

9

The Fartian Chronicles

3. Victorious Scotty Skatbord hauled his head out of the dumpster, his bleached-blond locks wagging. “Two cans and a plastic liter!” “Awesome!” Sackageegaws handed the treasures to Suki, who placed them neatly in her heavy-duty garbage bag. “No, bi-och!” Eye Bee plucked out the items and flattened them with monster stomps. “How many time I gots to tell you? Make . . . space!” Roach shuddered, staring up at the night. “Space . . .” He looked back down. “And how many times you gotta be told, homey, to not use that word?” Eye Bee nodded grimly and showed his fist. The Klee-shaes all matched the gesture, extending their arms until knuckles met in the gang’s secret street salute. “To kicking greenman butt!” Roach vowed. “Hallelujah!” Sackageegaws breathed. Eye Bee stopped dead. “Say what?” Sackageegaws bristled. “It’s a sacred term. One my people used to fight off the damn Pilgrims, okay? Suddenly you don’t know all about prejudice?” Suki stepped between them. “Come on, you two! We not lose sight what we fight for!” “Against,” Scotty amended. “What—ever! Klee-shae a unit, baby, and we never forget that, or we lose before begin!” “Right on!” The Klee-shaes punched fists again. Their gang name was an amalgam: “Klee” from a popular brand of tissue, and “shae” from a New York baseball stadium now being used as an arms warehouse in the Fartian War. Since Kleenex®, the tissue named, was used for nose-blowing and 10

The Fartian Chronicles wiping up residue, the gang’s credo proclaimed: We gonna blow away the greenman like the snot he be, wipe him to da moon and back, and trow his funky little space ass in da trash where it belong! The Klee-shaes were not to be confused with Da Branededz, a loose assemblage of peripatetic Christian proselytizers, or the Starry o’Types, a Mickey’s-swilling conglomerate of steel drummers and bongoheads—all ex-rival gangs, now united in the common war against the despised Fartians. “Jam!” Scotty swore. “How we supposed to fight those radical little dudes with these pickings?” He raised a plastic 12-ounce Coke bottle in either hand. “Sometime,” grated Suki, stamping a foot, “I just get so anger! Fartiaman give us two thousand buck a month, some cheap-ass condo, and a crapload of food stamp ain’t no good whatever on street. How we suppose to meet cost of living? When we gonna get another raise? This terrorism bo-sheet gotta end. It gonna end!” Roach drop-kicked a trash can. “They want us soft, homegirl! Don’t you get it? That’s why they give us so much—so we’ll get lazy and won’t be able to fight back.” “Klee-shaes,” Eye Bee proclaimed, “ain’t soft! And Ichabod Bartholemew Tawkins ain’t about to lay down fo no alien hijink. You all stiff?” “We stiff!” “Then let’s do it!” “I’m with ya, dog!” “Mazel tov!” “We ready!” “Far out, dude!” And with that the real war, the war of the streets, was on. The Klee-shaes splintered on Main and reconnoitered at Minor, bivouacked on Major and surfaced at Admiral. This was no haphazard assault: they’d group-fantasized overthrowing the Fartian’s Earthfare complex countless times. The grounds surrounding the complex extended a good square mile. It looked like Woodstock—if Woodstock had been lit by a vast ring of streetlamps, peppered with carnival rides, daycare centers, and concession stands, and littered with over three thousand porta-potty outhouses, most used as living quarters by homeless and substance-dependent Terrans; silently suffering soldiers in the gutsand-glory war with the Fartians. The Klee-shaes pimp-strutted purposefully up the long walk leading to the building’s main entrance, their cylinders a’clickin’. Veterans of ease flashed their bedsores and plaque, mothers of war raised their fat children high. This was it; the real thing. Men poured along the Klee-shaes’ flanks, chanting “Oof-oof-oof!” in the manner of Cheetos®-snarfing Rose Bowlers, women shook their moons and udders hysterically. As they approached the steps the Klee-shaes could hear a Terran favorite over the great building’s Public Address system—it was Neil Young warbling Keep On Rocking In The Free World, but a Fartian host, misunderstanding the moment, transferred the track to Mollify. Instantly The Boss was belting it out, right on cue and over and over and over and— “Bohn in da USA! Bohn in da USA!” The mob went gablivaschnocketyboogle. Klee-shaes vaulted the steps and kicked in the doors, stormed down the main hall demolishing anything green. The huge lobby was socked in, but the crowd intuitively cleared a path: this was serious business, baby; this was genuine Earth business at last. The tension produced a drug-like euphoria as the Klee-shaes stomped across the lobby. Eye Bee acknowledged his familiars with macho nods and glares: there were Logy and Wheezil, Sfinkter and Lee Mur, Stickypawz, Shrieking Violet, Gangho and Boilpuss. In Eye Bee’s camouflage pockets waited a cattle prod and brass knuckles. Maybe it was time to spill a little funky green blood. Their Fartian smiled politely upon opening the door. “How may I please you?” 11

The Fartian Chronicles “You can start,” Eye Bee hissed, “by kissing my shiny black ass.” The Fartian blushed kelly green. “Please forgive me, special sir, but there are moral considerations—” Suki restrained Eye Bee with a steadier arm. “Enough with make stalling, you little poof. How come my TV don’t get no freaking satellite?” The Fartian hopped about nervously. “But my dear, it was most necessary to ground those satellites. They were emitting gamma—” Roach showed a threatening fist. “Gamma, yo mama!” Cheers rang in the lobby. The Fartian looked like he would faint. “Counselor YoMama is currently unavailable, sirs and madams. An accident in Charity Center. Apparently YoMama’s face encountered a flurry of anxious clients. He is in Recovery, and will be back in service with manifold apologies.” Roach rammed him aside. “They ain’t gonna be no recovery, slimeboy. Where you hide your head honcho?” “Sir?” “The Jolly Green Giant, you quivering turd! You know just who I’m rapping about.” “I . . . I . . .” Sackageegaws stepped in. “Back off, Roach. This here situation calls for a woman’s touch.” She rubbed the Fartian’s trembling round crown. “What’s your name, sweetheart? What do they call you?” “Terrans,” the Fartian managed, “have generously honored me with the lovely appellation ‘DieBitch’, which I graciously respond to whenev—” Suki threw him into a headlock, a fist pressed against his nasal apertures. “I gonna show you woman touch! Now you listen up, Die-Beech. We Earthman ain’t gonna take no more of this bosheet, y’hear? So you gonna take us to your leader, right now, you gots me, or we gonna smash you into gooey little pile of kiwi jam.” Eye Bee pulled out his brass knuckles. Their Fartian squirmed free of the headlock and slapped his sissy-ass flippers against his cheeks. Scotty rode circles around the knot of Klee-shaes as their prisoner was cattle-prodded across the floor and into a huge storeroom. Here an elderly Fartian, no less wimpy than DieBitch, was meticulously ordering parcel allocations—shelves were overflowing with returned televisions, blenders, stereos, and microwaves. Oversized tags could be seen hanging from the articles, with labels reading: WRONG COLOR, LOUD TIMER, STICKY BUTTON, etc. Eye Bee didn’t waste time on introductions. He marched straight up to the head Fartian and knuckle-dusted him right in his just-begging-for-it face. “That’s for Earth!” Whoops rang in the lobby. It was obvious mustered Terrans were re-appropriating their beloved planet. Roach scooped him off the floor, slapped him once for good measure, and sat him back in his chair. “Now you gonna listen to the Klee-shaes, you little booger, and you gonna let the whole damn human race know we means business. You gonna put us up on that . . .” He snapped his fingers. “. . . on that . . .” “Times Square screen!” blurted Scotty. “That’s the one! Just like the Klee-shaes planned.” Roach shoved Scotty forward. “You tell him. And make him knows we stiff.” “No bo-sheet!” said Suki.

12

The Fartian Chronicles “Jam, dude!” Scotty got right in the First Fartian’s swollen gushing face. “We’re up for a hairy 360, you radical little hodad dude, and it’s like you’re airborne if you’re not totally awesome, you dig?” “No bo-sheet!” Eye Bee zapped him with the cattle prod. The First squealed and slapped his flippers against his newly-indented face. “Do him again,” grated Sackageegaws. This time the First yelped and leaped from his chair. Roach shoved him right back down. “Klee-shaes knows you can do it, cause you done it befo’.” He looked around. “And you done it from right here, in this very room. I recognizes it. This is where you announced all that free chocolate peanut butter toffee ice cream.” Sackageegaws grabbed the First by his pencil-thin neck. Her eyes were blazing. “I gained six pounds offa that damned ice cream!” Eye Bee meaningfully smacked the brass knuckles against his palm. “Move it, fart-boy, or we gonna do a little Rambo dance on your pussy green head.” The First pressed a button under his desk. A video camera dropped from a ceiling recess, and a wall panel rolled aside to reveal a 6 x 4 screen. A red light came on below the camera’s lens. The First appeared onscreen, surrounded by quickly repositioned Klee-shaes. He pushed another button and gagged, “Thank you so much. You may now speak.” “Yo yo yo,” called Eye Bee. “Lissen up, peeps of Earth. We is I.B. Tawkins, Roach Arroyo, Suki Kukinuki, Scotty Skatbord, and Jusplain Sackageegaws. We is the Klee-shaes, baby, here to say we done taked back the planet!” “No bo-sheet!” “Right on!” “Gnarly, dude!” “Top o’ the mornin’!” An insert appeared in the screen’s right-hand corner, showing the Square in real time. It looked like V-Day. Folks were leaping, handguns blazing, sailors necking with . . . well, sailors. “Now,” Eye Bee said, “for a little payback.” He began pulling merchandise off the shelves. “Where you keep the big screens and the high defs?” “It just like Fartiaman,” Suki fumed. “Hide alla good stuff.” “My people,” grunted Sackageegaws, “have suffered long enough.” She and Scotty tore open the tall doors leading to a closet containing control panels for the Fartian vessel chargers. They staggered back out dragging masses of insulated cable. “Come on!” Roach snapped. “What we gonna get for all that space jive?” “Jam!” Scotty said, shaking his head. “It’s copper!” This has been only one story, of many heroes. What’s important is the Fartian War is history. The extrastellar menace is behind us. We can all rest easy knowing our children are secure, our ethos reborn, our constitutions intact. One future day another invader may make the mistake of testing our God-given will. Let this record be a warning; a warning sent gloriously streaming into the cold alien depths—encased in an Earthling space capsule, shot from an Earthling launch pad, and with a very Earthling caveat: DO—NOT—MESS—WITH—EARTH! 13

The Fartian Chronicles

Punk.

14

A Deeper Cut Devon passed out. That’s what they told him, anyway. He’d been waiting in line like everyone else, and next thing he knew he was the center of attention for a ring of bystanders, a pair of old ladies were rubbing his arms, and the bank manager was asking if he needed an ambulance. The worst part, initially, was the embarrassment. But on the drive home an icy fear crimped the back of his neck, made his shoulders lock up and his elbows seize, made his hands sweat all over the wheel. What if it happened again? What if it happened while driving? He could be barreling along nicely, completely absorbed in the intricacies of lane surfing, and—BAM: dead man. Or find he’d unconsciously plowed though a crosswalk full of horrified lunchtime toddlers. Splattered innocence, crippled joy. The image was so appalling Devon had a phantom episode, imagining, in one missed heartbeat, that he’d blacked out again, and was surfacing anew. He pulled over with excessive caution; using only the rear-view mirror lest, in looking back for even a moment, some inexplicable mini-seizure should send him hurtling into a compound bloody fireball. Perspiration bathed his face and chest. He’d always been the healthiest of men; didn’t drink, didn’t touch drugs, didn’t over-exert. Gradually the tremors passed. But not the terror; it was a vital shadow in the center of his skull. Devon called a cab and a tow truck. He sat slumped in the back of the cab, drawing faux calm around him like a horsehair shroud. The driver was a talker; Devon let him roll on. All he could see was the cab’s windshield, streaked and bespattered, a broken mosaic of shocked baby faces that never had a chance to grow. “Your scans are clean,” Dr. Goodman beamed. The clipboard, facing away, would not elaborate. “I think we can cheerfully write off the cause of this visit as one of those little anomalies that pop into our lives, shake us up a bit to give our egos some perspective, and then pop right back out as though nothing occurred. And who knows? Maybe nothing did. Sometimes nature just drops the ball for no apparent reason. I like to compare the body to a complex harp with one or more

A Deeper Cut strings always out of tune, and hard work and healthful living as the elements that retune those—Mr. Devon?” Devon blinked at him. A low hum had just passed through his brain like a train through a tunnel. There were things in there, moving around, clattering without sound. It was as if his thoughts were loose shingles on a roof, responding to a sudden high wind. He blew over. Devon opened his eyes to another perspective. It was a skewed view, of three vulnerable specimens frozen in a brightly lit box. The action resumed: receptionist slipping out of room, staring strangely over shoulder, doctor frowning at clipboard, planted squarely before seated patient. Goodman’s entire demeanor had changed. He tapped his pencil on the clipboard—thudathuda-thud—little alien heartbeats in rubber on pressed cork. “You’ve heard of narcolepsy, Mr. Devon? Once we’ve ruled out the obvious—epilepsy, tumor, arrhythmia—we have to rely on conjecture, which, in a mature practice, comes down to empiricism rather than guesswork. What I’m trying to say is: symptoms are templates. Narcolepsy is a known condition, but it’s not a common one. I’m not going to beat around the bush here. In narcolepsy, the brain’s steady-state waking electrical activity is abruptly interrupted—the subject goes to sleep on the spot, rather than drifting away naturally. Why? The current’s been cut off, the lights shut down. Why? We don’t know yet; and there’s that dreadful non-answer which seems, to the anxious layperson, an evasion rather than a helpful response. But it’s all we’ve got. That, and a medication I’m prescribing. Don’t worry about the endless string of Latin syllables. Although still in the experimental stage, it shows tremendous promise in the short-term. However, there’s a caveat: you must be prudent in your approach to everyday activities whenever a recurrence might prove injurious to yourself or to others, and you must curtail these activities any time you experience symptoms that are in any way out of the ordin— ” “Mr. Devon?” Goodman’s smile was frayed around the edges. “Are you feeling all right now? We were discussing your prescription when you appear to have remissed momentarily. I’ve checked your vitals and you’re good as gold. The episode was very brief, yet it absolutely confirms my immediate diagnosis of narcolepsy.” He nervously drummed his fingers on the clipboard. “Miss Aines is going to administer a single dose of your prescription, and you are thereafter not to approach the medication without my approval over the phone. As I said, it’s experimental, but entirely safe. Then I want you to go home and take a load off—a load off your mind as well as your feet. I’d prefer you walk rather than use a cab or bus. Moderate exercise is always a precursor to healthful recovery.” He pulled open the door, hesitating halfway. “If you experience a recurrence, or become morbidly anxious, or entertain any weird, traumatic sense of alienation, I want you to give me a call right away. Miss Aines will produce my home and cell numbers as soon as you’ve received your medication and taken that single dose.” He smiled genially while ushering Devon out. “I know you’re going to be just fine.” Strangest thing. How can a man know what’s going on around him, behind him, within him—when he can’t see or feel a thing? Devon was unconscious. The infinitesimally vague electrical discharges were unlike anything he’d ever experienced, so he had no point of reference, but he knew his brainwaves were somehow being manipulated—by somebody or something from somewhere bleak and far away—for reasons of cold research, for inhuman experiment, for purposes that made no sense whatever in regular terms. He could tell, by focusing, that a kind of frustrated enmity pervaded the 2

A Deeper Cut ether connecting whoever he was with whatever they were, and that if he let go for even a second they’d— “Sir?” A thumb peeled back Devon’s eyelid. Sensible impressions were returning. The sounds of traffic. The inside of a paramedics’ van, seen gurney-up. A man’s face; a face like any other. “Sir, can you feel the pressure of my hand on your arm?” A pinching above the elbow. “How about now?” The full-screen thumb splintered into five fingers on a rocking hand. “Follow my hand with your eyes, sir.” The face turned. “He’s receptive.” The face turned back. “You’re in an ambulance, Mr. Devon. We’re taking you to the emergency room at Mother Of Mercy Hospital. But we’ve determined this is no emergency; that’s why we’re not using the siren. So just relax; what’s going on is purely procedural. You appear to have blacked out while sitting on the bus bench at White and Lincoln, yet no one observed any evidence of seizure or foul play. There’s no indication of brain trauma, no signs of physical injury, and all your responses to outside stimuli are well within the normal range. Do you feel okay now?” Devon’s voice phased in and out. “Yes, I’m fine. I just need to—” Two strong hands gripped his biceps. “You’ll have to remain quiet, sir. Until you’ve been thoroughly examined you’re under our supervision. It won’t be long. There’s the hospital now. We’re pulling up to emergency. Try to stay calm.” “I can’t be strapped down. That’s what they want.” Devon’s mouth was too dry for more. The paramedic rattled a prescription bottle. “The label reads fifty. The count is forty-nine. I’d call yours a pretty extreme reaction. Now just relax.” The van stopped with the gentlest jolt. A moment later the rear doors swung open, and the paramedic said, softly, “You’re under restraint only for your own safety, okay? We can’t have you blacking out and rolling off the gurney now, can we, Mr. Devon?” A hydraulic whine, a rocking and settling. A new voice said, “Okay to roll.” The bright assault of antiseptic fluorescence made Devon’s eyes burn. Faces looked on curiously as he was wheeled by; faces as indifferent as the paramedic’s, as indifferent as Dr. Goodman’s, as indifferent as that burned-out receptionist behind the glass, as— The electrical activity, Devon realized, functioned incidentally as a conduit. They were getting into his head, and they were learning what it means to be human, but it was hard work. Through this connection he’d become electrically empathic—able to glean their drive and exasperation, to know that, through their resolution, they were going to learn what they needed, if they didn’t kill him in the process, or if he was unable to kill himself first. He was experiencing their excitement as well as their frustration, their urgency and their demand. He was losing hold, losing self-control. He knew it. He could feel it. “Well, I’m taking him off the medication, at least for the present, and I don’t give a good holy crap what you or Lancet have to say on the matter, is that clear enough for you? As of right now he’s under our care. Your prescription arguably precipitated this patient’s arrival, and there’s absolutely no reason to believe it’s mitigating his condition in the least. Fine. You can talk to the coordinator in the morning. I’m presently handling Mr. Devon, and this conversation is officially concluded. Now go back to sleep!” Devon embraced the room’s hard white light like a lover. He kept his eyes fixed wide, afraid to even blink, as Dr. Grant firmly replaced the receiver and turned, hands clasped behind his back. 3

A Deeper Cut “Mr. Devon, you’re doing great. You’ve been through a bit of a scare, but there’s no reason to worry. Your provider has authorized any necessary procedures, though I’m confident we’ve no cause for alarm.” He raised Devon’s prescription bottle like a dead lizard. “As of this moment you’re off these. I’m going to give you a sedative to help you relax. We’re calling a cab. I want you to go home and get some sleep. You have an appointment with Dr. Randall for Thursday at nine.” “No, please . . . give me something that’ll help me stay awake. They’re getting closer. If I fall asleep they’ll be right back in.” Dr. Grant stood quietly, his expression sour. “Who’s getting closer?” Facets of his identity were falling like flakes of dandruff. Memories were being stripped, copied, filed; Devon’s humanness was being assaulted, weakness by weakness. The excitement was palpable; he was naked, he was down, he was roadkill. His flaws were being recognized and categorized, in some universal way only a natural predator could understand. Humans were easy, they were fait accompli. Devon could struggle all he wanted, but he was pinned and purpling, a pretty bruised butterfly. He thrashed, but didn’t budge, called, but didn’t peep, screamed— “The more you fight me,” snarled the security guard, “the harder I fight back. You got that?” He shoved Devon into a plastic chair, one of many lined against the wall. “Listen to me!” Devon begged. “I can’t hold on any longer. Please. Something.” The guard sneered over his shoulder. “I’ll give you something.” He pressed the intercom’s call button. “Security on floor one, east wing. I have a disturbed patient who somehow got out into the hall. Not a biggie, but Riley and Forbes, I’d like you to assist.” The feelers were in. He was going. A great company was in his skull; a kind of delirious clamor and buzzing crescendo. Devon was a transparent display, every nerve-ending under intense scrutiny. Ecstasy, comprehension, anticipation. His mind was being peeled open; his nightmares, his mistrust, his mortal horror. Devon leaped from his chair, tore the guard’s gun from its holster, crammed the barrel in his mouth. A bearhug and shattering of teeth. The gun went spinning across the floor. There was a hard stomping down the hall, a flurry of shouts, the pulsing buzz of an alarm. He was seizing. His arms were shaking wildly, his eyes bursting from their sockets. Liquid fire tore through his frame, spewed from his mouth and nostrils, set his fraying hair ablaze. Devon hit the plate glass window like a bug smacking into a windshield. He blew out into the night, a mass of porcupine shards, blood spraying in his wake. He heard Dr. Grant puffing behind. “Mr. Devon! Stop! For the love of God! Stop!” He was rocking madly, his skin blistering, his organs swelling to bursting. Devon’s head snapped back and his mouth ripped at the corners, peeled off his face and blew away in shreds. His ribcage shattered from the sternum down. He was being zipped open, torn apart, dug into. With a shriek of bone his spine snapped free, his pelvis collapsed, his skull halved to expose the hysterical animal writhing within. “Mr. Devon! Somebody call the gate. Devon!” 4

A Deeper Cut Devon’s brain turned to cartilage, to sponge, to jelly. The cerebellum split, the cortex gave way, and they were in. Electrical energy; frying, probing, hurtling into every cell. “Mr. Devon!” Night sucked him up like a giant straw. Consciousness was a black and wiggly thing, allfeeding, all-absorbing, all-encompassing, all “De—

5

Elaine There were worms in her mug. Tiny white maggoty swimmers that peeked through the steam before diving back in her brew. Elaine blew them away and sipped without savor, more out of habit than desire. Her morose brown eye, rippling on the coffee’s face, stared back, steamed over, dissolved. A trained observer would note Elaine performed this ritual, as a regular break from her streetwatching, approximately once every ninety seconds. To an untrained observer, she would appear intent and impatient, perhaps waiting on a tardy acquaintance. That untrained observer now looked down at his own eggs and coffee, feeling Elaine lift her eyes. It was one of those quirky events falling awkwardly into the norm; a square moment in a round day, a sentimental misstep in a routine dance of nods and evasions. The elderly man looked back up. Their eyes met and held. It wasn’t kismet; he found nothing attractive in the frumpish and pasty, rotund little woman with the bland expression. And Elaine, for her part, was not drawn to the spindly gray gentleman. They both smiled. Sun didn’t break through clouds, or anything like that. It was a snapshot, dingy with caffeine, phlegm, and emotional disuse. They looked back down. Elaine caught herself peeking. The elderly man’s eyes worked their way back up. They smiled again, this time out of good old-fashioned nervousness. Now it was more than uncomfortable. Though in adjacent booths, the two were only six feet apart, and situated dead-on: Crazy Dinah’s All-Day Diner featured notoriously narrow tabletops, forcing facing customers to sit diagonally with their personal plates and silver.

Elaine The old man’s voice was like cellophane. “Forgive me.” His fluttering hands were lame pigeons, desperately side-stepping his mug, silver, and plate. “I didn’t mean to make you nervous.” “That’s okay,” Elaine mumbled. The gentleman coughed delicately. “Well, I guess I’m what you’d call a people person.” His eyes searched the sidewalk. “I couldn’t help noticing how you enjoy staring out this big old window.” He smiled crookedly. “I guess that makes us both people people.” Elaine studied her coffee mug. “People—” she felt herself blushing, “people are . . . good.” The man, still smiling awkwardly, stuck his hand across the table. Long as his arms were, it was a gap too deep. He swung around to his table’s facing bench, leaned over the back and tried again. “I’m Joe. Or Joseph, actually. Joseph Carten.” Elaine blushed until it burned. “Elaine Bushnelkopf.” She shook hands timidly, immediately stuffing the unpracticed paw back in her lap. He cocked an eyebrow. “Unusual last name, Lainey.” “From . . . from the Pennsylvania Bushnelkopfs. The family was in fertilizers.” “Can never get enough fertilizer. Umm . . . the Cartens, far as I know, were never into anything.” He shrugged. “My dad was a serviceman. Air Force. He went down in Iwo.” “Oh!” Elaine blurted. “I’m just so sorry.” “Don’t be. I never actually met the guy. No bridges built, no bridges burned.” “Then your mom must have been, well, very strong. Very dedicated.” He smiled engagingly. “That’s what they say on the boulevard.” That crooked old grin collapsed at her look of confusion. “I’m just kidding, Elaine. Just being, well, you know, sarcastic about the whole family thing.” “People shouldn’t talk about their parents that way,” Elaine muttered. She looked up quickly. “Not you, Joseph. I don’t mean to be critical.” “Joe,” he said, drumming his palms on the seat’s greasy upholstery. “Look, I’m sorry, Elaine. You must have had super parents. Anyway, you’re probably right. I should know enough to keep my big mouth shut.” His eyes lit fractionally. “I’ve got to run, Lainey. It’s been great jawing with you. Maybe we’ll slam into each other again.” “I’d . . .” Elaine managed, “I’d like that.” “Ciao.” Joe grinned and creaked to his feet. He dropped a five on his tab, smiled back at her, and whistled on out the door. The worms resurfaced. “So you scared off another one?” Elaine didn’t have to look up. Cassie was one of those unfriendly friends, functioning as both conscience and bully at the worst of times. Not that the worst of times were all that much worse than the best of times, and not that knowing someone execrable was a hell of a lot worse than knowing no one at all. “He was in a hurry,” Elaine breezed. “An important man.” Cassie laughed as she swept up Joseph’s untouched plates, scraping his five off the table as though daubing a smear. “In a hurry? The only thing that’d make that old guy jump is a defibrillator.” Her eyes gleamed. “But I do believe he got it up for you, honey.” She ticked a forefinger side to side. “Don’t tell anybody, but I think little Lainey’s got a fella.” “Stop it.” “Seriously, sweetheart. While you were staring out the window ol’ Cassie was on the watch, as always. I think Mr. Hurry’s got googly eyes.” “He was just being nice.” 2

Elaine “Don’t be so full of yourself. A girl has to take what she can in this world. And I like ‘nice’.” Facing Elaine, Cassie leaned halfway across the table, using her upper arms to meaningfully squeeze forth her very ample breasts. “If you think you can do better than these, sugar, then you just don’t know men.” Elaine’s eyes burned into her brew. The worms circled concentrically in response, making for the rim. Elaine blew so hard her coffee sprayed the tabletop. “Joseph’s not like that. He’s a gentleman.” Cassie cupped Elaine’s free hand in hers. “Give me a break, Lainey. All men, God bless ’em, are ‘like that’.” “No,” Elaine whispered into her cup. “Not Joseph. Not Joe.” Elaine brooded all the way home. How could she have been so stupid. Joseph was the first man she’d spoken to, on anything remotely resembling an intimate level in . . . in . . . how could she have offended him like that. “Googly eyes.” Absurd or not, the idea grew on her as she waddled across the courtyard to her tiny apartment. Like most of the building’s disability recipients, Elaine’s inability to pursue meaningful employment came from hormonally-triggered chronic despondency. But, unlike the rest of the girls, she was unable to find comfort in medication or company. Elaine was a drifting, stale dreamer, unwilling to focus on anything real. She prepared her usual bath; lukewarm and not too full, tepid like everything else in her life. But for once she was prey to a forgotten impulse: Elaine exhumed her makeup kit and got liberal with the lipstick and liner. She added a capful of rose to the bath. The water took her as always, yet with an extra caress. Elaine soaped herself slowly with her left hand while her right slid over a breast and down her tummy. Two fingers made way for the third. But it wasn’t wrong this time; it couldn’t have been more right—that was Joseph down there, that was Joe. And Elaine’s depression was lifting like fog. That was Joey. She wasn’t exactly waiting for him, not in the literal sense. He’d never show, not after she’d embarrassed them both. But Elaine was on her fourth cup, and the sidewalk had lost all its appeal. She’d dolled herself up considerably. An ex-beautician neighbor took care of the hair and manicure, another loaned her a somewhat flattering dress. Elaine’s mood shift was all over the building; in a heartbeat the secret was out, and her gentleman admirer the subject of endless gossip and guesswork. Elaine stank of Tabu from five feet away. In her purse was a neatly folded love poem, sealed with a kiss; part heartfelt rain and daybreak, part saccharine Hallmark cliché. Never had she been so nervous; it took the whole building to talk her into this. Elaine wanted to die. Or to live. It didn’t matter. If he laughed, if he turned away, if he gave her one funny look—it didn’t matter; she’d die. This was it, and she knew it. Her one and only chance for a man. For happiness, for comfort, for company. For all those things life had denied her, and granted everybody else in spades. She carefully wiped the lipstick off her mug’s porcelain rim. And again. Elaine sobbed and caught herself. She must look a mess. She’d gnawed away half her nail polish, the dress was bunching in all the wrong places, and tears and mascara don’t mix. She couldn’t breathe. And now she was hyperventilating. Hard to swallow. She took a sip and sobbed again. The door chimes rang cheerfully, followed by Cassie’s girlish squeal. Elaine couldn’t believe her ears. 3

Elaine “Joey!” At the same moment a dark brown step van pulled to the curb. The van’s deep color provided a temporary backing for the window’s pane, so that Elaine was able to monitor the goings-on behind her by their reflection. The floral delivery van’s huge heart-shaped logo formed a frame for the action at the register. Around this logo was set the legend: Life Is For Lovers. Cassie was all over Joseph; kissing and petting and stroking and groping. In his gangly fingers dangled a large box of chocolates with a big pink bow. Elaine turned, against her will. Cassie had Joseph’s face in her chest now, but she swiveled long enough to squeeze her breasts with her arms while giving Elaine a triumphant wink and smile. Elaine stumbled all the way home. Pedestrians stared curiously as she staggered off curbs, neighbors blanched and retreated into the shadows of their knowing lives. She carefully plucked the flat packets off her medicine cabinet’s bottom shelf, neatly laid out her makeup items round the tub’s rim while the basin slowly filled. Her hands trembled upon submerging. Elaine whimpered against the pain to come. “Shhh,” the razors whispered, “shhh . . . shhh.” It didn’t hurt the way she expected. The bath quickly went pink, only gradually turning red. Elaine raised her streaming arms, folded her fouled wrists across her chest. And Joseph appeared as a brooding transparency, waxing almost-real in perfect sync with the room’s slow fade. She could see his mouth struggling to reach hers, could read his slow-motion lips, contorted by guilt and shame: “I’m . . . Just . . . So . . . So . . . Sorry . . .” “I,” Elaine heard her voice reply, “forgive.” But the sound was hollow, and leaning whence it came. And the air congealed, and the room dimmed, and Elaine’s lips were utterly without sensation as Joey bent at the waist, passed out of passion’s way, and kissed her once goodnight.

4

Now!

The first gob was like any other: warm, well-aimed, expressed with certitude and contempt. The second hit his cheek, just shy of the clogged broken nose. Numbers three and four were almost on top of each other—pat, pat—on his eyelid and beard. Pat, pat, patapat. Pat. Patapata. Patpat. Patapatapatapata, and the rain came down for real. He rolled his swollen eyes—once to the left, once to the right. The lids were so damaged he could manage only a periscopic slice. He was in a field, on his back, becoming drenched even as his senses became desaturated. The sky was black, gray, and heaving. It had to be winter; late December or early January. Rainwater made him gag, but he was too logy to turn away. The pain was vicious. His mouth had been kicked in: several teeth were missing; the gums clotted and bleeding, the jaw a rusty mangled trap. He sat up and nearly passed out. But he recognized the signs, and didn’t dare: he’d drown in the rain—croak tonight, half-buried in mud, a foul pocket of steam for Starbucks’ horizon-searching crossword solvers. Before dawn the rats and possums would come for him, attracted by the blood. Once the field had dried out, the ants would get busy. The gulls and pelicans would show off the harbor, followed by crows and buzzards. A flesh hill for flies; big ones, marsh jumpers, relentless in their work. The machine would break into full gear at this one sunken, miscellaneous spot, spreading its operation like a rank growing pool, horror to horror. And the flesh would dissolve in mandible and jaw, and the raggedy clothes would gradually fall away, and the innards would rot in the warm California sun until the unrecognizable pile stank so badly someone called a low-level emergency number. Too big to be a dog or cat. Smells something awful.

Now! He lurched to his feet and stood swaying, pressing all available energy into the one vital effort of remaining vertical. His left side hurt so wildly he had to lean right. The giddily revolving field made him stagger, until his skewed equilibrium got him stumbling along, into holes, over roots, down and up the swirling polluted ditch, toward the fence . . . the fence—that collapsed border between the world of crawling, sucking nature and the world of paramedics and dumpster dinners . . . the fence, leaning in the leaning rain, snagging in his old coat, tearing a forearm, giving way that he might pitch over and crawl through the curbside growth, off the curb and into the road. Cars braked and swerved needlessly, drivers hammered on horn plates, screamed obscenities, hurled miscellaneous refuse. He scrambled across the road and into the mall’s parking lot, but the moment he hit the ground he was socked in by pain; he had to keep moving. He stumbled alongside a few storefronts until he reached a facing pair of cast iron benches. One seated a tiny old woman, so white and wizened she looked like she’d just been fished from the harbor. She watched him lilting there, hands clamped on the opposing bench. “You’re a dirty man. A dirty, dirty man.” Footsteps on wet cement; a splat and clacking. A new voice demanded, “What are you doing here, buddy? Are you bothering this woman?” A chubby security guard stepped between them, his expression and posture flat-out confrontational. “Call the police,” the woman said. “Is he bothering you, ma’am?” “Call the police!” The guard squirmed. “Well, there’s no reason to do anything that radical, ma’am. I’ll just escort him off-property. You’ll be fine.” The old woman’s jaw fell. “Officer. Did you just hear me? I don’t feel safe. He could come back. Now call the police!” “I . . . ee-yuh . . . ma’am, to be honest, this isn’t really an emergency situation. But I’ll make absolutely sure that he doesn’t—” “Officer! I said to call the police! Where is your employer, officer? Do I need to talk to him?” The good arm began to tremble, the knees gave way, and he collapsed supine on the bench; a pile of rags and refuse. “I-ee-uh . . . oboy.” The guard fumbled out his walkie-talkie. “Yeah, Gopher, it’s Buddy. I’m over here in front of Dimple’s. We got some derelict wandered in off the street, and now he’s all flopped out on one of the benches. Right. Well, there’s a woman here who doesn’t feel safe and she wants we should call a cop . . . I copy that, man, but like I’m just passing it along, okay? What do you want we should do? No, don’t roust Al! It’s not that important, and anyway he said we got to, y’know, use our own initiative. I dunno. I can’t move him, and that’s lawsuit-type action, man; you know that. Whatever you want to do. I guess. Then it ain’t on me, man. Okay. Ten-four.” He stuffed the walkie-talkie in a coat pocket, knocking out a handful of corn chips. “The police will be here in a scratch, ma’am. I’ll be right beside you all the time, so you don’t have to worry about anything.” “He’s disgusting.” “We get them from time to time, ma’am. They come dragging in off the beach or harbor. This one looks like he sleeps in the garbage. But I’ve never heard of ’em actually hurting anybody, you know, biting people or stuff like that. No reason at all to be scared. I carry pepper spray in case one should go off on somebody or something, and the station’s just down the street, so you can count on the police showing up real quick if you need them, ma’am.” Even as the words were leaving his 2

Now! mouth, red and blue roof lights showed at the drive. “And here they are now. See what I mean? No worries at all.” The car pulled up beside them. A spotlight played for a few seconds. The lone cop stepped around the car. “Who called in the emergency?” The guard tossed his head. “That would’ve been Gopher, over in the shack by Sauer Dog. I think the situation’s pretty much contained. This guy don’t want to move. I don’t know if he’s wasted or what. This lady here complained about him.” “I don’t like him. I don’t like him at all. He smells bad and he looks dangerous. He’s a dirty man; a very dirty man.” “Like I said.” The cop turned to the other bench. “Sit up.” He forced himself into a seated slump. “What’s your name?” “Lsr.” “Loser? What happened to you, sir?” He passed a light eye to eye, gave the mouth a visual once-over. “How’s the other guy? You do some damage?” The eyes flickered. “Do you feel you need medical assistance, sir? Are you having trouble breathing or swallowing?” He tucked the flashlight under an arm and extracted a sterile glove from a pouch on his belt. “Hold still.” He used the gloved hand to examine the ears, mouth, and throat. “Stay put. Don’t move unless I tell you to.” He walked over to the security guard, now huddling beneath an overhang. “What’s your name, Security?” “Ernie. But around here I just go by ‘Buddy.’ Sometimes we like to—” “Security?” “It’s Ernest William Budd, sir.” “Do we have an understanding, Security?” “Look, I didn’t mean to come off—” “Security. I didn’t ask you if you liked me, I asked you if we understood each other.” “I was just doin’ my—” “Security. Are you carrying your guard card? It’s required, you know, on this shift, on this property, on my time.” “Yeah, well of course I—” “Present it to me please. Remove it from the wallet; take it out of the little window. Thank you. This card is not well kept, Security. I need to be able to read these characters on the moment, not squint through thumbprints and cookie crumbs. I’d like you to clean, smooth, and file this little paper card very carefully; that’s if you ever get a free minute. Take a good look at it. Now take a real long look at this shiny thing on my chest. See the difference? Thank you. So what am I?” “You’re a police officer, sir.” “And what are you?” “I’m a security guard, sir.” “Now we’re going to have us an understanding, Security.” “Sir?” “Security: I like my coffee with one cream and two sugars. Not the other way around.” He grimaced. “Makes me think of mama. But not hot. And definitely not cold. There’s a crazy li’l just right in there somewhere, and I’m sure we’ll get it just right sooner or later. Right?” “Sir!” 3

Now! “Security? Don’t you have work to do? Patrol the premises, maybe do a little detex here and there so your boss knows you’re not too comfortable? Somebody could be in dire need right now, Security. Maybe some skateboarder’s running amok, maybe the supermarket’s short a boxboy. Or maybe that poor dumb son of a bitch back there needs counseling more than badgering. Maybe you could call the police when someone needs the police, instead of dragging me off my fucking lunch break to take down some homeless stiff who only needs a push in the right direction, instead of a bench in the rain. Get him off the property.” “Sir.” “I have your name and card number. Get him off the property.” “Sir!” “Security?” “Sir?” “How many creams?” “Just the one, sir.” “Just the one.” The cop stepped back behind the wheel, killed his emergency lights, and cruised away. The guard came back clenching and unclenching his hands, his eyes on fire. When he reached the old lady he forced himself to relax. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I . . . I . . .” “Don’t be too gentle with him, officer.” She raised the umbrella to cover her eyes. “Not on my account.” “Get the hell out of here! If I see you on my lot again I won’t need a cop, you hear me? I’ll kick your a—excuse me, ma’am—I will eject you with any means at my disposal. Now Go!” He wobbled up and careened the way he’d come, swung left at the sidewalk and staggered to the corner. The rain picked up momentarily, but he was too dazed to worry about shelter. It was all he could do to remain standing. A man was melting out of the drizzle, crossing the street slowly but purposefully; bent face hidden beneath a rubberized rain cap, slight frame bundled in a trench coat under a clear plastic protector. He skipped a couple of puddles, keeping his head down, his hands clenched in the coat’s pockets. The last few steps were taken with care, that he not appear the aggressor. “Please don’t be alarmed. I need only a minute of your time. If you’d like a clean bed and some dry clothes, a hot meal and a storage locker, I’m the guy to see. There’s showers and basic stuff; you know, radio and TV . . . nothing fancy. I can even put a few bucks in your pocket . . . here and there.” One eye showed as he skewed his head. Very old, in his seventies. Angular face. Lots of acne scars. A fair Caucasian, Midwest accent. He very slowly removed a cheap pop-up umbrella from under his coat, thumbed it open, and gently tucked the handle behind the filthy coat’s lapel, creating a hood against the rain. The umbrella cut out the back-glare of floods and neon, allowing the wasted mug to show in bleak humps and hollows. Deep compassion ran over the stranger’s face like passing headlight beams. He breathed, “Oh, my,” and squinted up at the heaving mist. “What else? I.D., if you’ve lost yours. There’s a phone to call home . . .” He looked inward, at a bruise too deep to display, and sighed, “What’s your name, son?” “Lr.” “Larry?” “Ltr.” “Later? Lothar? Luthor?” “Lsr. Ltr.” 4

Now! “Lester. I have a two-point proposition for you, Lester. Option One is you can come along with us now, and we’ll get you all fixed up.” He pointed across the street, at a white van idling in anticipation, a long exhaust plume marking its tail. He pulled a business card from a coat pocket. “Option Two is you can dial the number at the bottom of this card and ask for ‘Mr. D’. It’s a toll-free number; won’t cost you a thing. The boys’ll drive out straightaway, and pick you up whenever you’re ready. I like to throw out this option in case someone is, understandably, trepidatious about the whole affair. But there’s no reason to be nervous.” Mr. D now cupped both Lester’s hands in his. He squeezed those mangled hands with sympathy, with necessity, with poetry. “Look down at our hands, Lester. Look down at our hands.” Pinched against the business card was a meticulously folded twenty dollar bill. “Many establishments simply will not serve the homeless; there are hygiene laws and all that. But this money, if used in a timely manner, may help preserve your vital existence—if only for a space. I do not dole out such a sum willy-nilly. But I find a certain potential in you, son; one that has surely gone unnoticed.” Mr. D looked down with a kind of jaded embarrassment, pearls dripping from his brim. “There’s always that Third, unspoken Option, Lester. We can turn about, go our separate ways, and this little slice of magic will have never occurred. You may keep the twenty. But I would urge you most emphatically to hang onto that card.” Lester’s arms worked their way up, out of his control, until the squashed bill and card were nested in his palms. Again Mr. D cupped Lester’s hands, his eyes all but welling. “Bless you, son. They are yours to keep. Come with me.” He gently led Lester across the street to the van. Inside were a large, strapping black man behind the wheel, and a small, scrawny white man in the back. They were dressed in hand-me-downs. The black man wore a leather flyer’s cap, the white man a rainbow stocking hat. The small man slid open the cargo door. Mr. D helped Lester climb in. “Lester,” he said, motioning to the black man, “this is DeeWayne.” DeeWayne grinned chummily. “And this is Andrew.” The little white man nodded and gave an arcing wave of the hand. “Boys, this is Lester. He’s agreed to come along and get cleaned up. He’d like to enjoy our company, and I know we’ll enjoy his.” “Welcome aboard, Les!” said DeeWayne. Andrew smiled like a zoning chipmunk. “Good to know you, big guy. Great to have you with us.” Mr. D folded himself onto an upturned milk crate. Most of the van was taken up by bags and boxes. There was a smell of rain and overripe apples. “I apologize for the inconvenience, Lester, but we use this van more for the transporting of food and material than persons. Please make yourself as comfortable as the circumstances will permit. You are free to leave at any time, but I so want you to see what the compound has to offer. If for any reason you are dissatisfied with our accommodations, we will cheerfully return you to this very spot. But that would be a true tragedy.” He drummed his palms on his thighs. “Now. I need to have a word with the owner of this convenience store. I promise you I shall be but a minute.” DeeWayne’s smile lit up the interior. “Okey-dokey, Mr. D! I’ll keep ’er revving!” Mr. D smiled back and hopped out. He sidestepped puddles, flashing that tender grin at everyone he passed. Lester had just time to see him handing a bill to a panhandler before Andrew eased shut the door, leaving a crack to peer out. DeeWayne spun in his seat. “Listen, bitch! I’m telling you once, and once alone, so you clean that fucking shit out of your ears and listen! You best not be holding any needles or bringing in any drugs. You got me? You best not be having any outstanding warrants, you best not be having any bugs on you. No sex-communicating diseases, no weapons, and no outlandish fucking mental 5

Now! problems. Do we understand each other? Are you fucking deaf, too? That’s a good man just walked into the store; that’s a holy-ass righteous motherfucker, and he saved me, and he saved a whole lot of other sorry assholes who didn’t have a prayer or a dollar. I love that man, you hear me, motherfucker? And I’ll whip the shit out of any standout son of a bitch who don’t have the grits to do whatever he says, whenever he says it, for no other good’n’goddamn reason except because he says it. I will make him come out right—if I have to violate parole to do it. You got me?” Andrew laughed musically. “Sound down, Dee. Come on, man. We’re all good here; we’re cool.” He peeked out the crack. “He’s coming back. He’s carrying some stuff. Here he comes. Everybody mellow out.” Andrew slid open the door just as Mr. D reached the van. The drizzle was tapering nicely, but he kept his stuffed arms down. He hopped back inside, planting his butt on that same upturned milk crate. “Merry Christmas, gentlemen!” In his arms were bags of chips, nuts, and jerky. He passed the treats around. “I want you guys to put out the good word on Markey’s Quik-Stop. The franchise owner’s a scholar and a gentleman. He was at another outlet, but he left these goodies just for us. What a prince!” He turned to Lester with misting eyes. “Eat up, son! Let this be a reminder: the world is full of good, wise, and humane men and women. Nobody has to go hurting.” He raised a trembling hand. “Markey’s!” DeeWayne and Andrew lifted their hands as one, called out “Markey’s,” and slapped their palms against that delicate raised hand. Mr. D shook up and down, grabbed Lester’s free hand and kissed it over and over, his breath bubbling in his throat. “Markey’s!” DeeWayne cried, and put the van in gear. “Markey’s.” Mr. D’s compound was right alongside the freeway; the offramp was their overlook. It wasn’t all that big: half an acre of bare dirt surrounded by caving chain link. They could see a big old warehouse with a broad level roof, positioned forward on the lot and flanked by a number of brokendown office trailers. Behind the warehouse were dusty cars and vans, a few sagging motor homes, an antique converted school bus. DeeWayne whipped the van off the ramp onto a parallel dirt road. It was an adroit move, but a dangerous one. He said quickly, “I know, Mr. D, I know. I done it again. But did you see that semi bearing down on the left? He was trying to beat me out on the bottleneck. Can you believe it?” Mr. D hauled himself back up with the hanging end of the passenger-side’s broken shoulder strap. He’d been expecting as much. “Last time,” he said, “I believe it was a runaway house trailer.” He smiled warmly at Lester. “We kid each other sometimes. These boys are like my own sons.” Andrew leaned forward, embraced Mr. D, and kissed him smack on the cheek. “Papa!” DeeWayne laughed and whacked Andrew upside the head. “No matter how many times you disown ’em,” Mr. D concluded. The front gate was open on a permanent basis: a smashed-in skeleton made fast by twistedround coat hangers. DeeWayne turned in with exaggerated care, winking at Mr. D all the while. Andrew slid open the cargo door and they all piled out. DeeWayne and Andrew walked in through the solid front’s little side door, while Mr. D vigilantly accompanied the hobbling newcomer. It was all beds and bunks and sofas and mattresses. A single row of high windows on either side provided plenty of daylight. Ranks of ceiling lights were blazing against the weather. Kitchen, showers, and office were in the rear. Sixty-seven pairs of eyes coldly watched Lester pass. These were hungry faces, molded by years of guerilla survival in the streets, penitentiaries, and halfway houses; life streams that serve 6

Now! only as spawning grounds for miscreants. Mr. D, genially greeting his charges all the way, led Lester to an old steel motel bed with a scratchy khaki military blanket. “This is yours, son. This is yours, Lester.” The crowd pressed in. A lanky tattooed man on an adjacent bed watched Lester like a snake. Mr. D patted the blanket. “Go ahead, son. Give ’er a test run.” Lester carefully stretched out on his back. It was feathers and clouds. It was new-mown grass. The smell of chili con carne wafted from the kitchen, with an undercurrent of baking bread and hot cocoa. For a silken moment Lester’s whole body relaxed; his blood seemed to warm, his eyelids to shiver. The moment passed. Mr. D was delighted. “And you’ll have your own locker, with a combination known only to you! There are games and magazines . . . TV and radio . . . lots of stuff. But let me give you the grand tour first. You can rest in a bit. Boys!” Only Andrew accompanied Mr. D and Lester to the back; DeeWayne was hanging with some of the rougher-looking tenants. Lester peripherally watched them huddle and glare. “Here’s the kitchen; we’ll get some real chow in you in a minute. These are the showers, and I’m afraid I’ll have to insist you give yourself a good hot scrubbing, Les. We’ve had our share of problems with vermin; nobody’s fault, life can be rough. But transcommunication’s a terrible thing, and I would be derelict as head of this household were I to not lay down some ground rules for the good of all. This is my office. Andrew, allow me a minute or two alone with Lester, please. The formalities.” Mr. D led Lester into his little office. Andrew closed the door behind them. “Please sit here, son.” Lester took the indicated chair across the desk from his host. Mr. D removed his rain cap and wiped his forehead with tissue from a desktop box. His wispy scalp was spotted and creased, his hair so white it was all but transparent. He sniffed, wiped his narrow nose, and donned a pair of bifocals. A clipboard came from an upper drawer, a felt pen from his shirt pocket. He tilted back his head. “There are certain preliminaries involved, Lester. No organization can long exist without careful planning and the meticulous keeping of records.” He raised his eyes. “You look like you’ve been roughed up. I’ll need to have you examined by a physician. Doctor Glover is a fine man and a good friend. He actually lives quite nearby, and volunteers his services readily. He will be by as soon as I give him a call.” Mr. D winked. “Doesn’t look all that shabby on his résumé, either.” He looked back down. “We’ll get you some fresh clothes from the Hamper. I don’t think you’ll wow the ladies, but you’ll be clean anyway. And it’s our policy all furnished clothing be washed a minimum of twice a week. Machines are in an enclosure out back. I’d like you to shave and have a haircut, at least once. Injuries and infections can go unnoticed under a man’s beard and locks. If Doctor Glover prescribes medication, you are required to follow the prescription. We are well-connected with the wonderful people at Roosevelt Clinic. And I’ve found vitamins to be just as important as good food and exercise. Once we get your health back up, you will be requested, but not required, to assist in food runs, basic cleanup around the property, light errands; you know, stuff like that. Let’s see now. Am I forgetting anything . . .” “Ahr . . . arru . . . are you Jesus?” Mr. D’s head cocked. His mouth twisted about: he was uncertain whether to smile or frown. Half a minute later his expression was dead-serious. “Lester. My name is Mr. Dreir. Mr. Carl Dreir. I made a lot of money over the Internet, both in the stock market and on ebay. These are similar to stores; they’re virtual workplaces you can manipulate through your computer. If you’re a pretty savvy guy, and have a knack for getting in on ground floors—and I’ll be perfectly immodest here: I am and did—you can make a lot of money, 7

Now! very fast and very surreptitiously. I used to be, believe it or not, a terribly poor fellow. I flipped burgers, washed windshields, walked dogs. Then I ran into some people who showed me how a man, with just a computer, a modem, a little luck and a lot of chutzpah, can buy, sell, jump in, back off— well, you get the picture. I was quite wealthy before I knew it. I bought property, I bought titles, I bought on common sense rather than impulse . . . this may sound unreal to you; it sounds unreal to me even now as I speak it—but in the space of three short years I went from near-penury to a state of wealth I’d never dreamed of.” Mr. Dreir rapped a knuckle on the desk. “Funny thing. All that money had no effect on my ego. Zilch. Instead of feeling more successful, all I felt was guiltier. I started seeing people—people who were hurting—as an investment in something bigger than myself. One day I gave some poor lady a roof and a future, the next day it was a whole little tribe living under an overpass. I bought this compound and some vans, made friends with a couple of store managers—” Mr. Dreir did something that struck Lester as strange: he turned and stared with brimming eyes and a bizarre grin. There were lots of things going on in that smile—confusion, pride, awe, fear. “And you know what, Lester? It felt good; real good. I felt good. I was growing in ways that luxury and status can never provide.” Mr. Dreir now reached across the desk and clasped Lester’s hands in his own. He seemed to be caressing every scar and blister as though they were nubs of exquisite worth. Lester was surprised to see that Mr. Dreir was weeping—not overtly, not shamefully, not with effeminacy. With dignity. “Lester. When I first purchased this place it was nowhere near as orderly as it appears today. Everything has been picked up, patched up, cleaned up—all except for one little spot. That one little spot is a kind of closet we all jocularly refer to as the Confessional. It’s not really a confessional; there’s no confessing, no guy in a robe behind a screen, no religious significance whatsoever. It’s just a room where people can be alone with their thoughts for a spell, and try to figure what they’re really looking for in life. When you ask me these questions about Jesus and whatnot, I feel you’re actually addressing your personal spiritual side. That’s your space, and nobody belongs in there but you. Not me, not some proselytizer—just you. Okay?” Dreir nodded once, with conviction. “As I was saying, after I’d bought the property and everybody was moving in, I sort of locked myself away in that room and asked myself: Am I crazy? Is what I’m doing making any kind of sense? And I found something in there I’d never found before. And do you know what I found in there, Lester? Do you know what I found?” It looked like internal stress would break Mr. Dreir’s face into moist giving pieces. “I found me in there, Les.” He nodded again. “I found me.” Dreir abruptly released Lester’s hands. His expression became businesslike. “Ever since, I’ve asked newcomers to check it out on arrival. Not an obligation, not a rule; just a suggestion. So give it a shot for ten.” For a moment Dreir appeared at odds with himself. “I’m going to let you in on something, son.” He rapped that gnarly old knuckle rapidly. “The man I bought this place from told me about that little room almost exactly as I am telling you now; sitting across from me at this very desk, looking into my eyes with a depth at that time unfamiliar. And he told me that happiness is only a dream. He said that sentient life, due to its subjective nature, is destined—or, perhaps more accurate, doomed—to pursue the unattainable.” He vaguely waved a hand. “Perhaps his leanings were Buddhist, or he might have been an existentialist. Whatever. The point I am attempting to assay here, Lester—and it was merely his theory, mind you—is that this hypothetical state of happiness cannot be contained, cannot be extended. The machinery of being causes a man to strive, rather than loiter. In an otherwise healthy human, a state of enduring happiness would indicate self-delusion, mental retardation . . .” Mr. D’s eyes burned into Lester’s. “A sleeping man approaches that state of bliss, embraces it for a heartbeat, and—” he snapped his fingers. Brittle and spindly as those old hands were, the report came, in that hushed little office, like the snap of a whip. “And he is once again in the Here and Now. He wakes to 8

Now! the inevitable torment, to the want, to the soul’s undoing, to the . . . decay.” Dreir’s whole frame sank into his chair. “In real-time existence, according to that man’s philosophy, a wide-awake individual can undergo a similar process, only so gradually as to be unaware. In other words, he may ride the crest of events, and be washed up on the shore of happiness, so to speak, only to be just as surely sucked back by the undertow. Forward, peak, reverse. Up, tremble, down. Advance, retreat . . . surrender. As though a man’s life were a series of waves—a tide beyond his control. Oh no no no, Lester: that undertow does not necessarily contain the precise elements as the breaking wave—the details can be different, but the process is the same . . . forward and reverse, growth and decay, hope and dismay—the controlling force is the Worm, son, and he is in all things.” Dreir sighed. “Predestination is a difficult concept to accept . . . which only buttresses that fellow’s assumption of happiness sought in a vacuum. Free will, blind chance, just desserts . . . forgive me, Lester. I do not mean to bring you disquietude in this loving place. Just an old man rambling at the deaf portal.” He lowered his head, leaned forward, and gripped Lester’s hands with useless passion. “Bless you, son. Bless you, bless you, bless you.” Dreir leaned back. “I wish for you to experience that heartbeat, Lester. In our so-called Confessional.” Mr. D now reached under the desk and came up with a shaggy old dog, its newspaper cushion still gripped in its claws. Dreir carefully removed shreds of paper before gently placing the dog on his desk for Lester’s inspection. The thing was so faded it could hardly stand. “This, Lester, is Boy.” He steadied the old dog in the crook of his left arm and used his right hand to wave its forepaw. “Boy, Lester. Lester, Boy.” The dog swayed, dipped, and folded into a mangy pile. Mr. D sighed clear from the grave. “Boy is blind and unable to function healthfully, as he had the misfortune of belonging to a cruel master, who could not appreciate the love of a sweet creature such as this dear and devoted animal. Due to his advanced age he is unable to hear in one ear, slow and prone to crabbiness . . . nature’s banes . . . yet, despite his years, he should be able to walk normally, digest properly, sleep in peace . . . he does not deserve to suffer so . . . no . . . not Boy . . .” Mr. Dreir caressed Lester’s hand and Boy’s curls, his eyes melting in their sockets. “Nevertheless, son, you will encounter so many wonderful souls in this world. In this very compound—you will meet unfortunates as yourself, who are dedicated only to the comfort and succor of their fellow man.” He dropped his head one last time and pushed himself to his feet. “I’ve a pick-up to handle over at the Ralph’s on Harrison. Andrew will show you the room. See if you can get inside yourself; do a little searching. When I get back maybe we’ll be in a better frame for communicating.” He cracked the door. “Andy, show Lester into the Confessional. There’s somebody in there he’d like to meet.” Mr. Dreir picked up the clipboard. His cell phone rang and he clamped it on an ear. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” He carefully placed Boy on the floor, attached a little leash, and slowly walked him to the door. Decrepitude, high and low, passed from the room without looking back. Andrew took Lester’s elbow. “C’mon, Big L. We all gone in, and we all come out none the worse.” He moved his head Lester-wise, but backed off at the smell. “I’ll let you in on the grits right off: ain’t nothin’ in there but a man’s conscience. Don’t let Mr. D spook you none. Just talk to the Man and c’mon back out.” They halted outside a little door. “I’ll come for you in ten.” He grinned and wagged a schoolmarmish forefinger. “No sleepin’ now!” Andrew opened the door and switched on the light. Lester shuffled into a room no larger than a motel bathroom. It was as Dreir said: a blank little cubbyhole, unkempt and unresolved. Andrew closed the door. Lester came to his knees by degrees, the single dusty bulb shivering from stale displaced air. He blew caked blood onto a sleeve. He could breathe. “Sir . . .” The effort at cogency was just too much. Lester swung his bowed head left and right. “Sir . . .” He looked back up. “Sir . . . please help 9

Now! me. Please. No more. I . . . I—please. No.” He sobbed for air and hacked, spewing all over his beard and coat. “Sir . . . I can’t, sir . . . I can’t.” His face shook and relaxed, shook and relaxed. Lester raised his two mangy paws as abbreviated fists, the deformed digits unable to clench. “If you care, help me,” he managed, “please! I can’t, sir. Please. Show me.” Lester coughed, almost retching. “Please, sir . . .” he wheezed. “Now. Please.” There was a knock and the door creaked open. “You still awake in there?” Andrew smiled. “Come on, man. Let’s go and get you some grub.” DeeWayne stopped them in the hallway. His eyes tore into Lester’s. “What’d I tell you? I said if you got any bugs you wasn’t to come in here without a proper delousing.” He swung his head. “Isn’t that what I told him?” Andrew smiled uncertainly. DeeWayne pulled out a pair of generic plastic surgical gloves, jammed them on up to the wrists. “C’m’ere!” He grabbed a handful of Lester’s hair and dragged him into the main warehouse. At Lester’s bed he pushed until that smashed red nose was almost buried, like a furious master about to toilet-train a diarrheic puppy. There was nothing to see but linen. “Deaf and blind, huh? Well then, asshole, let me describe it for you. They’s called lice, and they transport from man to man, you dig? Right now they could be anywhere on these-here premises, ’cause if they’s on this bed they’s anywhere your homeless ass been. That means in the Confessional, that means in the van, that means in Mr. D’s own personal clothes for all I know.” He roared like a lion, grabbed Lester’s hair in both hands, and hurled him crashing into a bedpost. “Stay out of this, Andy, unless you want a piece of me too.” He punched and kicked, savagely, until Lester curled into a shaking fetal ball, then went ballistic; breaking a dustpan, push broom, and waste basket on the forearms and skull. When he ran out of weapons he gave a little shriek and began kicking the face maniacally; slobbering in his passion, falling and whaling from the floor, staggering upright, starting the process all over. Half the compound’s occupants cheered from a growing ring, half scrambled for cover. Lester was battered along like a smashed snake, sobbing with fear as he tried to make his feet. When DeeWayne came after him with a lock and chain, Lester lurched to his knees and scrambled out the door. “That’s right, bitch, get out of here!” DeeWayne was an immensely strong individual. He now grabbed Andrew in one hand and Lester in the other, dragged them, pumping his arms left and right, clear across the lot to the van. “Open the damn door, Andy.” Andrew did. DeeWayne kicked Lester inside, then kicked Andrew in behind him. “Close the damn door, Andy. If he moves, brain him.” DeeWayne stomped around to the driver’s side, jumped in and fired up the van. He took off like a lunatic, barely able to control the wheel. Lester and Andrew were hurled into a common lump amidst bags and damaged fruit. DeeWayne swore as he tore onto the freeway, vilely and repeatedly. He cut off cars, lanehopped wildly, broke every law in the book. Only the stress-relief caused by time and miles saved Lester from a solid tire iron-whooping. When they reached Markey’s Quik-Stop he screeched to a halt and composed himself. “Open the damn door, Andy.” Andrew did. DeeWayne watched Lester in the rear-view mirror. “Get out.” Lester didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled out and pitched onto the sidewalk. “Close the damn door, Andy.” The door slid shut and the van roared off. Lester used a bus bench to haul himself up. He collapsed supine on the seat, left arm hanging over the gutter. He could tell at least one rib was broken; he had to force shallow breaths, even as 10

Now! every nerve demanded he savage the air. An eardrum was popped or inflamed, the same-side orbit crushed, the mouth locked up—his stomach was . . . twisting, he couldn’t hold it, his eyes bulged as he fought against countering life-forces: those dyed-in-the-demon opposers that won’t let a wrackedand-ready animal die before it has experienced agony’s full measure. Unable to lift his head, Lester puked bloody bile, on his coat, over his face, out and back up his desperately flaring nostrils. A spotlight made his private hell available to all. An amplified voice snapped, “You on the bench.” A car door opened. A flashlight’s beam fried his eyes. “Sir. I need you to sit up for me.” A second voice, farther off: “Medical?” The first voice. “Sir, do you need a doctor’s attention?” Something banged his smashed shoulder. “Sit up.” Lester sat up at an angle, his left arm a straight prop for his shot Pisa-tower frame. He sucked wretched life back up his broken nose. The light moved eye-to-eye. The series of questions were looped sections of the same old nightmare: Drugs? Alcohol? Identification? Address? Employer? Person to contact? General relief? Medi-Cal? When the list was completed the light fell away. “Sir, I need you to vacate this bench immediately. Benches are not community property; they are provided for the convenience of persons financially capable of purchasing a seat on one of the lines, though frankly I doubt you’d be permitted to board in your present condition. Do you have bus money?” Lester squeezed shut his eyes as another wave threatened. “Then you have the option of walking away or facing arrest.” That second voice, with feeling: “Not in my car, Terry. I’m serious.” “Get up.” Lester draped his arms over the bench back and rose by walking up his butt. His knees screamed in protest. “Keep going.” The light swung to his feet. Lester stood in a punch-drunk sway. “Get moving. Stay on the sidewalk. Do not cross the street against traffic. Use the crosswalk like everybody else. Push the button until you see the steady green hand. If you’re halfway across the street and that hand turns red and starts flashing, I want you to turn around and walk back to the curb. I don’t care what the instructions say on the little box. Do it until you get it right. We hit this corner every hour. I don’t want to see you back here again. Do we understand each other?” “Thnk . . .” Lester managed. “Thkyu.” “Get going.” Lester clung to the pole like a drunk to a rail. He pushed the signal call button with deliberate accuracy and stared at that stern red hand forever. The patrol car cruised off. When the happy hand appeared it took Lester a full thirty seconds to peel himself off the pole, so by the time he was halfway across he was already being warned back. A bitty old lady stood on the island, hanging onto the miniature median call stand with one arm, her purse clutched meaningfully in the other. Her eyes were searing. “Get away from me,” she gnashed, “you filthy animal.” Lester staggered back to the curb. The old lady began a resolute march, against the light, while left-turning traffic waited patiently and drivers farther back, ignorant of the situation, leaned on their horns. It took two entire series, red through green, for the biddy to make the curb, one baby-step at a time, and by then the intersection was in gridlock. The moment she conquered the curb the whole mess blared past. She stood glaring for the longest time. The walk hand glowed. The old lady raised hers in imitation, waved it in front of Lester’s fractured face. “What are you—dreaming? Wake up! You can go now. Go!” He stumbled off the curb and half-ran, half-staggered across the street. 11

Now! He had to feel his way along the south wall to reach the mall parking lot. Lester collapsed in a doorwell, gripping his side. There was some serious internal damage; the spleen, perhaps, or a section of gut. His mouth had taken a real booting—teeth, tongue, lips. Lester wheezed away the blood. He opened his coat and gingerly lifted the shirt. His left lower quadrant was one massive bruise; just looking at it made him grind his teeth and squeeze shut his eyes. Gradually his head reclined in a whipped animal nod. Bloody saliva rolled into his beard. His foot was kicked, then the leg. The bad leg. Lester’s eyes popped open and he snarled. A skinny brown security guard was looking down on him, his cap tilted aggressively. “Get out of the doorway, asshole. You ain’t supposed to be on this property, and you know it.” He kicked harder. “Don’t fuck with me, motherfucker! I’ll mace your ass in a hurry.” Lester’s striving hands failed him. The guard tore out his walkie-talkie. “Peepers? I got a bum down here at SweePea’s. No, but he’s giving me a hard time. He don’t want to leave. Sure I told him, man; first thing out of my mouth. Can I juice him? But he is resisting!” He kicked savagely, just below the bruised quadrant. Lester roared to his knees. “He’s coming at me, Peeps! Didn’t you hear that? I got to protect myself, don’t I? Then how about the stick? But you heard, damn it!” Lester pulled himself to his feet. The guard shoved the walkie-talkie back in its holster. “Get your nasty ass out of here! Snap out of it, punk—go do your sleeping somewheres else.” Lester staggered past. The guard, attempting to kick Lester’s hindquarters, slipped in a puddle and fell on his own. “Go!” Lester stumbled into the road, hugging his screaming side. Braking cars swerved on the wet asphalt. He stumbled into the undergrowth and pitched over a crushed section of fence, pulled himself past the ditch and went kicking through roots and scrub. Something large darted between his flagging feet. Eyes gleamed in the brush and scattered; some were not so quick. Lester’s legs gave out and he fell on his back to protect his injured vitals. Something moist slapped his forehead; blood from above. Another hit his cheek, and another, his nose. Half a minute later the rain was coming down for real.

12

Boy Despite the old song’s lyrics, Southern California rainfall varies widely between never and pours. The January through March stuff tends to sploosh and drizzle, to pound and peter. Arthur could be allowed out with only his little crayola raincoat, even on evenings, if he didn’t wander too far, and if the air was not overly nippy. He liked to leap small puddles, and sometimes to come down hard in their centers. When he got to the mall he enjoyed the way its antique streetlamps glowed in the mist. Spooky and cozy all at once. As he came in off the sidewalk he noted few shoppers about; rough weather for Angelenos. But that’s a positive; crowds just show you how small you really are. The youngster hopped a few more puddles and huddled in a candy store’s doorwell. To his right stood a pair of facing cast iron benches, adrift in an amber pool. A frail figure sat crumpled on one of the benches, bent into a rumpled trench coat with a clear plastic protector. On his lap shivered a soggy old dog, gray and white with a dirty mussed coat. The boy inched along, as children will, moving well to well, until he stood between benches. After a minute the old man’s head rose, weighed by the rain and years. His jaw shuddered as the lids peeled apart. His rheumy old eyes fell on the boy. “Son. Son . . . what is your name?” “Ata.” “Otto?” “Arta.” “R2? R2D2?” “Artr.” “Arthur. Do you like animals, Arthur?” “Yesr.” “Dogs?” “Yesr.” “Do you like this dog, Arthur?” The boy leaned in. Sensing him, the dog dazedly lifted its head. “Yesr.”

Boy “His name, Arthur, is Boy.” The old man gave the animal’s paw a little shake. “Boy, Arthur. Arthur, Boy.” The effort cost them both. The hand and paw dropped. “Boy is well along in dog years, Arthur, and has difficulty with many basic functions. Also, he is all but blind and can no longer run. He cannot speak because he had a very bad master long ago, but he is a good dog, son, capable of giving a caring master as much love as he receives.” “Yesr.” The old man folded forward. “Would you like to have Boy, Arthur? Would you like to take him with you and give him a good home? I can no longer care for him.” The boy watched politely as the old man very gently lifted the dog and placed him between their feet. “Yesr.” The old man cupped Arthur’s hands in his own. His eyes were pinched barnacles, his mouth a closing cave. “Bless you, son. Bless you, bless you, bless you.” His shaking old hand fumbled with the trench coat. “Here is his little leash. He must be walked on this leash at all times, for he is sightless, as I mentioned, and unable to follow commands as you might expect of a much younger animal.” Arthur obediently clipped the leash onto Boy’s tattered collar. He stood patiently, waiting to be told. At last the old man said, faint as the drizzle, “We must part now, son.” Arthur carefully walked Boy home, minding obstacles. It was slow going, as the dog proceeded in a most ungainly fashion, and several times stopped to whine in confusion. Twice Arthur had to stoop and bundle him up for carrying. The dog stank, badly. It was not a healthy smell. The closet door cracked open. A wedge of light grew and grew until it stabbed the curly gray mass trembling in a milk crate by the water heater. Two tiny eyes peered up fearfully. “That’s it,” William said. Jeannie’s brows knit. “Where did he find it?” “Said some old white man at the mall gave it to him. Don’t worry; I made sure he got an earful. He won’t be approaching strangers anymore. Not as long as he’s my son.” Jeannie kept her eyes on the dog. “He looks real sick.” “I don’t think he’ll last the night.” “Well, Arthur can’t keep him.” “I know he can’t, Genie. Breaks my heart, but it’s got to be done.” Jeannie folded her arms and nodded grimly. “Breaks your heart. And now I guess it’s my motherly duty to break Arthur’s.” “I already made my speech. And if you think my job’s easy, then you just don’t know squat about men.” Arms ran around waists in an exclusive human circle. Thus entwined, they looked long and regretfully at the dirty pile of dog. Jeannie nodded again, patted her husband’s rear. On exiting, her instinct was to further close the door for privacy’s sake. William gave her a minute before removing a length of coiled clothesline from an upper shelf. The dog’s eyes glinted against the dark. William looked down. Their eyes remained wed while he looped and knotted one end of the line. He pressed the loop forward and gradually went down on one knee. “Good boy.” “Arthur.” 2

Boy The head shook beneath the covers. “Arthur?” The head shook harder. “Arthur!” Jeannie yanked down the covers. “If you’re going to behave like a child, I’m going to treat you like a child.” She leaned in, kissed his hot forehead, and whispered, “Child.” Jeannie smooshed him all over, nibbled on his little nose. When that didn’t work she sat up straight and spoke in a businesslike manner. “This has to be done, Arthur. The dog is too old for a young boy. Daddy is taking him to a place that gives old animals to old people who are better suited. That’s the fair thing, for both the dog and for you. You never told us you wanted a dog, honey. We’ll take you to get the one you love. That’s a promise, from both me and daddy.” Arthur pulled the covers back up. “Sweetheart.” This time Jeannie peeled gently. She looked him straight in the eye. “Life doesn’t always work out the way we want. You’ll find that out when you get a little older. But if you’re good, people will always treat you well.” She kissed him. “That’s a promise.” And again. “And that’s a guarantee.” At what point do we realize our lives are set in stone? There’s a treadmill of weeks and weekends, a slow parade of faces and names. Those faces become a blur, and Everyman morphs out of his pose. The names are all the same, or similar, or unpronounceable, or contrived. We burn out our youth in unreachable dreams—we plan, certainly, we muster and micromanage. We flirt with discipline . . . somewhere in there we lose it all; we let go, without intending, generally without knowing. Maybe it’s marriage. Maybe it’s the job. Calendars grow yellow and dog-eared, pinup girls are replaced by National Parks. And the rut owns us before we know it. For a genuinely sweet man like Arthur, that rut, or its realization, does not bring about a psychological crisis. The old shoe has always fit. He’d never really had a school crowd; he was more wont to lose himself in hobbies and daydreams. Too shy for a real relationship; the girls he fell for were being swept off even as he rehearsed his lines and avenues. Chemical engineering: a trade that started out loftily enough, only to taper to contracts with soap manufacturers and cat litter companies. The apartment was nice, the condo nicer . . . but somewhere in there he became implanted; not just in space and time—in destiny. And he would watch the bugs driving up Lincoln, glazed in their cellphone stasis, lost in a verbal melee unknowable to a blank smiler like Arthur Beyer, whose butt was made for blues and benches, whose eyes could reflect but never shine. He was an extra in his own lame movie, dining alone, dancing solo. As people lost interest, his reciprocal energy decreased. A fixture anywhere he went; the death of the party. And so, at some indistinguishable juncture in his thirty-seventh year, Arthur Beyer just died in place. That’s when he met Angela. It was a shareholders’ merge at the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey. Even technical men, and even minor engineers like Arthur Beyer, were compelled to show; it was on the agenda. These reservations are unbelievably dull, but they’re pretty well catered, and the rooms are nice. After forum and presentation, employees are free to wander around the lobby or pool, or to stand outside on the walk overlooking the yachts and dinghies. For a homebody like Arthur, this imposition was a blue-moon opportunity to kill another party. Strange that the lonesome heart should pummel itself further. People such as Arthur are no good in a crowd; no good at small talk, too shy to run with the ball, out of touch with the news and 3

Boy the lowdown. They’re wallflowers, they’re lousy décor. Stranger still: even wallflowers don’t like each other; there’s no such thing as a growing pocket of bores, no franchise on disenfranchisement. Drop by drop, drips enforce their own isolation, smiling emptily at the guffawing and giggling circles of men and women, carefully sipped drinks half-raised. Angela was what another drip nudgingly labeled a Lounge Lady. Arthur was moved that a woman would frequent these lobbies and bars out of lonesomeness, especially one so attractive and outwardly aggressive with men. She was able to circulate with an air of complete confidence; Arthur recognized that effrontery as the pause-and-slither of desperation. The harder they fall, the harder women like Angela try. She was dressed all in blue; Arthur’s favorite color, and she wore her hair natural the way he liked it; that type of allure is exclusive to African-American women too proud to cop out. She was sleek, with high cheekbones, and wore very little makeup, another big plus in Arthur’s book. Her eyes flashed across the room. Arthur colored and stared into his drink. When he looked back up she was smiling like an old friend. He blushed furiously, and took his first real drink of the evening the moment she began sauntering away. He kept his eyes on the ambered ice: Seven and Seven. As the pianist broke into Unchained Melody a pocket of unsung crooners formed spontaneously, leaning round the eighty-eight like a barbershop quartet. One guy was so offkey the rest were forced to dredge tonically; they’d get him right up to scale and he’d sink like a stone. It was an oddly magical moment; full of sentiment and society and barely dampened humor. A voice like honey was humming along. Arthur looked up, almost guiltily. She was prettier than he’d imagined, and her eyes were sparkling into his; it took him a second to realize she was misting: the magic had her, if only for the space of a wobbly pace in time. “My favorite song,” she hummed. “Mine too,” he hemmed. “I’m Angela.” He might have known. Angel. Are parents prescient? “Arthur Beyer. I’m, um, can I buy you a drink?” “They’re on the house, sweetheart. You’re not a party crasher, are you?” “Oh no! I’m a chemical engineer. Lab man. We just sat for the conference and had to wait in the lobby but it’s pretty nice really because it’s really pretty homey but more like home away from home if you see what I mean.” She giggled, angelically, and gripped his forearm just below the elbow. Ten thousand electric lunatics scrambled up his arm. Angela massaged his back between the blades and Arthur almost fainted. “I’ll have what you’re having, sugar.” Arthur ordered a similar. What a turn-on. Buying a pretty lady a drink and the guys all watching. He’d be the talk of the office maňana, no doubt about it. But right now he was all Angela’s. Almost as soon as the drink was in her hand a voice broke in from behind. “Beyer!” Arthur looked around. “We’re on, Beyer. Get it out, man. Let’s go, let’s go. No drinks inside.” Arthur apologized effusively, just as uncomfortable as uncomfortable can be. Angela saved him. “I’ll call you, honey.” He fumbled a magic marker from his coat pocket, she gave him her cocktail napkin. An awkward moment: with nothing to write on, the woman did the unthinkable—she hiked up her dress, placed a high-heeled foot on a chair’s seat, and offered her thigh for support. He couldn’t back down, couldn’t look up, could only scrawl his number, with one wrist resting in fishnet heaven. Nobody saw, nobody knew; and that made it even more special, even more intimate. 4

Boy And the bubble popped. The crush of bodies pressed him backpedaling into the conference room, but their eyes never split, and her look, her allure, followed him inside, and pursued him home. Arthur waited three interminable days for that damned phone to ring. He had a variety of speeches prepared, a number of mantras tucked into one corner of his subconscious, a desk littered with crib sheets and hints. At the first chiming he swept in and down, sat on broken glass, wiped a hand, nonchalantly picked up the receiver. “Hello?” “I’m looking for a certain lab man.” “Angel! I was just thinking about you.” “Ditto here, sweetheart. So are we on for tonight?” “Gee, let me check my schedule. Well what do you know about that? The whole night free.” “We won’t need the whole night, lover. I’m back at the Marina R-C. Shall we say ninish?” “With bells on.” A smooch in the mouthpiece and the line went dead. Arthur looked at his watch. 7:10. He moved like a forward guard: bathroom, wardrobe, hall mirror, car. Jesus, she’d called him ‘lover.’ Jesus. He drove like a maniac, then like an automaton. This part, the nerves, wasn’t written into his fantasy. What happened to that suave, loquacious son of a bitch . . . he tipped the valet before the man had his keys; and only then realized he was flat out of cash. The credit card looked good, but a winner flashes the bills in front of a lady. He’d been told that since junior high. Unfortunately, he’d been told a lot of other things. Arthur glanced in the gift shop with rhinestones in his eyes. Generous, but not flashy. Soon, but not quick. He licked his lips. Cash first. Arthur made his way to the outdoors ATM, nestled like a cement altar in an ivy niche. Three hundred dollars would be padding enough, for show’s sake. Dinner and tips on the card. Drinks and tips with cash. Promises and prayers on bluff and bravado. Card in the slot. Three zero zero. Yes. Arthur never had a chance to reach the dispenser. He was grabbed from behind and yanked out of the camera’s field. A Latino man wearing dark shades and a watchcap snatched the bills with his left hand and stuffed the right like a psychotic crab in Arthur’s face. “What did you see?” Arthur whipped his head as those fingers made for the sockets. “My eyes!” “What did you see?” “Nothing!” “You’re damned fucking straight you didn’t see nothing!” A knee caught him directly in the scrotum. The pain was so great, and so immediate, that he went down without witnessing his assailants’ departure, without feeling his body crash on cement, without realizing he’d curled up on his side with his hands tucked between his knees like a half-dead tramp. He didn’t move for five minutes, trying to get his wind back. Nobody responded to the incident, nobody else came to visit the ATM. The camera’s red light winked cheerily. Arthur pulled himself up using the stainless steel shelf below the dispenser. His first instinct was to remove his bank card, lit by a pulsing yellow light. The screen thanked him, and reminded him to take his receipt. He made his way slowly, using walls and fenders for support. Skeptical women: This unique pain has to be monitored, not fought. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has placed man’s chief governors outside the body, where they can dangle like a couple of tender sponge balloons with KICK ME written all over them. No pen is adequate . . . but by the time Arthur made the hotel’s lobby he was able to feign normality with a few scooted steps at a time; to pause at the magazine rack, to rest a bit on the couch. An ice machine provided cubes and a plastic container; 5

Boy Arthur made his way to the men’s room, eased himself into a stall, and sat for fifteen numbing minutes before checking his watch. He pulled himself together and swayed in the wall mirror. Just cleaning up and going about the routine of grooming did wonders. His mind was clearing, his thoughts zeroing in on the real world. He hurried to the gift shop, used his card to buy a dozen roses and a box of Swiss chocolates. This was all new to Arthur; he was as uncertain as he was excited. But suddenly he was drunk with testosterone—there were pendants and frilly things; stuff women were supposed to like, a delicate diamond watch, cutesy cards, individual liqueurs. What if it looked like he was coming on too strong . . . but what if he looked like a cheapskate—and how did he suddenly know she was here, in the lobby right now, looking for him. Arthur took his deepest breath. The pain was gone. He picked up his roses and chocolates, turned robotically, walked into the lobby. She was lovelier than he remembered, lovelier than each successively-lovelier fantasy, lovelier than he deserved. A black Venus in red, his all-time favorite color: evening dress and heels; goldsequined purse and black velvet gloves. And she’d done her hair soft and wavy, just the way he liked it; how could she have known. The gold hoop earrings were perfect; exactly as he’d have specified. She was standing by the big front window. When she saw Arthur’s reflection she whirled and smiled like the sun. She gasped and laughed at his gifts, took them into the crook of her left arm, took Arthur’s waist in her right. Angela pulled him flush against her womanness, molded his body flush to hers, kissed him flush on the lips. No woman had ever . . . no feeling could be so . . . you could have wrung out his palms. Arthur stood with his mouth hanging open, speechless. “You’re sweet, Artie. So where do you want to do this?” His voice caught in his throat. “I thought maybe dinner and a drink. The restaurant in this hotel is supposed to be pretty good. There’s live entertainment.” She giggled and gripped his arm. “You’re cute.” Arthur froze up, and a voice that was not his own mumbled, “You’re pretty.” Her eyes laughed into his. Something happened and passed. Arthur found himself leaning in, body and soul caught in a stupefying gravity. His hands floated up her arms. “You’re my dream,” he whispered, and cupped her shoulders in his palms. He smelled her all over; not trying to, a stranger to his own timeless receptors. For an instant he was swallowed up in that animal fragrance, too deep for the mask of Chanel. “Then let’s never wake.” Her cell phone rang. “Damn.” She slipped from his embrace, plucked the phone from her purse and held it to an ear. Her brows knit. She dropped it back in her purse, pulled out a compact and lipstick. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I really have to run. Something’s come up.” Arthur’s face fell, the tender expression replaced by deepest concern. “Is everything all right?” “Everything’s fine.” Arthur felt something moist run over his hand. He looked down. A line of red numbers blushed knuckle to wrist. “Call me.” She kissed his cheek and hurriedly made her way through a plain little side door, doing her lips while watching him in the compact’s mirror. He stood there far too long, staring at that uncompromising door. A knee-high table on either side held a beige rotary telephone; the left table a house phone, the right an outside line. Arthur dragged over a red leatherette chair, looked at the numbers behind the dial, then at the numbers on his hand. How desperate would that look—separated for three minutes and he’s ringing her up like a teenager pestering a heartthrob. But Arthur was desperate. His past was closing about him like a fist. He pushed through the door expecting a side lounge or secondary reception hall. What he got was a boxlike room: black-on-gold paisley wallpaper, ruby shag carpeting, a facing door blocked by a man perched casually on a padded wood chair. He’d been reading something; a pocketbook. “Looking for somebody?” 6

Boy “A woman,” Arthur tried. “Black, tall, pretty. Red evening dress. She just came in.” “Who you with?” “I am,” Arthur said uncertainly, “alone.” “I can see that. Who sent you?” “Look . . . I just need to talk to that woman who came in. Her name’s Angela.” The man slowly shook his head, watching Arthur with care. “Nobody came in that door, pal. Nobody but you and me.” “I was just with her, for goodness’ sake.” The man put down his book and stood up. He appeared quite strong. “Do I stutter, motherfucker? Is there shit in your ears?” Arthur shrank back. “What in the world’s going on in this hotel?” He licked his lips. “Who are you? Who do you work for? Who is your employer?” Something animal flared in the man’s eyes. “Isn’t that what I just asked you?” He reached for an inner pocket of his coat. Arthur slipped back into the hallway. After half a minute he leaned his ear against the door. The voice was muffled, but he heard all he needed: “Guy coming out, probably through the front. Black. Five-ten or eleven. A hundred and eighty-five. Cheap suit . . .” Arthur went through the kitchen to the employees’ parking lot. Most of the lighting came from floods positioned along the hotel’s eaves. The aisles were unlit except for occasional lamps under steel cupolas. He zigzagged the rows of parked cars; suspicious-looking, certainly, but better than glare-exposed. A hard blow took out his knees. Two pairs of hands hauled him to his feet. One pair locked his wrists behind his back, the other pulled his face forward by the lapels. A fist caught him hard on the jaw; Arthur would have gone straight down if not for those strong cuffing hands. A second punch caught him in the solar plexus. The breath whistled between his teeth. He doubled forward with his eyelids squeezed shut. His head was yanked back up. One after the other—crushing blows, wellplaced, perfectly timed. This was no mugging, not even a warning. It was a professional, methodical ultimatum. As Arthur sagged, the pauses between crashes to the skull grew longer. Now his chin was raised on a fist for inspection. He felt, or imagined he felt, a column of air proceeding that massive black fist before a wrecking ball and white light threw his entire weight into a drooling supported heap. The hard-breathing fulcrum behind him hauled him roughly vertical, using one knee at the tailbone and a sideways shove of the shoulder. Arthur’s body sagged to the other side. There was a grunt in his ear: “Shit.” The opposite shoulder and that knee on the coccyx again, this time with real attitude. Fingers in his hair steadied Arthur’s head. The column of air, now a wide wall, whooshed in like a wave. The detonation of his skull, the hiss and crackle of cartilage. Hands dragged him up, almost from the asphalt, by an ear and lapel. A combined effort, front and rear. The man behind embraced Arthur in a propped full nelson, using his locked hands to push the mangled face forward as a shield for his own, lest that approaching tsunami take errant aim. Arthur, quite literally, never saw it coming. When the male voice picked up it was all Arthur could do to force a breath. “House.” Arthur pressed the receiver against his ear; unable to respond, unable to hang up. “You got exactly three seconds. Three . . . two . . . one . . .” 7

Boy “I’d like to speak with Angela. Please.” “Who is this?” “My name is Arthur. Angela knows me. We were about to have dinner when something called her away.” He nursed his fractured jaw with cracked and scabby fingers. “If I could only have a moment of her time, I’m certain we could clear this up.” “What needs to be cleared up?” “I don’t know. Something.” The voice was redirected. “Angie? Come here, baby. You know some guy named Arthur; owes you dinner?” The voice came back. “She don’t know you from nobody, pal.” “Please.” Arthur had to squeeze the word out. “Last night. At the Marina Ritz Carlton. We were dating. Just the once. Something came up; an emergency. I’d like to offer my condolences and try to make it up to her.” There was a male-female exchange. Angela’s voice melted all over him. “Arthur?” “Angela!” “This is the last time I want to hear your stupid-ass voice, creep.” That male voice came back. “You don’t have this number. You don’t know this number. We never talked. Capiche?” The line went dead. Arthur cradled that receiver in his hand for the longest time. The hum became a peal, the peal a series of clicks. A canned voice droned on. The peal was renewed and the sequence repeated. And the shadows and webs of desuetude recast their workaday pall, sucking the billion-and-one Arthur Welles into that heaving gray mist we all fit, by sleepy interconnecting currents, by degrees too subtle to fathom. From the matching bench he could see the long line of headlights spilling down Lincoln, see the long parallel line of taillights crawling on up. Bugs. Fire ants on a biochemical rollercoaster, soulless things unaware of the big picture, just sucking along. Only in the weest of hours would there be a break in that routine—a break just as much a part of the pattern as the crush itself. For an exhilarating moment, captured whole during some miscellaneous red light, no lancing beams would bugger that cusp: the intersection capping Lincoln’s bleak incline would remain static. Something Arthur could not see would be holding its all-polluting breath right along with him, and an icy silence would contain a world caught like a droplet suspended over a snowscape. Then the light would change to green. In a moment a double-damnyou would roll over the cap, soon followed by another. Then a pair, a pack, a swarm, a stampede. The ants would pour down the slope, antennae waving, and they would find him, as they did every morning, and they would tromp him with their sticky rubber feet, reduce his corpse in their cold chromed mandibles, fry his trammeled useless being in their numberless halogen eyes. “Arthur.” The haze was congealing. “Arthur?” The muscles of his neck kicked, gently. “Arthur!” Arthur’s lids peeled apart. That was the voice of sweet Nurse Beatrice. 8

Boy “Arthur, the wonderful people over at Jefferson Chapel have set up a program to assist ill and bedridden people; you know, so they won’t have to lay around doing nothing all day long. But instead of just magazines and puzzles and stuff, they’ve decided the best thing anyone can have is a little company.” Nurse Beatrice turned her head to the side; Arthur could tell by the way her voice changed planes. “Miriam.” A chorus of squeals outside the room. There was a scuffing of rubber heels, a flutter of skirts. “Arthur, there’s somebody here I want you to meet.” Arthur’s head rolled to the side, pulling a trailing tube taut. Nurse Beatrice gently tugged it free of the collapsed lobe. In the crook of her left arm was a shaggy gray pup, nervous as all get-out. The animal peed a trace down good Beatrice’s elbow, and the girls all laughed. She cupped the little guy in her palm; no bigger’n a tennis ball, and just as round. Nurse Beatrice sniffed back a sob. “He’s a good boy.” She set him on Arthur’s bulbous belly. The pup swayed like a novice seaman. Nurse Ruth glided round behind the bed, cradled Arthur’s fallen head in her hands, tenderly rolled it aright. She wiped the tears from her eyes, bent in to kiss his cooling brow. Angel. For a paralyzing moment beast and man faced one another, as awkward as first daters. Nurse Beatrice gave the dog a little pat on its rump, causing it to wobble forward, to slide down that heaving slope, to stagger onto the wide splayed breast. The puppy grew like a funhouse image in Arthur’s rheumy eyes; a flattening, rounding, comical thing, all wet nose and sticky grin. “Oh my God!” Nurse Esther squealed. She slapped her palms to her cheeks and hopped about like a schoolgirl. Then all the standing nurses were hugging in a giddy huddle. Nurse Beatrice gave the pup another bump. All Arthur could see was a crazy convexity of big eyes, shaggy ears, and flaring runny nose. Nurse Miriam popped out a camera as the puppy licked away old Arthur’s salt tears. The breather fogged over and his eyes rolled back. The girls all squealed. It was a Kodak moment, a slice of American pie, a Rockwell oil fading to black. Nurse Beatrice moved aside for the camera, and, before her voice could break completely, whispered: “Smile.”

9

The Book Of Ron (Being a Highly Authorized clarification of events surrounding the Creation and early development of man) —By Way Of Introduction— I am one of the few lucid individuals to have actually seen and heard God—an honor He no longer bestows lightly. He is not particularly ravenous for company—embarrassed as He is by the blunder of humanity—and now limits His interviews to those possessing a certain stolidity of constitution. The bungling-humans Headache has persisted for thousands of years now (thanks a bunch, scribes, for a convoluted spirituality, an ever-splintering credo, and a mangled and incomprehensible testament), so I was approached with caution. Here was the Great and Wonderful God’s dilemma: The most important, meaningful, and profound document in the universe—the Word, the History of all that Is—was set down millennia ago in a turgid, incredibly overdrawn, wholly unreadable style. How in the world was He to win over an endless stream of increasingly sophisticated seekers while saddled with a work that guaranteed the rapid zoning-out of even the most avid reader? What God needed was a contemporary writer—someone attuned to the easygoing, near-glutted appetites of modern Americans—but one with an attitude. What He needed was a cynic, a thinking man; someone not so susceptible to the emotional pitfalls of faith as to immediately revert to ecumenical gobbledygook; you know, all that outdated stuff that makes the Old Bible so hard to get into. But man, was I a tough nut to crack. In the first place, I’ve never bought into magic, metaphysics, or mysticism. The universe works according to physical laws that cannot be undone by our pathetic imaginings—and, highly desirable as an afterlife may be to we vainglorious little mortals, a whole cosmosful of parroting adherents doth not a mutable reality make. As a matter of fact, it makes no f---ing difference what

The Book Of Ron one knows, believes, or wants . . . erase sentience from the picture entirely and the universe will proceed as-is. So imagine my surprise when I learned there really is an Omnipotent, Magnanimous, and Allloving God! Talk about having Egg on your face! All my life I’d been disgusted by a perceived intellectual cowardice on the part of virtually every encountered human being, and here I’d suddenly become a fellow babbling weenie. But, as I said, my soul didn’t come easy. —As to profane images and descriptions— First, let me make it amply clear that God is not some silly caricature or phantasmagorical personification! He is most certainly not a kindly old man with a long, flowing, snow-white beard. Nor is he plump, rosy-skinned, and obsessed with jollification. In no way does he resemble incendiary shrubbery. Even attempting to describe Him, in all His Wonderfulness, brings on a play of reverent emotions which absolutely befuddle the process. Already my quill quivers. Console yourselves, then, in knowing you’ll find out soon enough . . . maybe! Now, I realize a lot of this will come off as blasphemous to those of you still adhering to antiquated beliefs. Worse, it will sound like malignant untruth, sick issue, antisocial heresy . . . and I offer my apologies in advance. Be all that as it may very well be, it’s the truth. Swear to God. It’s no fun writing all this down under the pressure of such a mighty Taskmaster, for the sake of a posterity that will no doubt blast it as lies and the ravings of a deranged mind. So be it. You opinionated gophers, you oh-so fabulous conformists—you think you know it all! But you’re laboring under an illusion. You think you think. All your smarmy conclusions are merely worldly wisdom, and God and I spitteth upon you. Go ahead, hang onto your smug and hypocritical heresies, wallow in your fornicating, sacrilegious lifestyles while you can . . . boy, do you have a comeuppance waiting for you! But I digress. Your worldly wrongheadedness is really the residue of one of God’s early projects. As He explains it, intelligence was something that, like gravity, at first didn’t occur to Him, and a truly working brain seemed like so much supercargo on a paradise of a planet where sexual reproduction is a perfect perpetual motion machine. However, intelligence—before The Lord realized how it could backfire—seemed such a clever idea. What would these creatures do with such a gift? That’s what fascinated Him. It was no fun watching the “lower” animals slurp, gallop, and reproduce all day. These new beings couldn’t even gallop. They were damned good reproducers, however. Apparently the brain’s installation had an unpredicted side-effect: humanity was in heat all year-round. Only one thing to do: leave their played-out carcasses to rot and refurbish the soil, and take the souls, which are very light and compact, and store them up in Heaven. He can’t leave our souls “down here” because we are, after all, His children, and you don’t keep up a reputation of being Wise, Witty, and Wonderful without a long-term benefits package. But after thousands of years even souls can take up a lot of room, and Heaven’s better acreage is already grossly overpopulated. And old souls never die. They just hang around. Naughty ol’ Satan, confined as he is to the interior of this 2

The Book Of Ron embarrassing little rock, has solved the problem. He fries the souls until they resemble crunchy little pork rinds, puts them on a diet of coal dust and bat dung, and makes them listen to Jesse Jackson discourses throughout all eternity. Just for the Hell of it. —But still the question remains: why me?— Why, out of McBillions of far more likely prospects, did the Good Lord God Almighty pick a stubborn atheist to revise this greatest of books? According to The Lord, there was an unwavering pattern in His interviews, so reliable He considers it a rule: the feebler the belief, the milder the reaction, or, inversely, the more devout the subject, the more hysterical the response. His past attempts invariably brought on reactions ranging from hysteria to heart attack, making accurate communication impossible. It took The Lord a nerve-wracking night of cajoling, conjuring, and outright bullying to make a believer of me—consequently, when I finally came to my senses and saw The Truth, the typical frenzied reaction was considerably dampened. But at least I was doable—the reaction of all previous candidates was so wild they on the instant became monomaniacal zombies. You’re skeptical? Ignore the impotent tracings of my pen. Witness, instead, a planet crawling with visionaries, prophets, and messiahs—all stricken failures of The Lord in His frustrating campaign . . . and here I sit with my quills, my earplugs, and my Tylenol . . . quite an honor you think? To be The Lord’s personal scribe . . . but I tell you, the pleasure is most assuredly not mine. The Lord beats a mighty Drum, and I can row only so hard. And His rages are tempestuous, His moods mercurial and infectious. And now another goose-stepping headache is on the way, an all-too familiar sign announcing the Dictater is, once again, getting Impatient. This fate, mine, I wouldn’t wish on the lowest sinner, not on the meanest fool. But it’s back to work. Let’s see now . . . —In the beginning— Right from the start of the Old Bible The Lord has grounds to be upset with humanity’s early poor performance at dictation-taking. There was no beginning, He points out, and if there had been, it surely would have been His conception that was the beginning, for He couldn’t have created all this if He Himself hadn’t already been in operation, unless of course, He concedes, the original authors meant in the beginning of His activity, which, He notes irritably, would imply a sort of vegetative Deityship activated simply for the future gratification of egotistical little men. “In the beginning,” in short, is too vulnerable to misinterpretation, so God has ordered The Book Of Ron to have a better opening; an opening that will more clearly set the pace for what theology is all about: —Once upon a time God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep— All this about jumping right to work on this remote hunk of rock really infuriates The Lord. Typical of the mad vanity of our species, to allot our insignificant planet priority in the sequence of universal events. Is it possible that a couple thousand years ago men were so backward? The general 3

The Book Of Ron tone of the Old Bible is heavily patriarchal, and suggests the pontification of a hard-nosed old Bastard in His mid-fifties given to random acts of sadistic violence, but the mental content of the work brings to mind the slapdash constructs of a bright six year-old with a wild imagination. In actuality, according to God, Earth is one of His more recent projects, and certainly one of His least successful. First on the agenda was some light to see what was going on, and where He was. He recalls “Just sort of floating there” for a “Real long time” with nothing much to do and no one to talk to. Then getting “Kind of paranoid” and wanting to “Do something about it.” As anyone who has lived totally alone for an extended period realizes, eventually you get to the point where you begin to vocalize your thoughts. —And God said, Let There Be Light— He wishes it could have been that easy. In the absolute vacuum of space no sound was generated, for there was no medium to carry waves. But God found that by twirling a Forefinger He was able to create a spiral that generated both heat and light. This first nebula was formed (to give some perspective on our high and mighty attitude toward Earth) so far beyond our present scrutiny of the heavens that it will take our technology, even at its headlong pace, another thirty-two thousand years to develop instruments sophisticated enough to breach the gap. Now, one nebula gave plenty of light, but only enough to See that there really wasn’t a whole lot to see, and that, wherever He was, it was an awfully big place. So God set about hanging new lights, but no matter where He went it was the same old thing. Pretty soon there were star clusters all over, and The Lord, bored almost to inertia, sought to amuse Himself by positioning stars and galaxies to play connect-the-dots. These were whimsical designs: a bowman, a bison, a big or little dipper here and there. Just so were the heavens created; a bit at a time, with patience and great expertise, with insight and, yes, with Love. But there just didn’t seem to be an end to the void, and, since The Lord had eternity on His Hands, He threw Himself into His new hobby with truly deific enthusiasm. After a few billion years it became like a mania, and what was born of simple boredom grew to be a desperate endeavor, a passionate attempt to fill up all this emptiness with enough light to See that there was more emptiness needing light fo fill up the emptiness so He could See there was more emptiness needing light to See the continuing emptiness. Eventually this got to be rather silly and exhausting. There had to be a nobler way to expend the creative energy of what was obviously a very productive and gifted young God, so He got into detail. What He had in Mind was some kind of little orbiting system of planetary bodies around one of the lights, a sort of concentric ring-around-the-rosie. Just what shape these satellites should take was an absorbing and delightful puzzle for The Lord in those ages. God became more than a Dabbler in physics. He found that if He zinged a spark just so at the light He’d chosen, that spark would whiz around all on its own. He tried it out in lots of places, and had a whale of a time for a few gazillion years, but there becomes a certain routine to whinging sparks that can grow to be unsatisfying and, even to the Mighty Lord, wearisome. So it came about that God found Himself plodding lonesomely through endless fields of stars, and thinking what a mess He’d made of the place, and wondering just what the heck there was to do now. And slowly formed a glorious Idea, a scheme for building a little working model of a selfperpetuating environment He’d visualized way back when He was still hanging lights. So gung-ho was The Lord on this new project that he managed to finish it in less than a week. 4

The Book Of Ron The first couple of days went into thinking up neat new names for light and darkness and so forth. God then set about creating a firmament to divide the heaven and earth. This was some fancy Doing. What He Did was part the ocean and sort of flip the firmament into a horizontal position so that half the water was above and half below. Then He moved all the nether water around, exposing land above the seas. He confesses to a certain lapse in Planning here, for He could have saved Himself a lot of Trouble by simply introducing gravity first and allowing the seas to form naturally. The important thing was the thrill of the creative process. God saw that it was Good. But it took all day. The next step was to give the place a little life and color. He was getting so good at creating He didn’t have to use His Hands to whip up any miracles; all He had to do was speak to make it So. He never did quite get the hang of telekinesis . . . but just by Saying He wanted it—whoosh—there were grasses and herbs and fruit-bearing trees everywhere! It was wonderful, it was magic, and boy, was it Good. But the details took all day. The Old, pre-Book Of Ron, Bible is confused here, stating that God now began hanging lights, with the implication that He made earth and grasses and whatnot working blind, and that He saw how Good everything was in the dark. As I’ve previously recorded, the sky was already riddled with stars, but God decided His little terrestrial experiment needed a couple lights of its own. So He slapped together a sun and moon, and had a deuce of a time setting them in place. It was dizzying work, making the moon zoom around the earth every twenty-eight days while adjusting the earth to travel in a more stately manner around the sun, then having the sun barely drift through the Milky Way, which was in turn configured to revolve in immense light clusters . . . but it sure was Good! Yet it took . . . all . . . effing . . . day. The next morning God decided His handiwork could use some locomotion. So He spake into existence whales and fowl, and blessed them and told them to multiply. It was really Good, man, but it still took the whole goldurn day. On the sixth day The Lord, indefatigable as ever, was whale-and fowl watching when it struck Him that there was lots o’planet still to be filled. Whales can make pretty boring pets, and fowl are noisy and smelly at best. Still, the whales got into some interesting antics caused by slow starvation until The Lord whooshed some plankton into the seas—one thing led to another, and The Lord just had a ball creating everything that came to Mind. He made cattle and other beasts, and all kinds of creepy things. It’s absolutely mind-boggling to imagine the burst of creative Zeal taking place on that sixth day. The number of species on this planet seems almost uncountable, but God was really on a roll. Man, it was Good. He designed the thorax, the pulmonary system, the proboscis, the carapace— faster than you can say whoosh. Annelids, insectivora, reptiles, amphibians, primates—it was a whirlwind of activity. The platypus, the wombat . . . then, in a burst of Vanity, something that, in miniature, would resemble Himself. This creature He called man, and this creature He made top dog over the whole earth. Then He kicked back, exhausted. He looked over His experiment and Saw it was very Good. Modesty is, in this instance, a truly deific virtue. It was spectacular. —Man alive—

5

The Book Of Ron Next day God was totally bushed. He blessed and sanctified the day, but that was about all He felt like getting Into. He was even too tired to make rain, but fortunately a mist that was hanging around warmed, rose, and fell to wet the ground. This little observation got God’s creative Spirit back in gear. The damp dust, He found, could be molded into all kinds of shapes, but the one He really liked working on was a male figure. When finished it just lay there, so God decided He’d try to inflate it. Talk about Finesse! The Lord’s Lips are wider by far than the largest super-galactic cluster, but He managed to blow life into the dust man’s nostrils without even shattering it. Lord God then planted a garden, called the place Eden, and put His little man, spot-named Adam, in charge of all the luscious trees therein. God told Adam to go ahead and eat from any tree save the tree that bore knowledge of good and evil. Lord God was dead-serious about this, and threatened Adam with certain death if he dared, if he essayed, if he even thought of disobeying. God, His Wrath resolved, went back to sculpting wet dust, creating a whole neato menagerie to keep Adam company. But something was still missing. God put Adam to sleep and looked about. There was plenty of dust around to make another person, or even a whole planetful, but Good Old Lord God, prey to a reckless whimsy, decided to fashion this mate from one of Adam’s ribs. So He tore open Adam’s side, and He r-r-r-ripped out a rib. That woke Adam fast enough. Adam lay there howling while The Lord concentrated on the rib, and God admits the howling got on His Nerves and messed up the whole blessed experiment. This new creation was a laughable failure, all rear end and sagging pectorals. Whereas Adam had the potential for strength and prowess and a certain animal cunning, this Eve couldn’t possibly be good for anything. But, since Adam just gawked at her, The Lord decided to forget all about her for the time being and focus on getting Adam to move around and maybe perform some tricks. Here gravity was the real poser. The Lord, intrigued, inflated Adam a little more and was rewarded by the sight of Adam rising arse-upward into the air, where he hovered like a rag doll with a slack jaw and empty eyes. The Lord putt-putted Adam around for Eve’s amusement, but after blankly watching Adam bank and circle for a few minutes she slipped into a heavy sleep. So The Lord dropped Adam and tried to Think of another means of locomotion. There was still a whole lot of space between the ears that wasn’t being used for anything, yet God was beginning to develop a strange fascination for Adam’s legs. He had, after all, created Adam in His own Image, but He Himself had never encountered a solid surface. He had no Idea what His own Legs were for. Once He managed to stand Adam upright, the little dust man could be prodded along quite nicely. It may seem curious that the idea of a snakewise slither didn’t occur to Lord God at that time, but He confesses that slithering gives Him an uneasy Feeling. This Feeling gets validated pretty soon, when a famous snake does something really rotten. Anyhow, now that things were beginning to take shape, The Great Lord God Almighty looked down with Delight on His creatures and saw they were Good. And Adam somehow attained the ability to utter his thoughts (which were, understandably, pretty vague) through the unlearned, instantaneous use of speech. Think of that! Barely out of the dust stage and he’s already putting sentences together. Not only that, he’s taking control of his environment. He calls Eve “Woman” and acknowledges himself as “Man.” Then he’s dictating that man and woman should live as husband and wife. This intellectual upstart and his woman—the dust man and the rib lady—were a peripatetic pair, and naked as jays. 6

The Book Of Ron —Enter The Snake— Let this be a lesson to all you silly, irrational, embarrassingly unrealistic Darwinists out there . . . back when homo sapiens originated, snakes could already speak as articulately as you and I! That’s right. Believe it or not, they were vocal and wily as all get-out. Nowadays, it’s true, snakes haven’t gotta whole bunch to say. But back in Edentimes this crafty old viper just slinks right on up to Eve and convinces her to disregard Lord God’s edict about avoiding the good and evil tree. The snake tells Eve she and Adam will themselves be gods if they get the inside scoop on good and evil, and won’t die at all. The snake was saying, in effect, that The Great and Goodly Lord God Almighty didn’t want any competition and so was trying to keep the two in the dark. So Eve ate of the fruit of the tree and turned Adam on to a piece. Apparently the fruit caused them to see their nudity as evil, for they were abashed enough to sew aprons out of fig leaves. But then they heard God’s Voice somehow walking in the garden, and had to hide in the trees. God busted Adam semi-nude. Adam fessed right up, ashamed as he was with the image of God. Then, after a quick grilling by The Lord, Adam narked on his mate, setting a precedent for all humanity to come. He fingered Eve, hoping to save his own skin. Eve, catching on quick, pointed her fruit-spattered finger at the snake, who didn’t have a finger to point. God blew it. He cursed the snake up and down, damned Eve to woeful childbirth, and doomed Adam to hard labor and easy death. You don’t mess with The Great and Goodly Lord God Almighty. Then God made them suffer the further humiliation of wearing skincoats as He kicked them out of the garden. Realizing the snake was the only genuinely guilty party, The Lord decided to let him hang out, and even whooshed in some rather tacky ornamentation—your basic whirling flamingsword-and-chubby-angels display—to add a little life to the arboretum. —The Duo Incorrigible— Once they were out in the real world, the pair went straight from bad to worse. Adam discovered that new people could be produced biologically, which was not only a lot of fun, but a tremendous relief. The last thing he wanted was to lose another rib. And they named their love child Cain. Child-making was so much fun the pair got right to work producing another; a boy they named Abel. This Abel grew to be a shepherd, while brother Cain worked the soil. Eventually the boys decided to get on The Great Lord God’s Good Side, so they agreed to bring Him gifts. Abel brought sheep fat, but all Cain could manage was veggies. 7

The Book Of Ron Lord God was more than happy with Abel’s homage, but fit to be tied over Cain’s humble offering. Where was the fat? Cain was crestfallen. The boys went into a field and had it out. When the dust had settled, Abel lay dead and Cain stood vindicated. The phenomenon of sibling rivalry was off to a murderous start. But God’s rage over Abel’s death, and over Cain’s pathetic gift of all he had, was undiminished. Lord God heaped unbearable punishments upon poor Cain. Cain was stunned. The Great Good Lord God Almighty had just doomed him to the life of a fugitive and vagabond, with no crops to tend and a price on his head. God then marked Cain for easy assassination, and booted him out into the cold, hard, unforgiving world. Cain then took a wife, which is pretty strange, since the only woman on the planet was his mom. The oedipal insinuation here is too delicate to broach, but suffice it to say that things began to get a tad on the kinky side, culminating in polygamous doings by Lamech, Cain’s great-great-greatgreat grandson. —Noah— Life expectancy was like, super high back then. Adam died at 930, while Seth, his third son, lasted until he was 911. Lives this long gave folks the opportunity to reproduce a’plenty; the trend to overpopulation was well on its way. Lamech was another of the multicentennarian heavyweights proliferating so widely in those days. He lived to the ripe old age of 777, but sired a boy when he was only 182. This boy—who was to play such an important role in the global shenanigans to follow—young Lamech named Noah, prophesying the boy would comfort humanity, even though The Lord had cursed the ground and was in no mood to parlay. Now Noah was in his prime, scarcely five centuries old, when Lamech finally passed away, and Noah decided it was time to concentrate on a brood of his own. The result was Shem, Ham, and Japheth (a.k.a. Larry). Anyway, about this time God’s sense of humor was nearing depletion, and He was really sorry He’d ever begun the whole project. So He decided to destroy the works; not only that demented poser man, but the innocent beasts in the fields, the inoffensive winging birds, and all the creepy things. Especially the creepy things. But God liked Noah. So God gave old Noah ample forewarning of the Calamity He’d dreamed up, and iterated explicit instructions for building an enormous Ark out of wooden gophers. This was to house not only Noah and his family, but a pair of every living creature on the earth, one male and one female. This was because The Lord, like all artists, couldn’t bear to see all His Handiwork destroyed. Noah was a rather simple fellow, and didn’t pause to consider the magnitude of his task, but just got the Mrs. and kids packing and set to work. It took poor Noah almost a hundred years to get the job done, but by the time he was finished he appeared to have aged a thousand years. He caught malaria and various spotted fevers sweet-talking alligators and king snakes into his clever swamp traps, went half-blind one day luring a squirrel out of a tree, got mauled wrestling a brown bear into captivity. Noah, indeed, was in poor humor after a hundred years of butterfly 8

The Book Of Ron chasing, grunion hunting, and peeking under various tails. But somehow he got them all together and crammed into the Ark. What a zoo! As if the stench of the place wasn’t bad enough, Noah was soon to discover that hungry tigers and wolves, for instance, don’t cohabit well at all with fat yummy ducks, for instance. Also, rabbits and rats and many of the lower animals were very fruitful and multiplificate, though not quite so proliferate as the fleas, flies, mites, ticks, tapeworms, and mosquitoes. Giraffes, even in dry dock, were seasick around the clock. Poor Noah’s manifest included a hypertensive sloth with the hots for a spider monkey, a hyena with insomnia, and a Tasmanian Devil whose idea of a good time was to sneak up and scare the daylights out of him. For a whole week the Ark remained grounded while The Lord aggregated hydrogen and oxygen molecules into a great liquid atmosphere. Making rain is no quick trick, and God was beginning to Think it would be just as tough to destroy life as create it, when the seventh day passed and the deluge began. —Captain Noah— For forty days and forty nights it rained cats and dogs, and everybody was perfectly miserable, what with the cold and damp and the howling and braying. Noah, who was a ripe 600 years old, suffered through the constant sniffling and aching joints with the quiet humility of a willing dupe. And still it rained. And rained and rained. The sodden Ark was borne up and drifted out on the face of the waters; up, up, fully fifteen cubits above the land. Naturally, every living thing on dwindling terra was exterminated, and for weeks the water was littered with the carnage of fowl and cattle and creepy things. But old Noah and his brood just drifted on, week after week, month after month, futilely searching the horizon while resolutely accepting their dreary fate. Meanwhile The Lord was busy hanging new lights in the firmament of the heavens, amusing Himself by flicking away bits of energy to create comets, playing a sort of cosmic tiddly-winks with galactic matter. After tooling around the heavens for a few months He remembered Noah and Co. bobbing around down here, so He turned off the tap and blew away the clouds to see if anything was left. Sure enough, there was Noah, soaked to the bone and still scraping the Ark’s rank mushy deck; a creaky old codger given to mumbling and grumbling and the scratching of imaginary bites. The Lord got busy right away, but it took Him over ten months to blot up most of the mess. The Ark got stuck on Mount Ararat when the earth finally dried to its present paradisical state. —God Makes An Announcement— Seeing His work was Good, The Lord told everybody to pile out and multiply. And the entire menagerie wobbled, pitched, and staggered off the Ark, old Noah and his dungcrusted spade dragging the rear. Noah, half-crazed, built an altar to God, then flipped out completely. He ran amok with his spade and barrow, slaughtering the clean beasts and fowl and barbecuing them on the altar. 9

The Book Of Ron “That does it,” said The Lord. “Here I’m stuck with nothing but dirty beasts and some old nut who’s a pain in the Holy Neck. But I can See what good it does trying to straighten things out. This time,” vowed the Great and All-forgiving God Almighty, “I won’t curse the ground or pick on these puny living things. Noah, I bless you and your boys and grant you the right to eat anything you want, excluding relatives.” With The Lord’s blessing, Shem, Ham, and Larry took their wives to town and started bonking like crazy. —Noah Ties One On— Meanwhile Noah, with time on his hands and grieving his lost occupation, husbanded the first vineyard. He mastered the art of wine-making and whooped it up by himself in his tent all night. There is some uncertainty about Noah’s activities during that night-long bacchanalia, but in the morning a shocked Ham found his father naked and out like a light. Shem and Larry then put a cloak over their father, for a buck-naked 601 years-old man in a drunken coma is not a pretty sight. Noah woke hung over and in a terrible mood. Since Canannan, his grandchild by Ham, had absolutely nothing to do with covering him up and enraging him so, Noah put a curse on the boy and doomed him to familial servitude. The Lord was delighted to see that old Noah still had his sense of humor, and left him alone in his tent with his booze and his funky spade. The common ancestor of all winos, Noah clung to his shattered existence for another 350 years, finally passing away in withered, sniveling ignominy. —The Plot Sickens— The generations passed rapidly, and it became pretty obvious that man was here to stay. Already he could postulate sillily, dance like the dickens, and carry on rudimentary conversations. And boy, could he come up with some wild names for his kids! Some of Larry’s children were stuck with real doozies, like Magog, Dodanim, Ashkenaz, and Togarmah—Yeah!—while Ham, not to be outdone, was responsible for beauties such as Phut, Cush, and Mizraim (and of course poor Canannan, the family fall guy), and indirectly responsible for gems like Asshur and Rehoboth. —SRO— Now, coprolalia is no laughing matter, but in practically no time the whole planet was inundated, and this phonetic awkwardness had evolved to a fine art. And everybody journeyed to the east and settled in Shinar. Why? That old, obsolete Bible doesn’t tell us why, but The Great And Marvelous Lord God Almighty demands it be noted in The Book Of Ron that, when He sincerely tried to fine tune the 10

The Book Of Ron aimlessly milling multitude in Shinar, everybody at noon abruptly stopped and said to one another in unison: “Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly.” God wanted to be sick. And everybody suddenly had the same bright idea: they would build a tower to heaven, which was a mere 205,000655 light years distant. God came down to check out this latest act of mortal lunacy and, Almightily embarrassed, scattered ’em all right back out of Shinar and splintered their common language. —One More Try— Now, it’s true that everybody so far had turned out to be a holy flop, but The Lord was a Diehard at Heart, and firm in His belief that someone out there wasn’t beyond help. So it was that, after glumly watching a few more generations of humans breed, The Lord started looking about for a ripe pigeon. He picked Abram, son of Terah, and promised him celebrity and protection if he would only ditch his family, country, and home. That all sounded pretty good to Abram. So Abram took his nephew Lot and his shapely wife Sarai and they headed for Canaan. In Canaan Abram built an altar to God, then traveled to a mountain east of Bethel, where he built another. Abram had the situation pegged. The Lord was crazy about altars. Sensing he was on a roll, Abram continued south, but ran into a famine which forced him to cool it on the altar-building and head for Egypt. This posed a huge problem for wayfaring Abram. He was about to confront one of the great trials that hit men who marry for looks. You see, Sarai was a real corker. And Abram was hip enough to the Egyptian brand of testosterone to realize that, once they got a gander, his goose would be cooked. Abram managed to pass off sweet Sarai as his sister, which meant Pharaoh could get his greasy elite paws on her common luscious beauties without having to disembowel wily egocentric Abram first. The plan worked out perfectly. Abram got the royal treatment in exchange for his toots: servants, sheep, oxen, and even asses! The sly old fox! He comes into Egypt a vagabond, pawns off his hot little honey to the high muckety-muck, and next thing you know he’s related to the richest guy in town. Lord knows, literally speaking, which of the many feminine plagues lovely Sarai brought upon the house of Pharaoh, but Pharaoh did what any obscenely rich guy would do and sent her packing, Abram and Lot in tow. —The Continuing Adventures Of Abram— Now Abram was loaded. He’d come out of the Egyptian affair a rich man; with cattle, with gold and silver. He, Lot, and the oh-so comely Sarai returned to Abram’s mountain altar. Both Abram and Lot had so many tents, flocks, and herds that there wasn’t enough land to support them all, which caused their respective herdsmen to have a falling-out. Abram and Lot 11

The Book Of Ron decided to divvy the place up between them—Lot taking the Sodom side and Abram taking the Canaan side. Abram knew which side his bread was buttered on. Seeing a touch of mortal competition, he wasted no time. He settled in the plain of Mamre and built an altar pronto. —Slimepits And Shoelatchets— Worse even than to want is to have. Abram was finding out that, just as the Egyptians coveted Sarai’s gorgeous goodies, so his new neighbors had an eye on his garish goods. Smiters smote, folks got carried away, arrogant little humans set precedents everywhere. After the dust had settled, Abram was richer than ever and the friend of kings. God was certainly making good on His end of the deal. —After The Lovin’— But time was catching up with Abram, who now found himself in the grip of some pretty wild hallucinations. He went star-tripping with God, Who, ever the Showman, got off on tearing live animals in half for His and Abram’s amusement. This went on all day long until the night came and Abram crashed, for some reason paranoid of the dark. SomeBody must have slipped him Something. He dreamt of God talking to him about what great good buddies they were, and about all the blessings that were to come to the progeny of God’s favorite little altar builder. Abram woke to more hallucinations, this time to some supercreepy visions of smoking furnaces and burning lamps. He was in no mood for altars. —The Old And The Restless— Things were swinging in the house of Abram. With Sarai’s blessing he got it on with her Egyptian handmaid Hagar. Everybody got bent out of shape when Hagar got knocked up, and Hagar felt horrible. She took off into the wilderness. So Good Old God of course put a curse on her. It was a doozie. Hagar was doomed to perpetual childbirth and to submission to kinky Sarai. So it came to pass that, at the age of 86, virile but burnt-out Abram had Hagar bear him a wild young boy. This was Ishmael. —The Agony And The Agony— Thirteen years passed. Now Abram, even though he was only 99, was no spring chicken. He tended to laugh at inappropriate times, and was constantly falling on his face. God was not amused. He made poor 12

The Book Of Ron Abram walk in front of Him, demanding perfection every step of the way. But down went Abram again, flat on his face. The Lord took umbrage. There was just no way to get the bugs out of these recalcitrant little humans, no matter how hard you trained them, no matter how well they were rewarded. So God decided to make an example of Abram. He picked him up and dusted him off, renamed him Abraham, and cursed the old man into stud service. Abraham just laughed and fell on his face. God’s rage was Immense, but His sense of Humor was indomitable. He had to come up with something really, really, really good. And He did! He decided—now get this—to order every boy be—it’s difficult to be delicate here—every boy have his . . . that is to say, have his member, if you can believe it . . . sliced away around the head! Old Abraham just fell on his face, laughing insanely. But he wasn’t so senile he didn’t fear The Great And Kindly Lord’s wrath. Abraham got his blade and went to town, slicing like the Devil was after him. He even went under the knife himself. These were some pretty gory times, and God was pleased. —XXX— Incest, drunkenness, and a general good time were had by all. Sarai, renamed Sarah, caught Abraham’s laughing disease, but was still canny enough to appreciate the power of denial. The couple were now senior citizens, and Abraham was way too far gone to fulfill God’s stud curse. He did, however, love his wine. So The Lord sent a couple of Lot’s horny daughters into Abraham’s tent to get him wasted and laid and give Sarah a giggle or two. I won’t go into details (you can read it yourself!) but, man, those were the days. —The Sucker Trade— Abraham now pulled the old Pharaoh trick again. He went south and passed Sarah off as his sister to king Abimelech (no kidding) of Gerar (no kidding!). Even though the king didn’t score, cunning Abraham got sheep, oxen, a thousand pieces of silver, servants, and Sarah back! You don’t have to teach an old dog new tricks. —Gall In The Family— At an even 100 years old, with a little help from God, Sarah birthed another boy, named Isaac, by Abraham. Eight days later, slipping in and out of reality, old Abe pulled out his trusty mutilation knife and got to business while Sarah watched, shrieking with hilarity. But she stopped laughing soon enough. Once little Isaac was weaned, he began mocking her for not being his true mom; Isaac, you’ll remember, was a product of Abe’s and Hagar’s whoopee-making. Sarah, seeing red, made Abraham kick out Hagar and their love child. Fearing he’d be seen as a bad provider, Abraham rummaged through all his gold and silver and masses of wealth, finally settling on good old, practical bread and water. He heaped kid, bread, and water on poor Hagar’s shoulders, and kicked her out into the wilderness. 13

The Book Of Ron —The Ghoulies— Sarah finally died at well over a hundred; Abe hung on until the big one-seven-five. Even so, after he’d buried Sarah, he still had enough in him to remarry and sire six more kids! When at last he croaked, Isaac and brother Ishmael buried him in a cave, then dug him up and buried him in a field next to Sarah. The gazillion-year spate of boredom was irrevocably dissolved: God had created an insane and irrepressibly horny playground for generations to come. He foresaw cell phones and low riders, televangelists and garage bands, tailgate jocks and shamelessly-public pregnant soccer moms in spandex and heels. Fatcats and posers and pop stars and pinheads and oh God, oh God, was it ever Goo-oo-ood! —Thus Endeth The Book Of Ron— He hath an almighty headache, and his Merciful God doth grant him a break. So he riseth now, layeth down his quill, and slammeth shut The goddamn Book Of Ron. Unto The Lord’s people he goeth, that they may worship his Master’s Word. Fall flat on thine faces, ye sheep, and bless yourselves, your loved ones, and the innumerable sons of all your crucifix-hawkers to be: it can only get deeper, for the slaughterhouse is boundless, the worm is on the rise, and our Wise, Witty, and Wonderful Shepherd hath all the time in the world.

14

Yogi Alleys can be spooky places at night, especially if you’re twelve years old with a vivid imagination. Robert knew the overgrown way between Pace and Hereford by heart, of course, but he wasn’t supposed to be kicking around the weeds and bins in the dark—it was dangerous, immature, and just plain wrong: perfect. Light from carports produced uneven blocks of light, though for the most part it was all bleak and crawly bliss. A whining behind leaning trash cans got his heart pounding. What was it—a roof rat, a gnarly old possum, a feral cat? Irresistible. He picked up a branch and crept over carefully, every sense perked. What Robert found behind the cans was so gut-wrenching he almost swooned. A horribly mangled German Shepherd lay crushed and torn, crusted blood on its muzzle and ears, flies and ants in its eyes and mouth, pus and foam clinging to its gums and nostrils. Pathetic little whining pants rocked its lungs. The boy froze with the branch clenched in his fist, trembling all over. Finally he leaned in, and said in a hoarse and cracking voice: “Boy? Boy? Oh . . . boy, what can I do?” Caked lids peeled apart. One glazed eye worked its way open and the animal began scraping and thrashing fitfully. The whining became a heavy gasping, a gargling rumble, a profound wheezing. “Oh no!” Robert cried. “Oh no, boy, stay! Stay! Don’t move, don’t move—” The dog forced itself a foot off the ground on its forepaws, emitting little panting cries. Its back was broken, the jaw shattered, most of the teeth missing. Foam puffed and spewed. “No!” Robert screamed. “No, please!” But the dog kept trying to rise. Light came on in a window in the next building. “No!” And the boy just freaked. He threw up his arms and raced the two blocks home, burst in the back door and huddled trembling by the washer and dryer. His parents were hollering back and forth as usual; his mother coldly demanding, the old man shitfaced drunk. As usual. Robert grabbed a plate and bowl off the sink, a pound of bologna and a pint of bottled water from the refrigerator, and ran back down the alley. He came up on the trash cans shaking, half-praying the dog would be gone. Or dead . . . or anything other than that whimpering, gasping horror.

Yogi It must have heard him coming, must have felt his footsteps, for it commenced hyperventilating and attempting to stand. Robert set down the plate and bowl, laid on the meat and poured in the water. He shoved the plate and bowl forward an inch at a time, really scared now, but no less heartbroken. The Shepherd sniffed and bit at the meat, then threw its head side to side with little agonized yelps. A terrified Robert nevertheless splashed his hand in the water and dribbled some in the dog’s arching mouth. It yelped and hacked, staring at him with one frosted eye. “Please,” Robert begged, dangling a slice of bologna. The dog pushed itself up on its forepaws and, with a savage effort, began heaving itself from behind the cans. “No!” Robert gasped, backing away. Out of its mind with pain, the snarling Shepherd hauled its smashed hindquarters even as Robert continued to backpedal. The dog dragged along a few yards, snapping and crying, at last making it to all fours. “Stay!” Robert cried. “Stop!” But it kept coming on, and when the boy broke and ran it fought its way into an awkward leaning gallop, flopping in and out of the shadows, snarling and yelping with the rising agony. It followed him that way, down walks between buildings, in and out of carports, between cars—all the way home, where it collapsed in the backyard with a withering series of little screaming convulsions. Robert blew in around the rear screen door, slammed the back door hard, and locked it against the night. “I don’t give a good holy crap what he says.” The old man kicked over a kitchen chair. “There’s no fucking dog out there!” An abbreviated retort from his mother, a strong woman accustomed to abuse. Then the old man again: “I looked everywhere with the goddamned flashlight; the whole yard, okay? No . . . fucking . . . dog!” “Well, something scared the boy. He’s terrified. If you can’t find anything I’m calling animal control. I don’t feel safe for him.” “Ah, Jesus. Robert!” “Howard, don’t you bring that bottle in there. If you strike that boy again—” “Let me guess. You’ll pack up and head back to Elsie’s? Robert!” Hard yellow light cut into the room and Howard nearly fell in, using the swinging door for support. There came a harsh word from Robert’s mother. Howard rocked his head out into the hall, slapped the whiskey bottle down on the nightstand. “There: you fucking happy now? No bottle in the room.” He plunged a leg back in and, walking like a man on the moon, made his way around the bed. Robert peeked from above the raised sheet. “Hi, son.” The old man’s whiskey-breath was nauseating. He plopped down on the mattress. “I’m not mad; I’m not gonna hit you. I just want to say thanks for the wild goose chase, that’s all.” He sighed more of the same. “There’s nothing out there, boy. Nothing at all. No blood, no body, no nothing. Mom says you told her it was bad-injured, and she says too it followed you into the yard. Don’t you think we’d see some sign of it, son? Don’t you think?” The effort wore him down. After a minute he raised his head and forced a pacifying smile. “A boy should have a dog . . . deserves one 2

Yogi . . . man’s best friend. Maybe he’ll come back when he feels better.” He winked boozily. “What should I call him? Duke? Fido?” Robert pulled up the sheet, trying to survive those hated, ever-present fumes. “Well, he’s got a name, don’t he? What’s his name?” An anxious voice from the hall: “Is he okay?” Howard forced his head around. “He’s all right!” “Let me just talk to him for a minute.” “I said he’s fucking all right! God damn it, June, there’s stuff only a man can talk about with his boy. Now close the door.” “No way, Howard. I’ll be waiting right here.” “I said close the fucking door!” “And I said no.” Howard swung his fright-mask back around, got right in the boy’s face. “What’s the dog’s name!” He huffed like a straining locomotive, then straightened as best he could. In a moment a kind of bilious humor rearranged the lines of tension on his brow. “Let’s see now. How’s about Hondo— you like cowboys, don’t you? Or maybe Frodo; you know, those little puppet people all the kids is so crazy about.” His eyes swam in his skull. “Got to have two syllables. For a dog, I mean. Cats are different. Football . . . baseball . . .” A lopsided grin cracked his face. “What about Yogi? You know, that old Yankees catcher. That’s perfect.” He rocked back and sighed. “Yogi it is, then.” “Howard?” “Shut the fuck up, woman! You wanna know why I yell? This is exactly why! A man can’t have a private minute with his son.” He swayed to his feet. “You’ve had your minute! Now it’s my turn.” Howard staggered round in a half-circle, his fists balled. “Oh, you’ll get your turn, all right!” He threw a series of punches. “I’m taking this bottle, right now! If you want it back you’ll come out of there.” “God damn you!” One of those random punches took out Robert’s desk lamp, another shattered a square foot of plasterboard. Howard turned to the bed with hellfire in his eyes. “What’s the fucking dog’s name?” His son whimpered and pulled the sheets higher. “It’s Yogi, boy! It’s fucking Yogi. Say it! It’s your dog—say his name. Say fucking Yogi!” He reached down and yanked him clear out of bed. “Say it!” Robert choked from the knuckles in his windpipe. “Say it, you ugly dummy bastard, say it!” He hauled back his fist and sent it crashing into his son’s forehead. The impetus of his own roundhouse threw him stumbling against the door. June screamed and tried to force her way in, succeeding only in nudging her husband back a foot or two. “Fuck you!” Howard howled, and yanked the door wide. Robert had time only to see his father lurch out into the hall before the blow to his skull sent him spinning into unconsciousness. “It’s going to stop,” June whispered. “I promise you, baby, I promise.” The two sported matching black eyes. She kissed him tenderly, then gently massaged the whole area of impact with an ice pack, kissed him again. She pulled her face away to stop from crying, and sat up straight on the bed. “You’re staying home from school tomorrow; I’m going to . . . I’ve got to . . . talk to somebody.” She smoothed the boy’s hair. “He’s asleep now. You go to sleep too, Robert.” But he couldn’t sleep, not after the day’s events. Once she was gone he found his good eye tracing shadows on the ceiling. The night was pleasantly cool. There was a breath of autumn through 3

Yogi the open window, and a peculiar, yet vaguely familiar, sound in the garden. Robert crept to the window and leaned over the sill. The avocado’s branches were right in his face, but after a minute he could see something large flopping about in the flower bed. A sickening whining wound up and passed. Terror ran down his spine like freezing water, crimping his neck, locking his hands. The boy genuflected so he could just peer over the sill. Now the wretched animal was obvious, rolling on its broken back, kicking its forepaws. For one horrifying moment it stopped, its battered head half-in, half-out of shadow, and an ice-cold eye returned his stare. Robert instinctively yanked the curtains together and dropped to his knees. The thrashing picked up in the flower bed, punctuated by hisses and snarls of agony. The boy ran on all fours to the door, tore it open, and scrambled out into the hall. “All right,” Howard sighed. “The doors are locked and the windows closed. Nothin’ can get in or out of this house, not without getting past me. You hear?” He leaned this way and that on the bed, fighting for balance, but his center of gravity inevitably made him weigh on his son, who could only scrunch deeper into the mattress. “So I don’t wanna hear any more crap about some goddamned imaginated dog, either from you or from—” and he spat the word “—that woman.” Howard attempted to scoop up the boy, almost sliding off the bed in the process. “She ain’t my wife no more, hear? She’s just your fucking mother.” He crushed Robert’s face in his chest: stinking BO, drunkbreath, filthy crotch-smelling slob. Dad. “I’m sorry I hit you, boy, I really am. And I’m gonna make it up to you.” Howard began to weep softly—selfish tears as cheap as his word. “Whatever you want.” He rocked side to side. “Whatever you need.” A hideous smile half-lit his face, and at that moment Robert didn’t know which was worse: the suffocating breath or the image his father now presented: “It’ll just be me and you from now on, boy. No more of that bitch, I promise. Me and you’ll take up on our own somewheres; oh, don’t you just know she’ll get the house. It’s what she’s been after all the while.” He sniffed back the tears. “I don’t care if we have to live in a tent in the goddamned woods, I don’t care if we have to live in the fucking car. Just me and you, boy. Just me and you for ever and ever.” He kissed his son stickily and repeatedly. “I’ll never let you out of my sight, Robert. I promise you, boy. Never!” He pulled himself away and wobbled to his feet. “As God is my witness, son, I’ll never let you go.” He snuffled up the snot and tears and staggered to the door. “Now go to fucking sleep.” After that he dreamed. He dreamt of exploring strange places, with no home to return to, no family to endure. In this private world he picked through abandoned houses and climbed jetties, free as a boy can be. But, somewhere in there, an odd feature of dreams took a hazy but relentless hold— he felt, he knew that he had a companion, a faithful dog sharing his adventures just at his heels. But this dog wasn’t sniffing and cavorting; it was dragging itself room to room and rock to rock. Furthermore, it proved unshakable; worse, far worse, it was impossible to turn and confront it—this the dream would never allow. Now it had him by the ankles; a terrifying living anchor, dragging him down, making awful little gasps and yelps of growing intensity, painful to hear and horrible to anticipate, until they took on a frenzied and hounding feel, and the dream descended into a silently screaming, slow-motion nightmare. 4

Yogi Robert woke absolutely rigid. Every sense told him to not make a move or sound. The nightmare’s source was right at the foot of his bed, resting between his ankles. Panting whimpers caused the mattress to tremble; he felt the nails of one paw digging into his calf. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, as though to slip back into the false security of complete darkness. The whimpering was torn by a terrible, abbreviated cry, followed by more panting. Robert opened his eyes to find the dog staring at him fixedly, its mangled body frightfully bent and its muzzle a mess of dried blood. “Yogi,” he whispered, his mouth dry. “No, boy, no. You go away, Yogi. Go away.” The dog whined from its bowels. It began to hyperventilate, and, still staring as though mesmerized, commenced pulling itself forward inch by inch, its nails catching in the boy’s thighs. When Robert couldn’t take it any longer he cried out, and in seconds there was an answering cry from his mother. The door burst open. Seeing the dog upon her son, June screamed for all she was worth. Yogi turned and snarled. Howard, hard-drunk on the front room couch, yelled groggily, “What the fuck?” and came lurching down the hall. When he entered the room the dog went right for his throat, but, unable to coordinate movements, was easily beaten back. June went running to dial 9-1-1, Howard went reeling down the hall. He kicked open a wide cabinet and tore out a shotgun and shells, still so drunk that, upon loading, he put one shell through a window and another through the roof. Robert reached under his little desk and pulled out a hard rubber door wedge, a hush-hush gift from his mother for just such an emergency. He kicked it into place, sobbing all the while, and bundled up Yogi in his arms. The dog, as big and heavy as the boy, gnashed wildly as it was halfcarried, half-dragged to the window. Another shotgun blast rang in the hall, just outside. With his mother’s screams still muffled by the door, Robert forced up his window, lifted Yogi onto the sill, and climbed out onto the shingles. He wept as he fought the convulsing dog onto a main limb. This was his old escape route; he knew every hold and knothole, but the awkward load of the dog, his great fear and hurry, and the godawful kicking-in of his bedroom door caused him to miss a beat and grasp only air. Robert plunged the twenty feet to earth and cement all wrapped up in Yogi. The shock of impact was a heartbeat’s flam: butt and shoulders, followed by an accent to the skull. After that he felt nothing. A minute later he was roused by a blast and bellowing. He looked up to see Howard hanging half-out the window, waving the shotgun with his free hand. The boy struggled to his feet. Bent like an arthritic old man, he limped to the avocado, seized the handle of his little red wagon, and dragged it over to Yogi. He had to turn it on its side, and it required an astounding effort to push in the howling dog, and to lever the wagon back upright. Sobbing with the exertion, Robert hobbled through the yard and out the back gate, the bouncing dog yelping pathetically at each bump and crash. They swerved and jerked down the alley, a quirky compound shadow surrounded by scrambling homeowners and running pedestrians, everybody jacked out of whack by the shriek of sirens, the whipping lights, and the memory of Howard’s shotgun blasts. Robert had no inkling of what or why; he was following instincts, hauling his snarling and howling cargo back to its source. He wept like a baby as he shoved the wagon behind the cans and tenderly laid page after page of yellowing newspaper on the panting animal. From somewhere up the alley came the sound of Howard staggering along, cursing the planet’s every aspect, continually smacking his shotgun’s butt on a caving pine fence. The smacking stopped; Howard had knelt and was now inspecting the wagon’s tracks. Robert clamped a hand over Yogi’s thrashing muzzle as the footfalls approached. 5

Yogi Howard grunted. His flashlight’s beam swung erratically, at last falling on his son and the wagon. The old man’s eyes gleamed. He grinned and held the flashlight against his chest with the lens pointing up, so that his face was lit like some kind of psychotic jack o’lantern. “Out of the way, dummy! I’m putting that ugly motherfucker to sleep.” Howard seized his son by the collar and yanked. There was a squeal beneath them—with a lurch and snarl the dog sprang half-out of the wagon and clamped his jaws around the old man’s throat. Howard screamed and flailed furiously, dragging the dog and boy into a heads-butting embrace. A siren’s wail approached at one end of the alley, headlights tore in from the other. A spotlight played over the scene and an officer raced in even as a hubbub of neighbors blew down the walk. Unwilling to fire into the tangle, the officer first clubbed Yogi with his baton, then used Howard’s shotgun to repeatedly bludgeon the skull, but the dog would not release its death grip. Robert, rocked with each blow, found his face shoved into Yogi’s muzzle and his father’s face until all three were eye-to-eye. Blood spewed from Howard’s wracked mouth and nostrils, his expression grew impossibly contorted, and he gagged one final time. The crashing shotgun became a flagging piston, a throbbing spike, a cotton-soft jackhammer. And Yogi’s eye burned into Robert’s, grew opaque to the tungsten and halogen spears, and was lost like a wraith in the night.

6

ScanElite “Yeah, yeah, Ernie, I got a good one here. Says he spent twenty years on the damn thing; can you believe it!” The Beamer leaned back, receiver locked in shoulder and chin, hands free to rattle the keyboard. “Calls it Search And Rescue, and claims it’s mystery, adventure, and psychological suspense all rolled up into one beautifully polished package. No, I’m not kidding. Nine-freakinghundred and seventy-two pages, man! I’ve got it right here. It’s on a floppy, straight off his hard drive. And get this, get this, get this . . . the guy—are you listening, Ernie? Yeah, well, he inserts a copyright symbol, right under his name! Uh-oh, it’s Superman! Boy, when I seen that I just knew he was serious . . . sure, sure . . . I copied the whole thing straight onto our drive. So what do you think? I’m hearing you, Ernie. ScanElite’s just the ticket for this fish. How’s about Norway? They love ‘psychological suspense.’ What better market? Spain? Espanol’s almost too easy. Whatever. Sure I’ve got the code.” The Beamer rocked side to side in his chair. It was a lovely gray L.A. day; even the graffiti appeared to sparkle in the mist. He leaned over, squished and smeared a spider on the pane. “Then give me one he’ll appreciate, Ernie. That’s almost a thousand pages, for Christ’s sake. Ten-four; here it comes now.” The Beamer adjusted the zoom on his screen. “Let’s see. The William Morass Literary Agency, Agency To The Stars appreciates your contacting us . . . blah blah blah . . . overwhelming number of submissions . . . impossible to judge every manuscript on an individual basis . . . considers your work of the highest quality—good, good; I like that part . . . hopes you will continue to submit your manuscripts on a regular basis—you got that right—and, of course, will never accept a cent in payment for any service or subjective evaluation. Et-freaking-cetera. This one’s a goer, Ernie. Right away. I’ll get back to you on it. How’d that casting call go? No! She did it how many times? Okay, okay, my lips are sealed. Too bad hers weren’t. Just joshing you, big fella! All right; I’ve gotta get on this Search And Rescue guy anyway. Ciao, baby.” The Beamer replaced the receiver and bent to his work. Dear Author, he typed. He copied and pasted the rejection, and under this typed The Very Best Of Luck, W. Morass, William Morass Literary Agency, Agency To The Stars. The Beamer then opened the ScanElite program on his drive, peeking round the room as he typed in the pass: an old literary agent habit; he was the building’s sole occupant. The screen showed symmetric halves. The Beamer loaded Search And Rescue. The

ScanElite text appeared running down the left side. Above this he typed English, and above the opposing column Spanish. The Beamer hit Connect, and the right-hand side immediately translated Search And Rescue. The Beamer now hit Indigenous. The beauty of ScanElite is that it doesn’t just translate verbatim. It’s loaded with idiomatic guides, thesauri, map features, governmental agencies, histories, cuisines . . . when the Beamer hit Indigenous the program introduced samples of locales similar to those in Search And Rescue, altered dishes to those popular in contemporary Spain, overlaid rural maps matching the square mileage of entered sites while adjusting street names accordingly, altered weather patterns, host affiliations, slang phrases . . . the Beamer shook his head admiringly. Search And Rescue was now a novel written by a Spaniard, in a mode and tense only a Spaniard could appreciate. While the original author continued to beat his head on agency doors, his novel would be on the imports carousel, finding its way to airports, gift shops, and candy stores before finding its way to permanent obscurity. By that time a hundred others would be hard on its heels. The Beamer hit Send and wagged his head once more. Technology is a beautiful thing. Instantly an email icon appeared on his screen. The Beamer looked around the room again. If Ernie’d changed his mind it was too late now. He opened the message and squinted thoughtfully. Please take heed. The ScanElite program has a bug that can be traced to senders and associates. I have developed a con-program that will not only disable electronic eavesdroppers, but will enable users to increase profits exponentially by automatically cross-referencing to desaturated global links. This message is new, and if you are reading it now you are the first to view. If you do not respond, the message will migrate to every literary agent in the book. Beat the feeding frenzy. I am willing to take you on as an equal partner, no questions asked. Click on the link below. Now. The Beamer’s forefinger was an epee. The link opened on a phone number; very near, same area code, same prefix. He picked up the receiver and dialed, his eyes glued to the screen. “Go ahead.” “I got your message,” the Beamer whispered, “and I must say I’m impressed with your enthusiasm. However, the William Morass Literary Agency, Agency To The Stars is a perfectly upright organization, and we do not engage in practices that are not one hundred percent aboveboard.” He licked his lips. “And, of course, we never accept a cent in payment for any service or subjective evaluation.” “You got to the phone fast enough. Come now, Mr. Morass, we’re both men of the world, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” “Of course, of course. But you weren’t all that generous with the details in your message.” “We obviously can’t discuss business over the phone. You’re familiar with Chez le Encountre?” “Sure, I lunch there all the time. You’re pretty close by?” “On the patio. I can’t sit here forever without looking suspicious. It’s starting to rain.” “I’m on my way. I’ll tell my secretary to send the staff home early.” The Beamer gently replaced the receiver, grabbed an umbrella, and sprinted for the door. It was starting to pour. The Chez waited only three blocks down. He couldn’t afford to fire up the Ol’ Lexer and make a stately showing; time was running against him. The Beamer hopped puddles until he saw the familiar wrought iron rail. He turned up his collar, righted the umbrella, and paced the slurping cement steps with decorum. At a storefront table, under an anodized steel umbrella, hunched a raincoated man, gloved hands folded on the glass. The Beamer couldn’t tell anything about him, other than that he was thin 2

ScanElite and Caucasian, due to the coat’s floppy drawn hood. The Beamer shook rain off his umbrella as he took the facing seat. “Pardon me, sir. I believe we have an appointment here.” The stranger didn’t raise his head. “I prefer to keep my identity secret, at least for the time being. The business we are about to discuss, you understand, carries certain extralegal ramifications.” “Certainly, certainly.” The Beamer scooted forward; out of the rain, out of the security cameras, and intuitively lowered his voice. “You mentioned something over the phone about a collaboration. Of sorts—you weren’t definite either way. I’d like to hear more.” “SEG: the ScanElite Guard. I’m the inventor. I’m also a handyman, investor, programmer— I’ve a long and quilted history. At one point I ran a very successful literary agency, making good money on editing services, promo packages, quickie covers, fonts and letterheads, bylines and boondoggles.” The Beamer fidgeted defensively. “We got those too.” “The Guard simply functions as the next-generation Elite. It not only outperforms ScanElite, it seeks out sources incidentally encrypted by what I call misnomers. In other words, there are literally hundreds of thousands of potential sucke—clients—open to Internet voyeurism . . . but only when a sophisticated program culls incidentals. Okay? Every author wannabe isn’t wooing Herman or Literary Marketplace; the genuine novices are purchasing learner programs, taking classes over the Internet, peeking in on conventions . . . these are the ones we go after; the ones who’ve yet to feel the sting. SEG can smoke ’em out.” “Brilliant! But where do I come in?” “Fifty-fifty. I’ve burned all my bridges. You’ve got the connects, the name, the network, the clientele. We do this together. If it busts, we slip out of the light and swear we’ve never met. If it flies, and I know it will, we buy an island and sell watered-down Margaritas to the tourist rubes.” The Beamer’s initial trepidation was now fully replaced by awe. “Mister, you are one savvy customer.” He offered his hand. “I’m using my cell phone.” The stranger faced it toward the Beamer. “That, Mr. Morass, is the power of the Internet. A man can send and receive messages electronically, anywhere over the globe. He can send text and graphics as attachments; even whole manuscripts. A smart man can even encrypt those messages with tracers; microscopic munchers that will tell him, instantly, if his stuff goes anywhere it’s not supposed to go. Not only that, his encryption can run on a floppy and thereby infect another’s hard drive, exporting a trace signal the original sender can monitor. And not just at home, Mr. Morass; this kind of activity can also be transmitted to and from a properly outfitted cell phone.” “No kidding,” the Beamer mumbled. “And I need to know all that to sell Margaritas?” “Not everything. But if a signal should get lost, somehow, we might have to perform a search and rescue operation before the authorities catch on.” “Huh. You think we could be traced over the Internet?” “Not readily. There’s just too much traffic. Any kind of search and rescue would leave one of us hanging, and I’d sure hate to be that guy.” “You don’t say.” The Beamer backed his seat a foot or two. “I can’t say I feel all that comfortable with the operation as you lay it out. Maybe there’s still some bugs.” “No problem. We just do a search and rescue and stomp the little creeps before they run.” “Look, I gotta go,” the Beamer said. “Lit. Convention; all the biggies . . . Harris . . . Fine . . . Herman . . . Gooder Books . . . Ajents R Us . . . Flybi Nite’s . . . Auther’s Junkchun. Maybe we’ll pick up this little talk some other time.” 3

ScanElite “You’re not going anywhere.” The Beamer rose. “I don’t think I have to take that kind of behavior, Mister. I have friends in this town.” “I’m sure you do.” The stranger rose also. “What’s your problem, buddy?” The Beamer moved off, looking over his shoulder as he walked. The stranger snapped shut his cell phone and stepped off in pursuit. “Jesus!” There was no one around; the rain was coming down too hard. The Beamer ducked between shops, saw the figure picking up pace. The Beamer raced awkwardly down the dreary aisles between stores, twice nearly falling in puddles, hearing the splashes coming on hard to his rear. He stretched out flat behind a trestled planter, half-submerged, and listened as the splashes approached, paused a few feet away, and slowly moved along. He was shivering like a dog as he snuck around the building. His mind was halting, his pulse stumbling. The Beamer pasted himself in a haberdasher’s doorwell, wiped the rain from his face. Gradually he grew aware of another presence. That second party, not at all mysterious, morphed by degrees from an amber lamp-generated shadow; looming brick by brick on a facing wall, the frame and demeanor fully anticipated, the coat and hood, even in the transparent, absolutely unmistakable. The hand was rising with deadly certainty; slowly, slowly, the swelling shadow seeming to bear down until it all but grazed the Beamer’s cringing own. The ballooning shape topped the wall and the Beamer’s heart stopped. Funny thing about nature: even at the very jaws of death, the cornered animal may refuse to turn and face its stalker—that longsuppressed image can be so mortifying as to dwarf the moment itself. Yet just as the horror was upon him, the Beamer managed to catch his breath and whirl. It was a gummy old bum in a trench coat, bonnet, and shades, whacked out on speed and booze and God knows what. He thrust that determining hand in the Beamer’s trembling face. “Take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and be—” “Christ!” The Beamer rammed him aside. “I’m a literary agent!” He found himself stumbling in circles; well as he knew the mall, his self-preservation instinct had produced a profound sense of disorientation. He slunk shop to shop for perhaps fifteen minutes, retracing his steps half a dozen times before passing headlights gave him a fix. The Beamer scrambled slipping and sliding on the slick cement, barking his shins on cast iron table legs, breaking his nails on the shops’ gray brick walls. The street was deserted, the rain pounding. He stumbled off the curb and almost lost it in the street; but a streamlined, medium-sized moving truckvan was barreling his way. Very high-tech, ultramodern; an imported job, eggshellwhite, super-smooth lines. Wipers accelerated, high beams flashed twice. The truck stopped six feet shy, on hydro-grooved tires, barely having to swerve. The Beamer staggered up to the passenger side and the window hissed a crack. He clung to the pane’s lip, his breath fogging the glass. “Help me out, buddy! Be a pal! There’s some nut chasing me down, man, and I think he’s trying to kill me.” It was impossible to make out features in the dark cab. The voice was gravel and phlegm. “Well then, call a cop! Jesus, man, I coulda killed you! You oughta have more sense than to jump out in front of a moving truck.” “I’m desperate, friend. Really! I’ll make it good to you. Promise. But for Christ’s sake, let me in!” The click of an electrically triggered catch. The window hissed back up. The Beamer yanked the door and squeezed inside. “Bless you, friend.” He slammed the door. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” The truck moved off. 4

ScanElite The Beamer ran a sleeve over the glass. “Anywhere you’re going. Just get me away from that kook.” He leaned back, gulping the A/C. “Oh, mama.” The Beamer rolled his head. “You’re a life saver. I mean that literally, and I’m a literary agent.” He extended a hand. “William Morass, Agent To The Stars.” “I’m using the gearshift.” “Right, right. You just go ahead and do the driving; we’re both cool here.” The Beamer looked the cab over appreciatively. “This is some vehicle, cousin. The works. What you got in the back?” “Just stuff. Go ahead and take a gander. Door’s unlocked. Lift the latch and give her a shove.” “Yeah.” The Beamer pushed the door wide. Heavy as it was, it slid soundlessly and almost without effort. The driver flicked a dash switch and the rear was brilliantly illuminated. “Wow!” The Beamer’s eyes were alive. “It’s like a hospital back there! Sink, tools; everything stainless steel. And what’s that big goober you got hanging in the rear? Looks like a meat hook.” The Beamer grinned at the driver. “What are you, friend? Some kind of a mobile butcher?” The door latches locked with resounding clicks. “Something like that.” This part is kind of difficult to describe for readers who may be, understandably, more sensitive to the gut, rather than the psychological, accounts of a written narrative—but it wasn’t the actual pain of the trapezius-ripping hook that brought the Beamer screaming into consciousness. It was the horror. The horror of knowing what his flickering subconscious had been insisting was all a dream. The driver stood just before him, dressed head to toe for surgery; cap, mask, sterile gloves . . . the truck wasn’t moving, and only the immediate area was lit, lending the place a morbid, suffocating mien. “Sorry about the medical getup, but I’ve a feeling things are about to get a tad on the messy side.” The Beamer screamed some more. “Please feel free to articulate most vociferously. While you were sawing logs we were on our way to a remote part of town. Your plaints would only prove music to the ghetto’s ears, and anyway the walls of this truck are completely soundproof.” “Please, friend,” the Beamer gurgled. “All a mistake. We don’t gotta do this.” “I see. You just accidentally took my life’s work, my heart and soul, and zipped it off to Barcelona for a few quick bucks. You raped my muse, asshole. But maybe you’re right. Maybe she was ‘just asking for it’.” The Beamer whipped his head side to side with outrage, sweat and foam glancing in the light. “I’m a literary agent, for God’s sake! We do this all day long. Countless submissions. You’re special, is that it? Christ!” Comprehension dawned in his working iris. “You’ll get your damned money, okay? All profits are digitally tabbed through Paymaster!” A shudder of hope. “Reach in my left pocket, friend. Grab my cell and let me make a call. We’ll get cash in your hand pronto, and I’ll make sure to slip in something nice on the side for your trouble.” “Gee, I’m sorry, but your phone’s been confiscated, along with your I.D., keys, and address book. Wink-wink, Mr. Morass. I think you understand: we’re both men of the world.” “Keep ’em! Take my Lexus and my credit cards. They’re yours, guy! Just let me go!” The stranger nodded wistfully. He folded his hands at the waist and raised his eyes in the shadows. “Just before you so abruptly encountered slumber, you voiced a curiosity as to the particulars of this truck’s cargo bay modifications. Now, I’ve always admired men of an analytical bent, so it’s with some pride I hereupon share our most interesting arena.” He disengaged a rolling office chair from a wall clamp and moved it directly before his squirming guest, leaned pensively 5

ScanElite against the sculpted leather back, and, with his free hand, tenderly removed from an arm fixture a rectangular steel contraption. It was about the size of a videocassette. “This is a remote control unit.” He got comfortable in the chair. “It instigates, and regulates, the various equipment and paraphernalia about us.” The flick of a switch, and scores of colored lights popped out of the darkness like the eyes of ever-patient predators. The Beamer had never witnessed an environment so patched and daisychained anywhere outside of Metro-Oscar-Mayer Studios. “This little lever,” and the speaker tilted his device for inspection’s sake, “controls the vertical inclination of your pointy spooning friend. It can be nudged up” —the Beamer shrieked as the hook raised his heels— “and just as gently lowered.” His soles returned to the floor. The Beamer’s host slipped on a pair of noise-canceling headphones and bent over his remote control. “Up. And down. Up. And down. Up and down and up and down and up—” “Son,” frowned the Vice Principal, “we’ve been over and over these occupational evaluations, and I’m frankly stumped. According to the State’s best experts, you have the morals of a child molester, the spiritual leanings of a Worm occultist, the ethics of a special education bully, and the IQ of a kumquat picked out of season. And, according to your mother here, you show zero familial aptitude and nil ambition.” He thumbed the pages irritably. “Based on everything we have to go by, the only careers open to you are auto mechanic, Tupperware hostess, literary agent, gay porno actor, and petting zoo rodeo clown.” “He ain’t got no carwork sperience,” Ma chimed in, “he don’t look good in a skirt, he’s ponyshy, can’t never get it up less he diddles first, and never could read or write worth a damn.” The VP signed the top page with a flourish. “That settles it then.” Oh, Jesus: a donkey had him cornholed and a lamprey had him by the weenie. Worse, worse; it was way worse. The lamprey was going all the way, its electric lips a red-hot vise round his beebees. And the darned donkey—well, he just didn’t know when to quit. The Beamer flapped and foamed with the agony and ecstasy, and now Ma had him by the spine, had smashed her paw right through the skin to work him like a puppet. Wake up. She had him jangling this way and that, had him hopping and popping and peeing in time. Wake up. He was on fire; his eyes were coals, his tickle-tank a furnace, his dinky dork a fat purple poker. WAKE UP! Never rouse a sleeper in REM. Consciousness is an ungraspable balloon, sensation merely novocaine’s initial blush. But the Beamer did have real sensation, and very focalized at that. Eyes, back, ballsack, and butthole: that just-dreamt fire would not abate. Or is consciousness really an extension of dreaming, or the other way around . . . his eyelids burned, but not only from waking. With a tearing of tenderest flesh, the Beamer hit reality screaming. “Remain perfectly still.” The voice was a therapist’s monotone. “Struggling only makes it worse.” The Beamer watched his host through a crimson veil. “The pain at your eyes is produced by a pair of fish hooks, one inserted in each upper lid. These hooks, attached to fishing line, are also controlled vertically by the remote unit. Observe.” The Beamer squealed and shrieked like a Campfire Girl. “This way I am assured of your continued attention. We have much to discuss.” He depressed a lever and the hooks’ tension diminished. “Fishing line is also very useful anywhere finesse is required. For example, line is securely wound about your scrotum, just where it meets the 6

ScanElite abdomen. That line is made taut by a ring affixed between your feet, and this arrangement produces a squeezing, rather than a tearing, effect.” He wagged his head. “I do so want to apologize for taking liberties with your apparel, but there was no other way to get you all prim and proper. And you were very messy. Plus, I’m absolutely certain you’re aware of a profound sense of rectal invasion. This can be attributed to an upright steel rod, bolted to the floor and terminating at waist-level, resting squarely in the most-becoming recesses of your dorsal region. The cap on this projection contains cross-terminals for producing mild electrical stimulation. Again, observe.” The Beamer almost hit the truck’s roof with the pain. All that stopped him was a tightening line round his nethers. Halfway to a eunuch, he trembled and danced against opposing forces. “Anything, man! I’ll do anything! Let me go! What do you want? Name it! Oh please let me down!” “In the mood for a chat, are we? Well, why don’t we start with a heartfelt discussion on ethics? I’ll go first. Let me present you with a scenario. In this example, a decent, creative man has labored a decade to produce a work of real literature, only to be ambushed by one of those marketing maggots known as literary agents. Having dealt with their caliber before, he encrypts data which makes his work traceable, records copies with the Library Of Congress, and organizes a Watch group databank. But, as a genuinely creative and therefore essentially virtuous individual, he finds himself utterly incapable of dealing with abject venality, at least not in a manner our spoonfed society would term rational behavior. He realizes the ponderous and indifferent legal course is no recourse: no course at all—there is no justice for a victim; the very existence of victimhood obviates, if not downright negates, the very notion of justice. Mutual exclusivity aside, this hypothetical individual decides to take matters into his own hands. To wit: vengeance and heroism are synonymous. As a literary agent you are surely aware of this. For a hero to exist at all, it is imperative the villain get his just deserts. Your rebuttal?” “God I’ll do anything! I agree! You’re right and I’m wrong! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, sorry, sorry!” “Wrong answer.” Levers were moved like fades on an equalizer. The Beamer, butt up and balls down, became an electric marionette screaming bloody murder. The levers were returned to zero. “Why did you do this to me? How could you do this to a man’s work?” “I’m a freaking literary agent, I told you! It’s what we do! Mouths to feed, bills to pay! Mommy! Let me go, let me go!” “How could you do this to me!” “Oh, God! Oh God, oh God oh God! I’m dying here. My confession! Forgive me! I do take the holy Jesus into my chest place. I repent, I tell ya, I repent!” “Talk to me!” “Mama Mary! Mother Jesus! Oh let me into your heavenly halo . . . I . . . Kee-rist! I’m spewing here, God. He’s making me bleed like Jesus all over—take me up to your cloud home, O savior me. Mommy, I’m dying, dying, dying . . . forgive me if I done any sins but we all done some, Ma, dear Jesus God, let me go, let me down, oh mama I’m sorry, so help me God, help me Jesus, help me mommy, oh Mary Martin, oh Luther and John, oh Moses, Manny, Moe, and Jack, I confess; all of it, I’m sorry, man, I’m sorrysorrysorry, pass the hat and crucify the choir, oh God it hurts, it hurts but I love you Jesus, the kids, the little woman, all of ya, the Beamer done his best, fellas, and he never squealed a once, oh Jesus, God, Mary, Christjesus, mamamercy, oh please oh please oh pleaseohpleaseohplease . . .” “Enough already!” The Beamer’s host killed the remote’s master switch and the whole apparatus collapsed. The Beamer, squealing, hopped free of his anal pal. The smocked man reached 7

ScanElite to the stainless counter and brought back a pair of shears. While the Beamer slouched weeping, he carefully snipped the fishing line, high and low, and reached around to gently disengage the meat hook. In one move the Beamer was on him. He grabbed the throat, tore the shears from the hand, went absolutely ape on the man, shrieking and shouting, cussing and cutting, slicing and hacking and chopping and stabbing until there was only a bloody pile. The Beamer tore through the man’s clothes. Wallet, pen and pad, Juicy Fruit, penlight, miscellaneous papers . . . but no car keys. The Beamer tore out the cash, unlatched the door, tumbled up front. No keys in the ignition. Frantic, not thinking, he leaped naked out the passenger side and ran off into the rain. It was the black ghetto, all right. He recognized it from last year’s Morass-sponsored Irish Limerick Competition. The money stuck out of his fist like a swollen green thumb. The Beamer bent at the waist and inserted it in the one place no sane man would visit. He then ran flapping up the street until he saw a long black limousine easing out of a tenement’s drive. The Beamer puffed on with a passion, and when the limo attempted to swerve he deliberately leaped in its path. The car stopped with a squeal and splatter. The Beamer stumbled round to the rear window. The pane hissed down a crack. Inside was an immaculately-dressed black man, looking more amazed than frightened. “Lord, son! What happened to you!” “Long story,” the Beamer panted. “Help me out, friend. Drive me somewhere, anywhere. I can pay you. Cash.” He proffered his backside, took a deep breath and pushed. “That’s all right! We can settle later. Who did this to you?” “Crazy guy. Didn’t like me selling his story.” “No! So you’re telling me he actually physically accosted you?” “Look at me!” A beetling of brows. “We just may be talking lawsuit here. Do you have any inside friends? And where is this individual? I would like to interview him.” The naked man’s eyes slunk to the asphalt. “Oh . . . around. You know, I been thinking maybe I could use some legal help.” The rider drummed his nails on the glass. “I’m going to be perfectly frank with you here, son. You impress me as a man with the wit and wisdom of a salamander, the scruples of a penitentiary snitch, and the moral restraint of a hooker during shore leave. You wouldn’t, by any chance, have ever worked in a petting zoo?” “Are you kidding? I’m a literary agent!” “Saints!” The latch was released and the door swung open. The dark figure extended a sticky hand. “Johnny Cockrun, Defense Attorney To The Stars.”

8

Home Planet If you’re reading this I have to assume you are of an enquiring disposition, can access basic computing equipment, and are able to open, close, and copy documents. PLEASE SAVE THIS DISK! Or make copies, if you can, and send them to any known survivors, and to any agencies— especially those expressly formed to deal with this horror. If you have a printer, print this out and distribute copies to any parties capable of plumbing it for clues. I can’t print off this thing, even if I could find an AC source. I’m not a scientist, I’m not a journalist, I’m not some hot-shot professor able to pull strings and make noise. I’m just a guy with a little solar-powered word processor. I’ve been retired for some time now, so I’ve had plenty of opportunity to take notes. Due to my analytical bent, a penchant for hoarding provisions, and a lack of family and social responsibilities, I’ve been able to ford the tragedies, the death and the madness, and still remain reasonably sane and emotionally cool. Though I’m slipping, goddamn it. I’m slipping. This entire journal shows exactly as processed, from the first keystroke to the last. What you are now reading is an addendum, cut and pasted to the page’s top. If the following seems stupid, it’s the stupidity of honesty. If much of it comes off as trite and ignorant, well, I guess that’s the realtime scratch-and-stumble of innocence. I could proof and edit, provide a neat and cogent trail—I’ve learned enough from just banging away to produce a strong file. But I’m not going to polish this, for one simple reason: I could be unintentionally deleting clues—no matter how homely, clumsy, or seemingly inconsequential; clues that might be needed by some surviving researcher. Also, as I’m not a diarist, I did not include dates. For this I apologize—but who could have predicted, from those first dire whispers, the horrific reduction, the brutal extermination—this impossibly repulsive obliteration of man. Here is my journal; unadulterated, naked, done with. It’s over, you fuckers. I quit. We pass. Icant’ believe it.My first wordprocessorrr@ Ill getthe hang of this thing soon enoguh. Its’ just like a typweriter. but it saves ontoa disk, Very cool. I’ts solarpowered so I don’t n’eed to chargeit. Colplasible key

Home Planet Board. Stores in a fannypakc. I bought it to record myobse Rvations on the ozone layer issue. Evrybody and their mother’’’s running around like chikcens.but I don’t’ see anybody else taking notes Okay. I’m going to hunt-and-peck until I get good. Here’s what’s happening: The ozone layer is breaking up into what scientists term Z Pockets. There’s that famous one over the Antarctic. But now there’s one over New Zealand, a couple over Europe, six more around Africa, and that really big one over the Pacific. The layer is undergoing an effect meteorologists label “tattering.” You can see it. Kind of. Here and there the sky shows streaks, or “rifts,” as they call them; sort of a burnt umber look, approaching maroon. But they seem to vanish as you stare, though every once in a while something resembling a crack will appear for a bit. I’m talking over great expanses of sky here. Yet from a ground vantage you do get this tectonic effect. We’re told the atmosphere is stabilizing, that’s all. I sure do hope so. I’m getting so good with this thing I can make formatting changes on the fly. Italics, bold, or underlined. Jump to the front or back of a word, line, or paragraph: no big deal. Justification and smart-hyphenation. I did a whole bunch of practicing in non-saved documents, but it was worth it. Watch dese fingers fly, boys. I gots da mojo. “Quotes”, $y^^b()!$, numera1s; a snap! Ellipses . . . and—em—dashes: (colon) each just a key/stroke away. Superguy. Storms are all the news. I guess that’s what we’d have to expect, what with the atmosphere breaking up the way it is. Hurricanes are common; typhoons out of season. Yesterday there was that tsunami in the Phillipines; thousands dead and nobody even blinks. And we keep getting this “Earth will heal” stuff. Maybe. But it’s pretty obvious the scientific approach is a dead end. Well, we did it, people: you and I. With our cars, with our factories, with our lousy aerosol. Just had to deodorize that room, didn’t you, homo sapiens? Just had to gun that engine. Go on, sport, have a nice day. Hey, I know! Let’s all take the tires off our cars, put ’em in a gigantic pile in the rain forest, cover the whole mess with gas and let it burn. Maybe sprinkle on some discarded plastic and used batteries for good measure. Then we can all join hands and sing We Are The World. That’s right; just you and I. The Evolved Ones. And afterwards we can alll;;///// Whoops. Sorry about that. Spilled my artificially flavored instant coffee with saccharine and MSG and had to stomp the damned styrofoam cup into the dirt. But that’s okay—I dug it down deep, and covered it up good. That’s because I care. There’s these weird sunsets I catch from the jetty. I’m sure a million shutter bugs are right on it, but I wish I possessed the vocabulary to do them justice. Purplish, instead of fiery . . . how strange is that? The spectral band is shifting, yet in ways I’d have never predicted. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope on an overcast day, but with breaks in the barrel, and with morbid dayglo stains in the glass. So odd. How can I put it . . . it’s beautiful, because it’s nature, but it’s ugly because it’s . . . wrong. I’m depressed as hell. I want my world back. And when twilight hits, you get these funny spots in the sky—I know I’m not imagining them, because I’m not alone. Even though scientists attribute the phenomenon to residual glow, we lay folk seem to know better. Ghost-specks . . . like miniscule eyes . . . millions of them . . . watching you, wanting you . . . and gone with the night. 2

Home Planet I don’t like the looks of the ocean. They say the tidal drag is waning. She broods, rather than breathes. Spume left on the sand stands for hours before dissolving—creepy. It has traces of purple, like everything else. I’ve begun to despise that color. The sun, with this continuous cloud cover, is perpetually obscured; there’s only a bright spot in the brown and violet quilt, moving in a heavy arc every twelve hours. Despite this cover, the world does not grow cool; the air has a sticky tropical feel—scientists ascribe this to a kind of greenhouse effect. I heard on the radio that crop plants aren’t failing, as one would expect with the dearth of sunshine, but appear to be altering their chemical structure somehow. This is apparently through profound and complex changes in soil minerals, those weird wind currents, and air quality in general; all due to atmospheric “stepping.” We are witnessing our world falling apart: seven billion greedy, shortsighted, extravagant fools in a Petri dish. And now, all over the globe, those crops are being declared inedible: bitter, textureless, covered with purple blotches—as ugly, noxious, and undesirable as we’ve almost casually made our once-beloved planet. Ah, this lightning—these tremendous discharges on every horizon—how does this fit in with stratospheric changes? Is the whole phenomenon “stepping” down? It’s the most awesome spectacle . . . mushrooming bursts of light, as though whole cities were exploding, pyrotechnic pockets that blossom and sag, the sky humming like high-tension wires in fog. At night the erratic displays have this iridescent beauty, with their buggywhip streamers crackling overhead . . . they leave a burnt odor, but odd. I can’t put my finger on it. And clouds—how strange to see these familiar puffy lands grow striated and bulbous. They remind me of jigsaw pieces, only expanding, like taffy, gradually closing gaps in the superlayer of fried amber sky. They have a new kind of transparency, an unearthly sub-opacity that both diffuses and mirrors the ghastly purple atmosphere below. It goes to show how indifferent are we vain little bipeds to that high plan of nature. Our sky, our lives’ breath, is now a polluted and failing lung. This glorious structure of earth—we tore off its skin, man. We made a wondrous hothouse an outhouse; with our fossil fuels, with our mercury and acids, with our vile refineries. We don’t deserve this place, maybe we don’t even deserve this existence. Ah but, God in Heaven, it breaks my heart to watch our poor world die. I’ve been examining some of these plants. Creepers and other supple varieties in particular show extensive change. But they seem healthy enough—though diseased. Does that make any sense? The coloration invariably leans to mauve and purple; greens and yellows are nearly nonexistent. The smooth-cell feature common to supples is strangely spiny—not woody: scaly. Larger plants droop, giving all the visual impression of dying flora. But why don’t they die? I tried bending a stalk, intending to break it for internal study, but it snapped back, as though infused with a vital tension. It scared me in some way. I’m beginning to feel out of place. The air’s very dense, the sun’s spectrum’s shifting. I don’t know if the shift will adversely affect this little word processor’s solar charger, but I’m going to hang with the document as long as I can. I hate this air. Everybody does. It makes you angry, embittered somehow; makes you despise your neighbors, makes you want to use foul language—and I’m a pretty genial guy. Biochemists say it’s to be expected: the atmosphere’s oppressiveness is producing unbecoming, albeit perfectly understandable, mood changes. Don’t fight it, they tell us. That only increases the body’s tensionfactor. Okay. Whatever you assholes say. 3

Home Planet I’m getting skin sores. Just like everyone. Boils, rashes, fungal patches. Fingernails are turning black and green. It doesn’t hurt. Maybe it’ll pass. Sun screen is said to help. Another change has come to the air. Tiny particles—those ghost-specks, distended, now not unlike grains of salt in appearance— are just standing about in suspension. Millions of them, glinting high in this heaving damson sky. I’m reminded of those glass snow bubbles we had as kids. Turn them upside down and white flakes would drift throughout the encased water; these particles behave similarly. They disintegrate upon touch, so scientists are only able to investigate at the molecular level. Silicone is the base, and there are traces of barium and bromium, apparently released by the soil as a consequence of organic breakdown. Other folks—theorists mainly, and they’re coming right out of the woodwork—argue that these specks are the result of unusual oceanic evaporation; one physicist states that atmospheric dissolution has created an arena wherein consequences bizarre to our way of thinking will become the norm. Well, give the fucker a cigar. Has he been living underground all this time? There’s a thought. A spokesman at Cal Tech goes so far as to suggest we’re witnessing what conditions might be like on another planet. These are typical of the fools and frauds who’ve always capitalized on catastrophe: anything for your fifteen minutes—even if it’s the last fifteen you’ll ever see. There are creeps running “safe suit” swindles, hookers making purple-spotted love with sticky old men, parvenu prick preachers with their quickie flocks and stale promises. Where are the poets? Where are the thinkers and visionaries? Same place they’ve always been: ground under the hooves of the shameless crowd. People will believe anything, so long as it appeals to the viscera. Now there’s this video hoax with the granules. Some guy fast-motions a sunup-to-sundown skyframe. Somewhere over Baton Rouge. Yeah, we all fucking see it: granules arcing and combining with a serpentine motion, moving independently and in groups—what the media has the balls-out audacity to call “schools,” as if people aren’t freaked out enough. Even though a university electronic arts class immediately shows how this video is easily effected using the crudest home equipment, it’s too late. People are running around with their heads up their asses. It just makes me sick. This is a text specimen from Science And Sentience’s interview with that ubiquitous theorist Dr. Brigham Railer on the Granular-Cluster Theory. I’m omitting a number of technical sidebars, as well as a few snippets that, due to core impertinence on the part of the questioner, were frankly digressive. S&S—Do you feel the Granular-Cluster Theory adequately explains this peculiar tendency of apparently random colonies to spontaneously diverge? Is it spontaneous? Railer—Well, as many theorists agree, this effect—wherein granules aggregate independently, even as their radial cousins tend to gravitate—is strikingly similar to the Globular Theory, where cells colonized in the primal sea. S&S—But, Doctor, these are not cells, the atmosphere is not a sea, except in perhaps a metaphorical sense, and you haven’t addressed the issue of random divergence. Gravitation, at any level, affects all matter concordantly. What would cause these incongruous splinter clusters? Why wouldn’t all granules, since they’ve been determined virtually identical in mass, behave identically? Railer—Who knows? There are currents in the air as well as the sea. Radiant energy could be a factor. We need to wait for the data to accumulate (laughs). And no pun intended. 4

Home Planet God, the air stinks. It has a putrid smell. I feel I’ll swoon. A totally bizarre thing. That guy with the video wasn’t running a hoax after all. Now that the granules are clumped to the size of golf balls, you can see how they do sort of proceed hurky jerky—what newscasters are calling “attitude.” The biggest reason for this visual factor, though—and I can see it quite clearly from the jetty—is that the process is speeding up as the clusters’ mass appreciates. Clumps appear to oscillate for a second before swerving in to impact clusters—“hosts,” they’re called. I swear I can see them growing before my eyes. It’s awesome. This is getting beyond ridiculous. Some stupid bitch in South Dakota claims a low level clump attacked her dog, for Christ’s sake. It’s these lunatics who are driving away what little sanity’s left, and it’s the fucking media who are supplying the leverage! Everybody knows that dogs, and especially those breeds trained as guards, have been leaping and snapping at these ground clumps all along. It’s inevitable the twain should meet, and obvious reports will become more numerous as the phenomenon accelerates. Oh, so now petroleum giants are being forced to curtail the distillation and sales of fossil fuels. So now your fucking NATO, SEATO, and goddamned PUTO are clamoring for an international “hiatus” on commercial manufacturing. So now microwaves are being taken seriously. GOOD! Put us back in the stone age, when men ate unadulterated food and our children weren’t poisoned from birth. Keep your stupid nuclear bombs. The only weapon I’ll need is a good solid chunk of basalt. Just make sure I get a scientist or two to try it out on. This is just godawful sickening; no lesson in biochemistry could be more depressing. It shows how the senses are hard-wired to focus on the beauty of nature, instead of that gruesome underbelly usually reserved for a microscope or coffin’s interior. The clusters are doing what biochemists call “attaching,” similar to the blind function of viruses. What this means, as far as I can understand, is that elements in our blood, mainly iodine and calcium, are “marrying” (now scientists are calling us the hosts, for the love of God) non-active elements in the clump-colonies, molecule for molecule, so that the hosts’ plasma is bled out the skin surface, or “leeched.” I positively loathe this reckless use of leading terminology! It just kindles already inflamed imaginations. And so we get more asinine reports of colony attacks, preposterous rumors of people bled dry, wild stories of “gang clumpings.” As I say, all this nonsense only makes the situation worse. Yet, in another way it’s understandable; I’ve had to dodge a few myself. Some are the size of medicine balls. But that’s just the point: stay out of the way, assholes! I’ve set the save function to every minute. That way, even if I’m cut off halfway through something, this journal will be very up-to-date, as opposed to the old method of entering a manual save at the close of each It’s all a mess. A panic. People running this way and that, begging for a solution, screaming for their Maker. The heat’s unbelievable. It lashes at the skin and eyes, strangles the tongue. No one will believe the reports: the temperature dropped an average of three degrees over the last two 5

Home Planet days—it feels like it rose ten. The air is actually sour; you can taste it. The alkalinity of soil samples is on the wane, the pH all over the place. Bael Laboratories has come up with a “peel ’n’ toss” disposable protective suit, for Christ’s sake, but what the fuck’s the point. We’re already covered with sores. God, I can’t breathe. They say going out without a suit increases the risk of skin cancer. Assholes! Who’s gonna live long enough for it to develop. This is impossible. Now there’re reports of colonies smashing through picture windows and attaching to homeowners! Idiots! Alert One is ordering all civilians to don those stupid suits: they say the material will mask hemoglobin. We’re one step away from martial law. But nobody gives a crap. People are going nuts with shotguns and flamethrowers. There’s simply too many of those things; and now some are “bonding,” as opposed to just “replicating.” 91Radio reports one the size of a house over Connecticut. I’ve had it with scientists and theorists! I’m fed up to here with their one-dimensional explanations about chemical interactions. I’ll believe my eyes, not some asshole lecturer. You fuckers tell me how a mass of “inert silicone-based clumps” can swoop on a lady and carry her off screaming! You tell me how a couple of colonies can fight over a child like a pair of hammerheads fighting over a surfer. You tell me how a “secondary osmotic exchange” can leave the streets littered with bloodless corpses. Fuck you all, fuck you all, fuck you all. I don’t need some goddamned scientist to tell me our Earth’s been appropriated. I don’t need a climatologist to tell me the atmosphere’s been altered to suit another species, and I don’t need some fucking biologist to tell me they’ve been adjusting plant life all the while. And I don’t need any shitface scientist to tell me that that ugly thing swooping my way is coming to suck me dry. Fuck you. Right over here. Come and get it. Yeah, fuck you! That’s right: carbon-based; sweet, pink, and juicy. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCKYOU FUCKYOUFU

6

Justman! “Hermie, me hearty, by the time I get a few rufies in that little bimbo she’s gonna know the Ol’ Shaman is pure Prescription X.” The table was bumped—precisely as a pair of samples were being physically juxtaposed in an A/B comparison. The specimens, thus roughly mixed on the handler’s palms, produced a stinging sensation and an unfamiliar, nauseating odor. When Richard Dukhedd smelled that odor he looked up from his table with a most uncharacteristic snarl. His nostrils flared repeatedly, his eyes burned in haunted caves. A string of saliva rolled off his lip. The expression was so savage both lab assistants stopped dead in their tracks. After a minute the bigmouth wondered, “Hey, Dickhead! What’s with you? You look like you just wolfed down a Mama Cass.” To his accomplice he said, in a jocular aside, “That’s our catering truck’s ham and chile relleno with heavy tabasco.” Dukhedd pulled himself together, surprised by the recent feeling’s intensity, and ventured meekly, “Er, it’s Dukhedd.” He remembered he had to remind this particular lab boy every single blessed working day of his life. For some reason that stuck in his craw. Strange. He’d never realized he had a craw. “Okay, Dickhead.” The assistant nudged the other boy, a new face at Chemright. “Herman Wilson, this is good old Ducky Dickhead. Here he sits, slaving away every day without complaining. That nameplate there is actually his headstone. See? ‘Ducky Dickhead. Born God knows when. Lived God knows why. Died facedown in a puddle of cheap perfume for some woman who wouldn’t give him the time of day.’ Is that what you’re working on today, Dickhead? Another of those groovy little scents the boss’s squeeze is so crazy about? When are you gonna hit him up for a raise, man? Tell his wife about the squeeze. Or, better yet, just walk right in and tell him you know all about it.

Justman! Then watch the red carpet treatment!” “Why, yes,” Dukhedd said absently. “I was just cross-analyzing pheromone samples of a motorcycle outlaw and a ground ape. Unfortunately they seem to have become intermingled here. But not to worry. Doctor Weissman has plenty of simian semen in storage, and I can always go back to that tavern restroom for more outlaw specimens.” The thought revolted him. It had been terribly difficult getting through that crowd last night, and several of the brutes had accosted him when they caught him scraping the stall walls for samples. Dukhedd rubbed the lump on the back of his head and remembered the gauntlet of pool cues and hairy bellies. Every window on his dusty orange Pacer had been smashed, and the stench of rolling troglodytes had clung to him all the way home. The dry cleaners had refused to accept his clothes. “Well, good for you, yo-yo. You just keep mixing away there, Dickhead, and maybe someday they’ll name something particularly smelly after you. Come on, Hermie, old boy, let me introduce you to the Broom Closet. It’s where you go to sneak a smoke or smoke a secretary.” The two laughed and kicked their way through the swinging doors leading to Warehouse. Dukhedd watched them go with narrowed eyes. His palms burned and itched, his shoulders kept fighting to remake his posture into a headlong crouch. He rose slowly, crept to the settling double doors, and peered through the right-hand pane. The lab boys were halfway across Warehouse, heading for a little door Dukhedd knew led to a sleepy room stocked with miscellaneous supplies and equipment. Barely aware of his actions, he slipped inside and stepped up to an in-building intercom, flicked a switch and said, “Herman Wilson to Inventory, please. Herman Wilson to Inventory.” Dukhedd watched as the Wilson boy looked around fearfully. He saw the bigmouth josh him confidently, and then Wilson was hurrying for the doors at West End. The bigmouth, Dukhedd suddenly remembered, was named Perigas. Evan Perigas. He stared angrily as Perigas pulled out a pack of smokes and made his way to the Broom Closet. Now Dukhedd, almost as a conditioned response, slipped between the tall racks and began following him one row at a time. Warehouse was deserted. Once Perigas had snuck into the room and closed the door, Dukhedd was able to boldly step forward. Right then, Chemright’s least appreciated wunderkind couldn’t have explained himself if you put a gun to his head. He only knew his destiny waited in that room, just behind that little wood door he was fast approaching with his body in a crouch and his palms itching like crazy. At the last moment Dukhedd stopped on a dime, turned the knob quietly, and eased open the door. As Warehouse light fell on him, Perigas immediately dropped his lit cigarette and covered it with a shoe. When he realized it was only Dukhedd his startled expression became one of contempt and resentment. “Dickhead! You damned meddler! What are you doing snooping around here, anyway?” “You,” Dukhedd responded, his voice growing in intensity with every syllable, “are a very bad man, and unfit to be a member of the gene pool.” This little utterance amazed him. He’d never spoken a harsh word in his life. A shudder ran up and down his body. The Broom Closet filled with a muskiness somehow both infuriating and intoxicating. “And you,” Perigas scowled, “are unfit to lick my boots. So checkmate.” He lit a fresh cigarette, but in the glare of the match saw something in Dukhedd’s face that made him step back. Dukhedd’s expression seemed to be trying to find its place, scrunching and writhing all about before finally settling into one of rabid psychosis. “Now hold on there, Dukhedd,” Perigas mumbled. “Richard.” “Unfit,” Dukhedd slobbered. “Gene pool.” “Hold it!” Perigas shot, and grabbed a heavy-duty box cutter from a table. He thumbed open 2

Justman! the blade. Before he knew it, Dukhedd had swiped it from his hand and was advancing menacingly. “Un . . . fit!” Dukhedd snarled, clamping a wildly itching palm over Perigas’s mouth. He slammed the assistant’s head on the floor and held it while cutting open the boy’s trousers. A brief flurry of denim and blood spattered the Broom Closet’s near wall. “Unfit,” Dukhedd swore, unaware of the shrieking gusts bursting from Perigas’s nostrils, “unfit . . . gene pool!” The castration was very swift, very unscientific, and very messy. Perigas passed out screaming, leaving Dukhedd slumped with the blade in one hand and the lab assistant’s manhood in the other. There was blood everywhere. As rational thought returned, Dukhedd gradually became aware of his plight. He was also aware he’d taken the first step on a momentous journey. There was important work to be done—under no circumstances must Perigas be allowed to blow his cover. Grabbing the unconscious assistant by the hair, Dukhedd coldly snapped back his head, located the jugular, and brought the blade down. “Hold it right there,” said the burly man at the door. “Don’t I know you? I think I know you.” He held a gnarly hand in front of Dukhedd’s face. Tattooed across the back of the hand was the legend, ME ASHOL. Dukhedd’s eyes followed a series of tattooed arrows leading up a fat hairy arm, across a fat hairy shoulder, and so on up to a fat hairy forehead bearing the second half of the message: YOO DED! Ordinarily the nauseating odor produced by this massive individual would have made Dukhedd dizzy and weak, but now it only engendered a snarl and tensing of the shoulders. His palms began to itch. His fingers clenched. The brute’s head cocked backward at that snarl, and his hand shot up to study the back of Dukhedd’s skull. “Why, it’s you, all right. I remember you from last night. You’re the funny little fellow we played foosball with, all the way out into the parking lot.” “Dukhedd,” the funny little fellow said out of habit. “Richard Percival Dukhedd. I’ll, er, be getting out of your way now.” Something abruptly straightened his back, and his voice, in that quirkily masculine tone he’d fallen into of late, said, “But not this time, I won’t.” Before Dukhedd could make a move, he was compelled to explain himself (after that nasty little incident with Perigas he’d come to his senses quickly, his self-preservation instinct burning red-hot. He’d cleaned himself up very carefully in the employee’s lounge lavatory before returning to his desk, pontificating under his breath all the way. No one suspected gentle Dukhedd of course; he hadn’t even been detained for questioning. Herman Wilson, the last person seen with a living Perigas, was presently under house arrest and close observation. Chemright had been shut down for the investigation into the lab boy’s brutal murder, and everybody sent home). Without having to collect his thoughts, Dukhedd now said, “Mister Biker, because you are a deliberate insult to every standard of decency devised by intelligent men, you are about to experience the exquisite horror of waking in the emergency room. So please pay attention: “Sin number one: you believe obnoxiousness is cool. For this snub at five thousand years of the civilizing process you will spend the rest of your life attached to a colostomy bag. “Sin number two: you think masculinity is a quality best defined by foul and offensive behavior, and that grease, din, and deviancy are elements to admire. “Sin number three: you feel that intimidating those less massive makes you a superior specimen. And for this little travesty you will learn to operate a wheelchair from the ground up, so to speak. So say ‘Vroom vroom,’ Mister ‘Big Bad Biker,’ and get ready to meet your new set of wheels.” The hairy man’s jaw dropped, his beady eyes narrowed. But before he could signal his lurking horde, Dukhedd had spun him around, ripped down his pants, and yanked out a good eighteen inches 3

Justman! of descending colon. He stepped over the writhing ashol and elbowed his way inside the bar. Dozens of similar hulking creeps were gathered in drunken packs; Dukhedd recognized many of them from last night. When the meanest loped up with pool cue in hand, Dukhedd calmly ripped off his face and threw the oozing flesh mask like a Frisbee into the crowd. He kicked the screaming man in the scrotum twice for every scream until the racket ceased. “Now,” Dukhedd said, pulling a pair of ice tongs from under his lab coat, “one of you lucky ashols is just about to graciously volunteer a semen sample. I’ll make the collection process short and sweet. Then I’ll be getting out of your way.” The Ford Ranger came up on his bumper again, so close the ashol’s face was right in Dukhedd’s rear-view mirror. Dukhedd grimaced as the night’s hard-won sample rolled precariously on the dash. The Ranger tried to pass at a bottleneck, almost taking out the Pacer’s right-rear panel. Dukhedd sped up and veered to the right, forcing the ashol to back off. He couldn’t help it; his rage at this dangerous display of selfishness in a social situation, at night with no law enforcement around, grew with each yank of the wheel. The Ranger began honking insistently—how dare a little orange Pacer with no glass be in the superior ashol’s way. Dukhedd’s shoulders were hunched, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. As the Ranger pulled right up on the Pacer’s rear bumper, Dukhedd gradually slowed. The ashol was barely able to avoid an unflattering ding on his own, finer bumper. He held his palm down on the horn, but Dukhedd only slowed further, until the inferior little Pacer was controlling the pace of the two vehicles at around fifteen miles per hour. That continuous blare of horn was drilling through Dukhedd’s skull, but his focus did not falter. His eyes shot left and right. There were no cars around; only the few red jewels of taillights a quarter mile ahead, petering quickly as the Pacer and Ranger slowed. Dukhedd forced a complete stop. Each adamant blast of the Ranger’s horn caused his neck to sink an inch deeper between his bunching shoulders. When he heard the Ranger’s door slam his palms were itching so badly the Pacer’s steering wheel was like ground glass. Every approaching footstep was another twist of the gonads, each challenging expletive sweet music to the ear. When the ashol reached the Pacer’s door, Dukhedd came out of the driver’s window like toothpaste out of a tube. He put one fist straight into the ashol’s Adam’s apple, felt the jelly knob sunder into mush. “For brashness are you silenced,” he hissed. He crushed the ashol’s spine like a beer can. “For arrogance are you diminished.” He kicked and kicked and kicked the ashol’s cadaver until it was impressed into the Ranger’s grille. “Solely for display purposes are you here.” Dukhedd blanched at the news. He was all over AM radio, his name mispronounced and his character misrepresented. Another anchor reported that a Richard Percival Dickhead was wanted for questioning in the Chemright incident—and that one Herman Wilson, recently released from custody, had informed detectives of Dickhead’s confessed strategy just minutes before the assault in question. Dukhedd pounded his fist on the Pacer’s peeling plastic steering wheel cover, visualizing he and Wilson in all manner of bloody scenarios. A ruckus to his right snapped him out of it. In Cartwheel’s new Cellular Mall, dozens of loping gangbangers were chasing down a little man in a bright orange costume. Dukhedd hit the brakes even as another group cut the man off. The whole mess swarmed him; fists, feet, furheads—everywhere! Never in his life had Dukhedd deliberately enjoined an altercation, but the sight of this helpless 4

Justman! fleeing victim, in the very process of being mauled by a fresh leash of ashols, threw his blood pressure into orbit. He was hyperventilating; tiny feral gasps whistled out his nostrils. The seatbelt refused to comply; Dukhedd ripped it from its moorings. The driver’s door was jammed (one biker had head-butted the Pacer); Dukhedd kicked it free. He grabbed the keys, arranged them to protrude separately between the fingers of his closed fist, and sprinted into the mob, jabbing eyes into jelly, shredding and grating lips, making bloomin’ onions of noses. A number of dullards made to retaliate and—Dukhedd lost it completely. By the time he reached the supine little man it was a gangbanger’s graveyard, and sirens were carving holes in the distance. Dukhedd rolled him onto his back. He was a dweeby stiff, not unlike his rescuer. Dukhedd scooped him up and raced to the Pacer before the cops could make a mess out of a miracle. He laid him on the front seat, fanned the face and rubbed the limbs. In a minute the eyelids fluttered. A scrawny hand shot upward, grabbed Dukhedd by the lapel. “Gene pool,” the dweeb mumbled. Dukhedd nodded passionately. The hand dropped. “I,” the little man managed, “have eradicated my share of stoopuds.” Dukhedd nodded harder. “Ashols,” he translated. “It is time to pass the torch.” The man’s voice was wind through leaves. Again with the hand to the lapel, again with the trailing mantra. “I sought a successor; instead has he succumbed to me.” Dukhedd had to move his ear right down to the man’s pale rolling lips. “Long have I labored,” the dweeb went on, “seeking a cure for the source of moral retardation that has plagued our race since its inception. I was this close.” He held up a shakily parted forefinger and thumb. His head rolled to the side. He looked dead. “Magnets!” he spewed, and gripped Dukhedd’s wrist with passion. “Oh, for the love of God—the derelicts, the gayboys, the harlots, the televangelists . . .” He was clearly delirious. “Gene pool!” Dukhedd sobbed, his head rolling miserably. “Yes. Yes.” “I was shittin’,” the little man gasped. He shook his head in frustration. “Smitten, kitten, mitten—I was bitten, bitten by a honey badger that had previously stepped in a certain muscleheaded governor’s urine. Oh, the humanity . . . it is pheromones! Pheromones control our every slip and brute desire. Well, perhaps not you and I, but all these barbaric marauders, all the venal charlatans who dictate our lives, all the wezls and horz yanking and cranking and shanking and watching our every weakness. Oh, the magnets!” Dukhedd wept as he nodded. “Gene pool.” “You must take this uniform. You must wear it with pride as you combat the wezls and horz, the doprz and loitrz; the stoopuds in general.” “Ashols,” Dukhedd said. He peered at the man’s costume doubtfully, less than enthused by the prospect of battling evil while looking like a Dreamsicle. “This is to be your guide.” The dweeb pulled a battered thesaurus from a marsupial breast pocket, handed it to Dukhedd. “I,” he gurgled, “am Justman!” A shudder ran up and down his frame. “You . . . are Justman!” Dukhedd buried him that night, on a knoll beneath the mall’s giant phone logo. He tried the costume on and found it five sizes too small, itchy in the crotch and pits, and prone to clinging in the least appropriate places. But it was an outstanding color match for the Pacer, and this coincidence alone made him ponder the serpentine role of Destiny. The dweeb’s words glowed on his mind’s back burner: “Instead has he succumbed to me.” Dukhedd navigated the mean streets of Cartwheel with a whole new attitude.

5

Justman! That night Dukhedd hunched in a 7-11 parking lot, poring over the thesaurus under a dome light’s dimming sallow haze. The Pacer was out of gas, Dukhedd out of cash, and it really didn’t matter—he was thunderstruck; not only by the extensive marginalia, but by the book itself. Roget did something stunningly straightforward way back in 1852; he categorized nouns in direct relation to their antonyms. Dukhedd’s ex-bookshelf consisted mainly of chemistry tomes and spiral-bound olfactory charts, and the only thesaurus he’d thumbed was one of the popular editions featuring the “arranged just like a dictionary!” bullshit. Roget’s original wasn’t concerned with the ab-c cretins; it was designed to elucidate. Good man, Dukhedd read, and rolled his eyes to the opposing column. Bad man. Dukhedd blinked. Absolutely sound. Virtue. And its antonym, Vice. Kindness. Cruelty. Honor, Dishonor. Loyalty, Treachery. Justice—and here Dukhedd had to stop, squinting in the sudden seizure of overlapping addenda. Scrawled in black ink were the words: Rightman, Goodman, Virtueman, and the bold and italicized, Justman! Dukhedd now noticed circled words, and a faint and wobbly, imposed skeletal sub-frame. Beneath Bad Man was the scribble WEZL, beneath Bad Woman the legend HOR. Dukhedd nodded. The banner for the sub-frame was the coined STOOPUD. He understood. Dukhedd fingered the orange costume with a new respect. “Yo yo yo, homey. Yo be up wit some change in da hood?" The voice in his ear was like sandpaper. Dukhedd had to rub his palms hard on the Pacer’s abraded seat cover. His head ratcheted to the left. “What it be cracka? Yo be in da flicky wit da bling bling?” “Wezl,” Dukhedd breathed. “What? See-it! I jus be jammin in da foo schoo, yo digs? Jus a dollah, dog.” A squeegee clattered around the Pacer’s windowless frame. That was enough. Dukhedd’s left arm shot out and brought back a handful of Bad Man. He stuffed the screaming wezl in the glovebox, appendage by appendage, until there was only the squashed remains of its trousers in his hand. Odd: He palpated a hefty lump in a space that should have contained only air. Dukhedd peeled back the fabric to reveal a wad of bills crammed in a leather tobacco pouch. Gas money, food money, and more. Enough to launch the new Justman. Dukhedd rolled the Pacer out the drive and into the street. There was an all-night gas station only two miles up the Grapevine. He took the steering wheel in one hand, the crushed door in the other, and began to shove. Everybody now knows the final leg of the Justman saga. Friends still argue the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the dos and the don’ts. Bullies are prone to think twice before picking on geeks, perverts tend to keep it all indoors. The gleeful bludgeoning of religious hypocrites, we all agree, must cease at once. Yet there are times when we can’t help but fondly recall the mechanics forced to perform surgeries on doctors, the lawyers forced to dismantle and rebuild the vehicles of mechanics, the systematic and long overdue barbecuing of Death Row inmates. Who can forget the thousands of shamelessly dressed horz, hung naked from street lamps over Dobermans in heat, or the endless packs of street wezls, violently indoctrinated into a lifetime of community service? The politicians dressed in leotards and rainbow wigs, the horrified low riders, strapped in bumper cars set to prestissimo . . . the bitch-slapped gangbangers . . . all the rude cell phone yammerers with their tongues expunged . . . the professional athletes in silk underwear, rolling beach balls with their noses on a spectator-packed, glass-enclosed, and fittingly shallow field of dreams. 6

Justman! Was Justman a villain, as the hookers, realtors, and telemarketers like to proclaim? Or was he really a hero, doing what we sorry-don’t-want-to-get-involved rubbernecks only wish we had the gonads to enjoin? From that first mass return-punting of border jumpers to his final group-batoning by itchy Police Cadets, the story shall remain a mystery, for Justman himself granted no interviews, and was tightlipped about the whole phenomenon, other than the trademark pithy explanations preceding each protracted measure of Justice. He is known to have produced a single in-depth explanation on the ultimate consequence of Evil, and for this mighty exposition we have one Herman Wilson, still in shock from the sulfuric acid, the cattle prods, and that televised and oft-parodied naked citywide meat hook ride. But Hermie ain’t talking.

7

Night On Wednesday night at 21:37:06, Pacific Standard Time, all the lights went out in the pinesmothered hamlet of Dearview, Oregon. Due to its elevation, and to its remoteness from city lights, the effect was startling: in an instant the dreamy community of thirty-seven, illuminated by softyellow and white electric light, became a black gothic bubble lit only by stars. It was too late in the evening to worry about juice for domestic purposes; most folks were fast asleep by eleven anyway. But there are countless wolves and bears in the area, and lately these large predators had been acting bizarrely—baying and snarling, running in and out of Dearview—much to the community’s consternation. A strong request was made to the County for an investigation, but bureaucracies are notoriously slow when it comes to the outskirts, and Dearview was put on hold. So men were stocking up on shotgun shells and flashlight batteries, women were keeping premises meticulously clean. The abrupt loss of electricity was like a trumpet call; on that chilly late October night, all Dearview’s thirty-seven nervous men and women hiked up to Balder’s as a unit. The Dearview system maintains dozens of security lamps, set up in seemingly random locations about the community and deep into the pines. These dully glowing lights remain on all night to discourage wild animals, and are powered by an independent generator that kicks in automatically in the event of a power failure. Balder was in charge of the Dearview main generator, a bulky monster housed in an offproperty outbuilding, and his twins Danny and Donna were in charge of solving every nonexistent Dearview mystery, of making certain the vaguest of complaints gets routed to the improper authorities, and of generally driving Balder crazy. The twins were chips off the old blocks: Balder and his late wife, as children, had been fans of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, respectively, and had passed on this love to Danny and Donna, both highly inquisitive, highly annoying children.

Night Just as the crowd reached Balder’s property line the lamps came back on, though Balder hadn’t touched a thing. A resolution to price a state-of-the-art generator was quickly passed, and, after an impromptu discussion on the pros and cons of setting traps for large carnivores, the folks all called it a night, traded well wishes, and marched back down to bed. On Thursday night at 21:37:06, Pacific Standard Time, all the lights went out in the pinesmothered hamlet of Dearview, Oregon. This time the residents were furious, and, by the glow of flashlights and lanterns, demanded Balder’s head. The emergency generator was slow in kicking in, and when it did the twins were quick to note the half-assed, flickering quality of the lamps’ response. Balder could only apologize and kneel to his work. Donna pointed out a lamp behaving differently than the rest—while it likewise fluttered and hummed, there was a steadier, pulsing aspect to its flashes. Curious as cats, the kids took off licketysplit. The crowd didn’t notice, and Balder wouldn’t have wasted his breath—when the twins’ minds were set there was no stopping them. They made a beeline for the spot. Odd—the lamps were expiring all around. Night’s train ran up the hill beside them, snuffing the lights one by one. More problems with the generator? And by the time they reached the sputterer it too had died. They stood small in the starlight, shoulder to shoulder. “It was just a goofer,” Danny mumbled. “Short circuit in the mainline.” “Look!” Donna indicated a lamp a hundred yards off; first glowing dully, then brightly. Another moment, and it began to blink. Odd. “A code!” Danny burst out. “Dad’s goofing on us.” “No way.” “C’mon.” So they crept tree to tree, sneaking up on a mystery. The moment they reached the lamp the blinking ceased and the light went out. Once again they stood alone in the night; yet now much deeper in the trees, and that much farther from home. “That does it,” Danny whispered. “Let’s get out of here.” “Look!” Donna whispered back. “Look, look!” Another lamp was blinking, not so far off this time, and in a familiar clearing. Sneaking along with their chins to the ground, the twins melted in and out of the pines, finally stopping behind a short screen of boulders. This stammering lamp was creating an epileptic halo, sending ghostly figments across a stroboscopic field. They stepped out of hiding as the blinking grew feebler. Fading . . . fading . . . fading . . . the lamp’s light dwindled to a softly throbbing glow. The twins were just trading stares when, with a sudden leap and sputter, the lamp went out. They embraced in the retreating afterglow, their eyes gradually adjusting to a world illuminated only by starlight. Slowly the craggy, bat-like figures gathered around them, seven feet tall and taller, cutting out the night chunk by chunk. The tallest figure took a step forward and leaned down; two others simultaneously parted to form a break in the living ring. The leader took a measured pace toward the gap and looked back. There was no mistaking his meaning. He continued out into the clearing, stopped again, looked back again. After a minute the twins, still locked in a clinging huddle, slunk toward the gap. The ring relaxed and they tiptoed through. The leader folded forward like a rusty hinge. The others fanned back, leaving plenty of space. 2

Night Now the tall figure, stooping, ran his hands back and forth above the ground in the manner of a man at a campfire. Little by little a soft violet glow formed in the hemispheric space encompassed by his movements. When the glow was a steadily bobbing field, a diaphragmatic disturbance appeared on its face, and a corresponding sound issued: “This,” came the eerie, metallic voice, “is our hearth.” Each syllable was matched by a tremor in the glow. The twins’ jaws dropped. Their eyes met, and returned to the glow. It was a strange trip to listen to a visual: “This field is the source of all our energetic endeavors. It is the quality that made it possible to cross the galaxy and to seek contact with your remote race. The voice you are hearing does not, of course, speak in our natural language. The hearth transposes, verbally and idiomatically. Likewise your vocal tones will automatically be translated in real time.” The long robed arms spread. “I am Elgnor. Please. Try for yourselves.” The twins jostled and jounced. Donna, the ballsier, articulated: “What—what do you want from us?” Elgnor nodded appreciatively and straightened. “Merely your attentiveness, and your patience.” He gestured globally. “Long have we marveled your species’ drive, your curiosity, your ingenuity.” He folded his hands behind his back and began to pace conservatively, philosophically. “Only your penchant for aggressive violence has prevented our making contact.” He raised a hand. “Please.” It was his most oft-used word. “We are a shy people, and you are, cosmologically speaking, a young race. With age comes wisdom.” He leaned down purposefully, and the twins recoiled at his features: Elgnor’s countenance struck them as altogether horrifying; a face that was one long scaly proboscis, with a moist, lampreylike aperture of a mouth. “Yes,” Elgnor breathed, and leaned back. “As we anticipated.” The glow, sensitive to its hailer, retracted. “But you must realize your features are no less repulsive to us—more so, in fact, due to their gross primitivity. Yet yours is a healthy reaction that only a mature approach can address.” He squared his shoulders. “Our first step in contact is with you children. This is because children are alert, honest, and, perhaps most important, innocent. Innocence is a precious quality. It is our hope that you will mentally assimilate our position, and prepare your elders for a meeting here, with the natural shock thereby softened.” The twins hugged and danced in anticipation. “Okay, okay,” Danny said. “We’ll tell Dad, and he’ll listen; he always does.” “But how about you guys?” wondered Donna. “Will you be okay? Should we bring you some blankets? Do you need any food?” “Yeah, yeah! We can get burgers and weenies, and there’s plenty of sausage and ground turkey in the deep freeze.” “Please!” Elgnor gasped, drawing back. “You have no idea . . . the ingestion of animals is offputting—is nauseating—is absolutely mortifying to a race as evolved as ours.” The hearth appeared to roil and seethe. “This point is central regarding our tentative approach to contact. So very primitive . . . we can only beg that you never again broach this repellant subject.” “We’re sorry,” Donna said. “How’s about some popcorn or granola bars?” “We’ve got vegetarian pizza!” Danny chimed. “And biscuits and candy bars and soda and—” “Thank you, dears.” Elgnor raised his hands. “That will not be necessary. We only ask that your elders bring no illuminative or incendiary devices. Our race evolved in near-total darkness. As a consequence we cannot bear direct light. Observe.” He leaned in. 3

Night It took all their fortitude, but by now the twins were prepared. They curiously studied that fright mask for anything resembling eyes; only a pair of pinpricks broke Elgnor’s elongated muzzle of a face. He drew back. “Okay,” Donna said. “You can count on us. We’ll talk to Dad, and he’ll tell the others. You don’t need to worry; he’ll keep the excitement level down. Dad’s a total bore.” “Bless you, dears!” Elgnor silently clapped his hands. The hearth leaped and subsided. “We must hive on the emergence of your sun. But we will encounter you all, right here, this time on the morrow.” The official reception committee was the entire community of Dearview. The townspeople hiked up in a single, phalanx-like wave, carrying shotguns, lanterns, and flashlights, and boy, were they pissed. Once again, all the security lamps were out. Their sole beacon was a soft violet glow. They were met by a pacifistic, seated semi-circle, with Elgnor at the fore. “Okay,” called Billy Bob, “who’s the dickhead who cut the power right in the middle of Football Fantasies?” He flicked on his powerful flashlight, jabbing the beam one by one in their guests’ faces. Immediately the strangers fell over and covered their heads, wailing in the creepiest manner. No way had the twins’ description prepared the good citizens of Dearview for the hideousness caught in that hard white beam—the men snarled and cursed, the women piped and squealed. But it was those very women who wore the pants in the group, and who had the good sense to back their men off. Ellie and Jeannie took their husbands by the ears, Mary slapped the light right out of Billy Bob’s hand. “We’re so sorry!” Jeannie cried. “It was all a mistake, believe us.” “Like hell,” said Jeff Bob. “And I don’t need no light.” He drew a line in the dirt with his shotgun’s barrel. Elgnor slowly rose to his feet. He waved about blindly for a moment, then, guided by the hearth, felt his way over to Jeff Bob and leaned down. Jeff Bob grimly raised the shotgun. Elgnor’s hand, following the movement, gently grasped the barrel. “Please,” he said, sitting with care while simultaneously pulling down the barrel. He placed the barrel in his mouth, eased it up his proboscis, and clasped his hands behind his head. “You!” Ellie cried, grabbing Jeff Bob’s biceps. “Can you face one crisis in your life like a man?” Jeff Bob, with his neighbors’ eyes dead on him, gradually relented. “Awww, shit. I can’t do him if he’s not resisting.” Elgnor relaxed and extricated himself. “A mature decision, dear.” “Don’t call me ‘dear’!” Elgnor cocked his head. “Forgive me. We were under the impression that this is an expression of deepest warmth and familiarity.” “Do I look like a fruitball to you?” “Yes!” spat Ellie. “Yes, you look like a fruitball!” She wedged herself between them, facing Elgnor while keeping her eyes low. “You must be Mister Elgnor. The twins told us all about you. I hate having to apologize for Goober’s big mouth every time we go out, but I’m getting good at it by now.” She turned and addressed the crowd like a schoolmarm. “These folks are our guests, and this is a mighty important occasion. The least we can do is have the courtesy to hear them out.” Ellie turned back. “Mister Elgnor . . .” and she gave a little bow and smiled, “. . . please.” 4

Night “Thank you, dear.” Elgnor indicated by a circular gesture that the Dearview committee should all get comfortable. Once they’d complied, he returned to his place and sat with legs crossed and hands hovering above the glow. “This is our hearth. It provides what its hailer requires.” Ernie Bob jerked up a hand. “I’ll take a high-definition big screen with all the goodies!” “Please,” begged Elgnor. “The hearth does not grant wishes; it takes care of business.” He looked into the crowd and, through the hearth, sought the correct terminology to best describe the abstruse. Picking his words carefully, he resumed: “The hearth is our soul. It is a flame, yet it is not a flame. It does not burn in the regular sense, though it leaves a residue not unlike that left upon carbonization.” Elgnor measured his next words so long time seemed to freeze, and when he spoke again his voice was mausoleum-cool. The glow pulsed in sync: “Mark well these words. Where the molecules of this residue are disturbed, the hearth is revitalized . . . and our presence renewed.” The silence was profound, the earth a bed of brambles, the night an icy shroud. It took Sam Bob to break the tension. “Okay,” he called, “who cut the green cheese?” The Earthlings all laughed snot out their noses. Elgnor spread his hands. A thin smile wrinkled his long, questing muzzle. “Please?” “Oh, relax,” Jeannie sobbed. “This is just the way we communicate down here, Mr. Elgnor. These are all good old boys, God bless ’em, and they just want you fellows to feel at home.” Elgnor nodded uncertainly. “Yes, dear.” When the circle had settled back down he said, “Think of it! Here, at your bidding, is an astonishing repository; the wealth of the universe. It is our gift to your planet, on the sole condition you use it wisely.” He sighed. “We too were once a backward species; disputing, competing, warring amongst ourselves. We also took flesh, we too bore arms. That was many ages ago. We grew, we studied, we adapted. We learned the positive, accretive value of peace, and the negative, regressive value of conflict. The hearth grew with us; it is inherent in all sentient aspects of the cosmos, only needing a wise hand for its wielding. It is, by that measure, as much yours as ours, as much ours as anyone’s. The hearth speaks, but not in a tongue. It tells us that your people are on the verge of readiness, of greatness, and that we are to be the harbingers of your awakening.” Elgnor now clasped and studied his hands. “As the children have informed you, we are counseled by the hearth to proceed incrementally. It would be a mistake to bluntly drop in on your world powers, so we are feeling our way, as it were. These fine youngsters have shown us your sweet curious nature, and you fine people have shown us your willingness to be friends. We only ask that you feel your way with us. Come,” he said, “and lay down your arms; they are of no import this night.” Grudgingly, shyly, the people of Dearview dropped their possessions. Seated in that broad circle round the hearth, guests and hosts accepted a staggered arrangement, so that each held strangers’ hands. “Through our touch and through our common need,” Elgnor intoned, “hand to hand and world to world—one to one we warm our souls before the universal hearth. We give as we garner; as a single, communal cell do we all reap the harvest of peace.” “That’s beautiful,” Mary bubbled. “I—I feel like I’ve known you wonderful people all my life.” “I, too,” Elgnor breathed, “am moved.” Monica leaned in guiltily, her brows caving, her voice desperate. “I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, Mr. Elgnor, but is it possible you could fix us up with one of those new washer-dryer combinations like in the Sears and Roebuck catalogue?” 5

Night Jeannie swatted playfully. “Oh, shush you, Monica May! Mr. Elgnor has more important things to worry about than your dirty laundry!” Monica withered. “I . . . guess.” She tentatively placed a hand on Elgnor’s upper thigh. “We Earth folk can be real friendly.” Ellie pulled away Monica’s hand and placed it on her own lap. “We can do it,” she said. “We can bridge the stars. There’s this energy, running right through me.” “You know,” Jeannie whispered, her eyes welling, “I’ve never really taken the time to appreciate the beauty of nature—I mean, away from all the annoying stuff of civilization. There are just so many stars.” “Yes there are, dear; yes there are. More than you could possibly imagine.” Mary reached across Danny to squeeze Elgnor’s forearm. “You’ve done us a great favor, sir. It’s almost as if we silly Earthlings, with all our screaming, blinding contraptions, could see better without our eyes. You are luckier than we.” Monica was weeping softly. “I’m just so ashamed! She’s right. If only we could see like you.” “But you can, dear. Utilizing the gentle glow of our hearth, and connected as we are in this common ring, all you have to do is lean back your head, close your eyes, and in a matter of seconds all will be revealed. Are you ready, dears? Everybody, on my count, close your eyes—one, two, three . . . “Now!” Clues in the Dearview Hoax are rapidly coming to light. Investigators have discovered many fresh bones—human, canine, and ursine—that are completely stripped of flesh. These bones were not gnawed clean, they were sucked clean, by some device of unknown origin, and this, more than anything, reveals the amateurish nature of the Hoax. There is nothing at all funny about this foolishness—just the notion of practical jokers looting graveyards for prop material, as well as recklessly butchering wild animals, has brought about a howl of public outrage, rather than the perpetrators’ hoped-for chuckles of amazed congratulation. Can a well publicized practical joke produce a fad epidemic? It is beginning to appear so. We now have all these college students sabotaging power stations in remote communities, ostensibly to duplicate the conditions of the Dearview phenomenon. These stunts are not amusing, are most certainly not valid “scientific experiments,” and are immature, dangerous, and illegal acts. And the inevitable “vanishing” of these pranksters fools no one, nor do the “mysterious” piles of polished bones found at every site. The fad is out of control. “Dearviews” are cropping up all over the country, with at least three instances reported across the Atlantic. Eventually these “vanished” merrymakers will come out. But their goofy grins and high-fiving keggers will be short-lived: in many areas, tampering with power flow is a felony punished by mandatory prison terms. Although student complicity in the original incident is adamantly denied by all suspect parties, the Dearview community’s earlier call for an investigation into the unusual behavior of local carnivores supports the concept of pranksters disturbing faunal patterns while in the act of setting up their operation. Whether they lured the residents of Dearview into “vanishing” with cash, or with some other incentive—or whether the residents are in some unknown way actually part of this nationwide ruse—is a mystery that will only be solved when the prank has run its course. There is one other curious element of the hoax: an odd violet residue, most likely left at the sites by students with access to campus laboratories. This powdery substance glows gently when shaken, and while scientists are not familiar with its supposed purpose (other than, presumably, to 6

Night further befuddle the public), they acknowledge it is harmless, and easily within the productive capabilities of students holding even a basic grasp of chemistry. The stuff, scavenged by rubbernecks from hoax sites, was hurriedly approved and marketed to meet public demand. Along with the popular bleached plastic bones and “invisible suits,” genuine Dearview Dust will be making its mass debut tonight in thousands of Halloween celebrations—the same night all these “vanished” jokers are expected to come out of hiding. So when you see our sweet sons and daughters filing along in crosswalks tonight, dressed in their cute little Invisible Suits, and in their regulation Bigfoot, Oprah, and Swamp Thing costumes, just be glad they’re carrying those adorable Dearview Break ‘n’ Shake Purple Powder Glowsticks. Give them a honk and show your brights, folks. Let ’em know the night has eyes.

7

Piety Old Malachi raced down the grade like the Devil was after him. Halfway to Piety he whirled and posed menacingly, all fang and fire, but the big staghound’s glory days were history. He stood panting on trembling legs, his eyes glazing, and for a moment seemed hypnotized by the rising moon. In his imagination he snapped back at those pink staring eyes, reared at that gray hairy frame, bristled at that odd, not-quite human smell. Hacking ferociously, old Mal continued his skid in a flurry of tumbling pebbles and rising dust. Abel’s eyes popped open. There it was again. All that racket could only be Job’s squeamish hound. Still fully dressed against the cold, the boy hopped out of bed and threw open his window to another crystal clear West Virginia morning. Abel saw what appeared to be a pack of lanky ghosts moving dreamily up the pine-lined grade connecting Piety with the Shepherd’s Mound valley overlook. The ghosts were lost in trees, reappeared writhing in moonlight, were lost again. The sound of hounds after prey was just beginning to carry when Malachi staggered into the settlement making enough noise to raise the dead. In seconds light was streaming from every window. Abel pulled on his heaviest coat and gloves, tiptoed downstairs, and gently disengaged his father’s Winchester from above the mantel. He would have stepped outside but for a hairy hand on his shoulder. Saul spun his son around, slowly unclenched his poised fist. He ran the hand up and down his face, gradually washing the fury from his expression. His eyes, still puffy with sleep, swept the faces gathering outside his door. “You maybe fixin on runnin off with the only rifle I got, boy?” He snatched the Winchester, grabbed the jamb and leaned out. “Somebody shut that animal up!” Malachi was heard gagging in a chokehold. Saul would have reached for a lamp, but the full moon was tearing up the black morning sky. He studied his neighbors from the doorway’s hollow, spat, and called, “Boy!” Abel’s older brother limped through the crowd, fighting to keep tall. “Dogs treed a bear, sir.” Gabriel had to force his voice above a whisper. Saul’s first-born lived

Piety in a ramshackle shed behind the house, out of view of healthy men and women. Piety’s patriarch made certain, long ago, that the settlement’s forty-odd residents were perfectly clear on genetics: blame for the young man’s condition fell solely on the mother’s side. Gabriel raised a deformed arm against the inferno in Saul’s eyes; his father could whip his sons like dogs in public. Saul swatted the arm away and shook the Winchester in Abel’s face. “Next time you try that, boy, you’d best not let go so easy.” He waited. “Hear?” Abel looked away. “I hear you.” “Then, damn your eyes, don’t forget it!” As Saul tromped into the night the crowd immediately halved, leaving him plenty of room to stride. A muscle worked convulsively in Abel’s jaw. He stepped outside with his heart in his fists. Saul paused in a dirty pool of moonlight. He took his time filling and tamping a pipe, smoked thoughtfully for a while. There was very little eye contact. Aaron and Matthew, as always, were armed with family Bibles. Saul smiled back coldly, his nod almost imperceptible in the bowl’s gentle flare. In this lull Gabriel slipped around the house and reappeared almost immediately, a pitchfork in one hand and a five-pound sledge in the other. He thrust the tines against Abel’s chest. Abel snatched the handle and stared hard at his father’s back. Saul commenced a measured assault on the grade, flanked by his sons. Neighbors gathered in a loose trailing mob. The distant wailing of hounds was fading, but it was hard to tell whether they were receding in relation to the men or had been cut off by the pines. As the pace picked up, Saul cocked the Winchester and fired a single round. The hounds, recognizing the report, quieted immediately. In less than a minute the first brown shape came whimpering downhill, quickly followed by four others. The dogs swam miserably around Saul while he tramped, snapping at one another and gnashing the air. No additional commands would be necessary. That one blast dramatically increased the party’s excitement. Men bunched into a hard driving line, their breaths puffing out like the steam plumes of racing locomotives. Saul pushed the pace harder still, the sides of his opened greatcoat swinging back and forth as he marched. Something pale passed between the trees. The men and dogs swung around a stand of sage, and so came upon a bare patch of hillside. Now Abel was certain he saw a ghostly shape hurrying through a copse of immature pines. There was a reddish double flash as it turned back its head. The apparition vanished. “Git!” Saul spat. The hounds broke uphill and disappeared in the trees. A minute later the men stormed the copse and burst upon a rocky alcove nestled in pines. There the hounds had cornered their prey. The body of men automatically fanned out in a crescent, sealing off the alcove. Although the hounds lunged ferociously, they were in no mood to attack. Whatever they’d pinned had them too confounded to leap. It certainly wasn’t a bear, though it was broad enough, and furry enough, to give that impression. The coat was a dull gray, covering everything except the mask, feet, and palms. Abel thought it behaved a lot like a man; in the way it stood upright without rearing, and in the way it swung its arms as it paced. But its hunched carriage and small head were absolutely unlike any human he’d encountered. As he watched the milling hounds he was reminded of the biblical Daniel, complacent in a den of lions. Saul’s impression couldn‘t have been more to the contrary. He was picturing himself as the central figure in a swirling display; a fearless superior in complete command. From this vantage he looked down on the scene, saw himself raise the rifle and draw a bead. When he cocked the 2

Piety Winchester the creature started. Every man expected it to rear or bolt, so there was complete surprise when it looked passively into Saul’s face and meekly lowered its head. Not a man imagined Saul had the guts to arbitrarily perform what amounted to an execution without provocation. But there he was, stepping forward deliberately, each pace marked by a blast from the Winchester. Abel caught up before the echoes had died. “What’d you go and shoot it for, Pa?” He’d never seen such a coldhearted act. “So help me, boy . . .” Saul lowered the rifle as the hounds bellied up, sniffing and crying oddly. A voice in the crowd called, “Still kickin.” Saul jabbed it twice, noting critically how it squirmed. Three shots had penetrated the chest, yet the escape of vital juices was mild. Abel went down on one knee and sniffed. He closely studied the pink frothing mask. “What in the name of God is it?” “Old Man,” Gabriel whispered. “The Old Man of the Woods.” Saul’s shook his head sardonically. “If my guess is any good it ain’t nothin made in the name of God.” He turned on the pressing bodies. “Now, you all get back. I mean it!” Curious white faces, moonlit crucifixes, brandished Bibles. Saul said with condescension, “Now, now, now—we all seen what we seen. This Thing creepin about. Good dogs actin like a bunch of women.” He poked it with his rifle and snorted, “Name of God . . .” “But it wasn’t doin nothin!” Abel protested. “Didn’t come at us, didn’t try to run.” Gabriel shook his head bravely. “You listen to Pa.” He raised the sledge like a blacksmith and cocked his head. “You aim to finish it off, sir? Or you want me to?” Saul cocked his head and draped a casual arm over the stunted boy’s shoulders. “You run home, Gabe, and you fetch me a box of rail spikes, just the sharpest you can find.” “Sir?” Gabriel swallowed, looking from the prone Unknown to that familiar fire in his father’s eyes. He dropped his head miserably and lowered the sledgehammer. “Well, well,” Saul cooed, “ain’t we all sweet and soft now, little Gabriel? Just like your poor, disappointed Mommy would have wanted.” “Sir, I” “Do it!” Saul spat. “And don’t you be tardy! I’m comin on mighty mean in my old age.”

The Old Man thrashed wildly as the first spike ripped into flesh. Abel and Gabriel, clinging to handfuls of fur, would have been hurled aside if not for the quick support of half a dozen shouting men. The crowd swirled around the action hungrily, their moon-washed faces passing from bonewhite to deep shadow—as Saul again raised the hammer, and again slammed it down. The final blow drove the spike solidly into wood. The Old Man whipped his head side to side and bowed his back. A shudder ran up his length. When the crowd piled on he flailed hysterically. A fresh spike was driven through his left calf. The Old Man threw open his mouth in a long, wrenching shriek. The other leg was quickly impaled. He ceased screaming and froze in a wretched arch, favoring the wounded areas. The least move produced unbelievable agony.

3

Piety Saul stood sweating, slowly clenching and unclenching his fingers, sucking saliva from the corners of his mouth. The primitive thrill passed from his eyes, and he relaxed. “By God, sir,” Gabriel managed, “that oughta—that should oughta show who’s boss!” “Look;” Abel whispered, as a series of spasms contorted the thing’s pink, pug-like face, “it’s still alive!” Gabriel clamped a claw on Saul’s hammer arm. “Needs a couple more whacks, sir, is all. Just a couple more.” Saul slowly turned his head. The full moon made Gabriel’s face a ghastly mask of morbid excitement. Behind him, a dozen others displayed a gamut of expressions; from shock and revulsion to anticipation and bloodlust. By his quick and intuitive appraisal, Saul knew just where his support lay. He addressed those squeamish faces frostily, his heart brimming with contempt. “Lord,” he said evenly, “I don’t make no claim as to knowin everthin what goes on. I’m a simple man, and not above basic corruption. But I knows sin when I sees it, and I hereby grudge all them cowards what defies your bidding.” He shook the hammer, flicked blood from his fingers. “God gimme the strength to do what’s got to be done.” Saul draped his arms around his sons’ shoulders. “Now I want you boys to stand this critter up in plain sight, so’s everybody can see what I’m doin’s right.” He squeezed their arms affably, a kindly coach trying to drum up a little enthusiasm. “Somethin special’s happenin here, boys! Somethin important! The Good Lord is testin us with this wicked monster—no other explanation possible.” He gently steered them to the pine’s rotted base and nudged the pitchfork with the toe of his boot. “Dig.” Saul relit his pipe and smoked patiently, facing the nervous crowd while Gabriel and Abel dug out a hole to post the pine. A nightmarish scream as his boys stood the tree upright, a round of moans from the neighbors. Saul smoked with affected nonchalance, for the first time in as long as he could remember battling a troubled conscience. It was that damned animal; wilting instead of defending itself, making him look bad in front of everybody. He turned back. The thing’s feet just touched the ground. A series of sobs escaped in irregular spurts, tapering to wet, hacking coughs. Gravity was pulling at the Old Man’s length, stretching his wounds. Saul watched, fascinated. But as moonlight played over that flat twisted face, the cinched lids peeled apart and their opposing eyes locked. Saul shook from his widow’s peak to his pinched, curling toes. Was this really It; that half-seen, scurrying creature of legend . . . sasquatch, troll, bogeyman, troglodyte; the fabled relic caught somewhere between man and subman . . . and would his god have created something so hideous and furtive, so passive? His words came back to haunt him—was this some sort of test? Just as blind ego was coming to his rescue, the thing’s eyes rolled up and it renewed its moaning, but now with depth and continuity. A hail of rocks battered the creature up and down. When the stoning ceased, Saul picked up Gabriel’s hammer and a single spike. He guessed where the animal’s heart should be. As he began his slow approach his doubt pursued him relentlessly. Lord, give me courage. Guide my hand, guide my heart.

Each new blow brought on a fresh convulsion, until the Old Man’s frame crimped in a steady head-to-toe tremor. Eventually there could be no more pain. Nerves relaxed, violent contractions became feeble spasms. The blows stopped. 4

Piety Through a veil of blood the Old Man saw Saul step back, saw him grab a Bible from one man and a pitchfork from another. Saul weighed one against the other; the book in his left hand, the weapon in his right. He raised the pitchfork and held it high, hesitated. The Old Man stared into eyes that glistened with an unfathomable rage. He stiffened and looked away, to where the tops of pines cut a jagged pattern in the false dawn, as Saul aimed the pitchfork for his throat, and with a grunt drove it home.

Just before sunrise Saul trudged back up the grade, bleary-eyed and uniquely troubled, the Winchester cradled loosely in his arm. Every time he’d begun to drift, the white cramp of conscience rocked him right back up. He needed to face his demon in the flesh, rather than have it stare back meekly in his imagination—and this time without the presence of all those skittish neighbors. More than this, he needed that mocking gray monster as a trophy, was fully prepared to tear it down and drag it back to Piety. With each boot’s crunch he grew in confidence, and by the time he stormed round the copse he was his unshakeable old, jerky-tough self again. Dogs, or some other big carnivores, had made quick work of the intruder, and now there wasn’t much left; just a knot of gristly strands still fixed to the pine. The anticlimax was so unfair Saul froze right where he was, reduced to a minor observer in a very dim big picture. And, as he stood nonplussed, dawn’s first ray burned down the hills, brilliantly lighting the scene. An unprecedented, overwhelming pang of shame dropped him to his knees. For a while his mind was blank. Only gradually did he become aware of the stench of his sweat, of the crushing ache in his head, of the oddly sour taste of cold metal. With a most unmanly cry, Saul tore the Winchester’s barrel from his mouth and dropped the rifle between his knees. He struggled to his feet. In the warming wash of sun Saul was a tempest of conflicting emotions, at war with himself as much as his environment. The pine’s leaning shadow fell across his eyes. He looked up. Black with rage, Saul went ballistic on the affixed remnants; ripping the strands free with his nails, trying to tear out the spike using only his hands. When that failed, he grabbed the Winchester by the barrel and smashed the stock repeatedly against the spike, succeeding only in rocking it aside before shattering the stock completely. Saul collapsed with the effort, one arm clinging to the pine, the other dead at his side. When he again found his feet it was a bright new day. Saul pushed off and, embracing his chest, staggered back down the grade to break the news.

5

C.F.B. “Okay,” Bryce rumbled, shuffling a fistful of papers, “I think we all know why we’re here.” His baggy eyes swept the room. “This town is fed to the teeth with gangbangers, hookers, and drug dealers. We’re sick of biker gangs defecating on all that is decent, then having the audacity to roar around with American flags cringing on their motorcycles. We’ve had it with lowriders polluting our roads and our lives, and we’re ready to bust over these ignorant, insolent, illiterate graffiti ‘artists’. We, folks, are at the end of our rope. The police are emasculated by internal affairs—our every complaint falls on deaf ears.” His eyes slunk to the side and he cleared his throat. “Anyway.” Bryce surveyed his guests for eye contact. “We don’t wear nametags here. We’ll get to know each other as we go along.” He swept an arm. “But first I’d like to introduce you to someone I’m sure you’ve seen around town.” He motioned to a round little man seated to his left. “This is Reggie of Reggie’s Camera over on Seventh and Main. Reggie had his store vandalized last week by the Mas Putos gang—for the third time. Reggie’s one of us now, and he’s generously donated dozens of video cameras and peripherals. Darryl of Deuce Hardware, who unfortunately couldn’t make it tonight, has also upped his ante: we’re looking at cayenne spray, pagers, and air horns—vital equipment you’ll all become familiar with.” “So. As it turns out we’ve an important guest tonight.” He stepped behind a man seated to his left, placed his hands on the chair’s back. “This is Sergeant Larkin of LAPD. He’s better equipped to explain the ground rules to you newbies, so I’ll just shut up and get out of his way. Officer Larkin?” “Thanks, Gary.” The man replaced Bryce at center stage. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The mayor’s office has agreed to give this fledgling operation a little breathing room, at least temporarily. I’ve been assigned to act as liaison, and to tender a report at a specific time as directed by the mayor; a report card, if you will. “Now, we have reams and reams of data—granted, gleaned mostly from hearsay, innuendo, and jailhouse gossip—that establish an outlaw motorcycle gang known as the O-TANZ—that’s short for Orangutans—as absolutely pivotal in pimping, in extortion, and in the distribution of methamphetamine and worse to the Caca de la Cabesas family, and to several other gangbanger groups in the inner city. What this means is that you must be very careful to not stir things up; there are bigger fish in this pool. Don’t intimidate, don’t elaborate, don’t advertise. Your sole objective, as

C.F.B. reluctantly expressed by the mayor, is to dissuade lawbreakers from congregating in public, with the ultimate prayer they’ll become uncomfortable enough to move along permanently. “Understand that your open presence might paradoxically engender heightened public paranoia, rather than create a newfound sense of security. It’s just human nature. That’s why there are no uniforms or insignia permitted. Dress normally, radiate calm, be cool. Keep your equipment out of sight, don’t make eye contact unnecessarily. You will receive tonight a single source of identification—a business card with this organization’s name, logo, and cell numbers. Present this card to any peace officer upon demand; without it you’re just another loose cannon on the streets. You are civilians, period. Remember that. Do not argue with the police, do not argue with lawbreakers, do not argue with the public. This is only a civic experiment, and you are hereby forewarned to be on your very best behavior. Gary?” “Thank you, Officer Larkin. Folks, those words of wisdom cannot be echoed enough. I don’t want anybody hurt, so you’re required to follow your good sense in conjunction with the law. Refreshments are in the hall. I want you all to mingle freely and become good friends as well as good crusaders. So for now, thanks again for coming and welcome to C.F.B.—to Citizens Fighting Back.” For Marla Deerst, C.F.B. was a revelation. She’d grown up the good girl, the shy girl; waiting, waiting, waiting. But Mr. Right never called, and her dreams of a law career peaked at court reporter. The workaday rut broke her down, week by week. Yet it was in this hum and peal of law that she grew increasingly aware of the human sewage oozing about the city’s underbelly. No real alarms were triggered—as with most normal, self-involved citizens, a healthy revulsion remained cloistered in the back of her mind—until she was treated to a home break-in, vandalized car, and brand new graffiti paint job on her walk and drive. C.F.B. gave her a look into like violations and similar victims, lending her a strong sense of community, almost of family. The first night out she went as part of a trainee team, and though it was a real eye-opener, it was kind of cool. They wore jogging suits with streamlined back-and fannypacks, courtesy of Sportmart. After a few startling on-camera incidents, hookers and johns opted for deeper shadows or relocated. Taggers became prone to abbreviation, dealers seemed to have vanished altogether. Gangbangers were the worst by far. These animals grow rowdier by the number, and tend to loiter in restless packs. Obsessive criminality makes them very observant. Marla was frequently threatened, mostly for not moving along quickly enough. She kept her pepper spray, packaged to appear as a lipstick tube, gripped in her hand at all times. Overall the program was successful. While there was plenty of harassment, and the occasional beating of a C.F.B. member, the streets of West L.A. gradually grew safer and more civil. C.F.B. headquarters became a minor landmark, and even the myopic L.A. Times ran a great piece in their Sunday morning Streets section. Marla, cuter than she realized, was one of the featured faces in the group-friendly collage. Small-time or not, it was a taste of celebrity. After that she grudgingly consented to stammering her way through an early morning radio talk show interview, resulting in a flood of fan mail and a couple of bizarre marriage proposals. It was giddy but brief. On the One Hundredth Day Anniversary, the party was cheerfully crashed by police representatives who presented Marla, the group’s de facto secretary, with a new laptop as a symbol of C.F.B. approval, and, with the whole room craning, their guest speaker even unintentionally, perhaps, mispronounced her name Marla Dearest. She brought that laptop everywhere, plastered with crimebuster decals and riddled with wellwishers’ sentiments. 2

C.F.B. As the attention waned she sank with it, and gladly. Marla was a loner at heart. It became a relief to drive home from work knowing C.F.B. was again a volunteer weekend affair—to know that she could turn on a local station without hearing the organization’s name, and feel, as she sat waiting the light on Sepulveda, that West L.A. was almost a different world—even though she, like every other decent driver, couldn’t help but grow aware of the broad obnoxious form wheeling insolently between lanes. Dangerous, aggressive, ugly, inconsiderate, the biker roared along mere inches from side-view mirrors, looming unpleasantly upon the lawful and meek. When the hog came alongside Marla’s Nissan, the rider clomped down his boots and walked his bike the few feet necessary to line up both vehicles’ front wheels. The biker kept his shoulders squared and his spiked helmet pointing high. She could see his reflection in his handlebars’ righthand mirror: the dark shades, the fat face, the overgrown beard. The gang name O-TANZ was sprawled across his mammoth back in red and gold, framing the mohawked-skull logo. The monster revved his machine needlessly, as though challenging the light. Again and again, louder each time. When the light hit green he immediately edged in front of the Nissan and proceeded to hold her at 5 mph. Marla honked and honked, and for every sounding of her horn the rider revved deeper, without putting on speed or looking back. She switched on her left-hand turn signal and attempted to go around, but the biker easily cut her off. Now honking continuously, she tried passing on the right; same result. Finally the bike came to a halt an inch from her front bumper: she couldn’t proceed without producing a collision. Marla honked maniacally, but the rider stared straight ahead, absolutely motionless, an oblate monolith and monument to vulgarity. She was just reaching to lower the window when an instinct made her lock the doors instead. Marla pulled her videocamera from its case. When she looked back up she was the focal point of a hog stampede. Bikers pulled up on both sides and left the rear clear: the O-TANZ had learned, from decades of successful vehicle assault maneuvers, that panicky victims are wont to throw their cars in reverse. To her left, the leader posed grinning while three of his leash exposed themselves and hammed for the camera. Marla desperately looked in her rear-view: four bikers, twenty yards back, had placed flares and emergency cones in the lane and were waving traffic around. The beefy leader put a chained fist through the driver’s-side glass. A filthy smiling head leaned in. “Excuse me, ma’am. Did you call for road assistance?” He snatched her keys out of the ignition, tossed the ring over the roof. Another member unlocked the passenger door, tossed the keys back. The passenger door opened and an equally obnoxious brute slid in. He plucked the videocamera from Marla’s unresisting fingers. “My cash and cards are in the glove box,” she said levelly. “You can have the car. Please just let me keep my I.D. and the family pictures.” The leader worked his way in behind the wheel—Marla was now the soft white center in a fat hog sandwich. He patted the videocamera. “Oh, I think we’ve found what we came for.” Surprise lit his features. “Say, didn’t you know we’re producers? We’re shooting a porno movie.” He leaned in tight and Marla almost gagged. “Congratulations,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re gonna be a star.” The warehouse was part wood, part sod, part corrugated tin. It must have sagged there for half a century; unoccupied, unrepaired, a derelict in both condition and memory. The property belonged to Warren Estates, and was periodically sub-leased for storage; the building itself was of no consideration. This was the suburbs’ boondocks—so off the beaten path a herd of bikers escorting a late model car went unnoticed. 3

C.F.B. Marla was squeezed between large, leaning, hangar-like double doors. The interior was well illuminated, as the wasted walls and roof allowed scattered spears like slender spotlights. Perhaps a dozen O-TANZ lieutenants were watching over a crescent of C.F.B. members, sitting along one wall with their hands bound. Marla knew each personally—these were her friends, her extended family. But not one had the balls to acknowledge her directly. “You must be wondering,” the leader addressed Marla pleasantly, “why these guys aren’t gagged. That’s how they do it in the movies, right? That way nobody can scream.” He wagged his head. “Never understood that logic: screaming’s the best part.” He bowed. “And you must be Miss Deerst. Or is it Ms.? No real man can ever get that shit straight.” He covered his mouth and his eyes grew wide. “Don’t tell me it’s Misses! And here you are, out partying with the boys. What would hubby and the kiddies say?” A snap of fingers. “Tell you what: it’ll just be Missy, at least as long as we’re dating. Well, Missy Miss Misses, Treefrog here’s been going over your computer’s files. Pretty tricky of you, labeling a folder C.F.B. right on your desktop, but we would’ve found it eventually. Get over here, Frog.” Treefrog pranced up holding Marla’s open laptop like a satin pillow. “Toshiba Satellite,” the leader mused. “Crappy battery life, but this won’t take long.” He dragged the folder into the recycle bin, opened the bin, selected the folder, and hit delete. “Oops.” He then lifted a purse, holding it like a soiled diaper. “And look what we found in your saddlebag, Missy: a Verizon broadband card.” He slid it into the port and opened the program. “Which browser are you using? Opera! My favorite too. I’m gonna take some liberties, Missy; I’ll only be a minute. I’m typing in Gopher’s YAHOO address here, la-de-da, and I’m emailing ol’ Goph’ a message. He’ll be glad to hear from you. The message is: Go.” He said in a faux aside: “That essentially means all borders are open—C.F. fucking B.’s out of business.” He turned to address the captives as a whole. “And now, folks, I hit SEND. Done! Anybody for pizza?” The beam abruptly left his face, and for no apparent reason he pointed directly at a bound young man seated near the end. “Fuck you.” He plucked a pepper spray canister off the collection table and sauntered over, saying, “How many dollars you costed our organization?” He sprayed the man right in the eyes, calling over the helpless howls, “Frog! Get back here!” Treefrog, picking up on the vibe, pulled a videocamera off the table and gleefully filmed the sitting captives being sprayed one by one. “How do you like it?” the big man snarled. “How’s about you? And you?” When he reached the end of the line he stuck his face right in Marla’s. “What’s the matter; your friends in pain? Well, how much pain do you think they caused my friends?” No getting around it; Marla was clearly his interest, rather than the group as a whole. He picked through the stacked C.F.B. protective arsenal, addressing her directly while Treefrog panned from speaker to captives, to Marla and back. “What the fuck are these? Air horns!” He grabbed one in each hand, blasting the seated prisoners right in the ears as Treefrog followed. “Not so much fun, are they? These things are made for football crowds, not for scaring the shit out of folks.” He seized and raised a rubberized horseshoe-shaped object. “My, my; personal stun protection. What next, tasers?” Each captive received a harmless but vexing jolt. The leader propped his big dufus boot on the tabletop’s edge. “Now that’s protection.” He kicked the table over, sending C.F.B. property clattering across the floor.

4

C.F.B. And now he turned and, almost anticlimactically, cupped his filthy paws on Marla’s breasts and kissed her flush on the mouth. That was bad enough, but the swift clam of his biker miasma was so profound she immediately flashed all over his face and beard. The O-TANZ laughed nervously. “Sorry,” Marla trembled. “Butterflies in my stomach.” The leader glared. “Not any more.” He plunged his head into a bucket of dirty water, wagged all over like a soaked dog, and wiped himself dry with his sleeves. “Come here.” Marla was dragged by the blouse to the table’s original location. The brute had two accomplices restrain her while another tossed a rope over a rafter. Her hands were bound with a torn T-shirt, then raised above her head and tied to the dangling rope. A hog hauled back on the other end. The leader, now the guest speaker for a sitting circle of horrified witnesses, casually indicated the woman strung like a marlin on a line. “Observe. Your pin-up pretty has elected to go hard core.” He ripped her blouse up and off as though he were a lecturer moving to the next page on an easel’s display chart. “Welcome to B.F.C.— Bikers Fucking Citizens.” The closing ring of hogs whooped and wheezed. The leader reached behind his love object and unfastened her bra, flung it into the crowd. “Girls! Catch!” Marla wept openly as she was forced to her knees. It was impossible to look to her friends, impossible to avoid the inevitable—for half a dozen relentless predators, positioned between her and their captive audience, had just dropped trou. Treefrog balanced the videocamera on his shoulder, peered into the viewfinder, and, seeking his beasthood with his free hand, called, “Action!” The big man shuffled up, fettered by his dragging pants, and dangled at eye-level for her assumed delectation. “You’ll notice,” he said pleasantly, “that you’re not being blindfolded.” He extemporized for his gleaming pals. “We’re not kinky; we’re just friendly.” The scumbags all guffawed and, handling themselves with the group dexterity that comes only from long experience on the road, closed in for the coup de grace. The warehouse doors blew in from the impact of a police Hummer. Before the dust had cleared there were two dozen abashed bikers surrounded by LAPD and SWAT. A female officer draped a dropcloth over Marla, another cut her bonds. The entire C.F.B. crew was sequestered against the east wall while the bikers were placed under arrest. A man in shirt and tie stepped over. “I’m Detective Arthur Nathan Lawrence, liaison with L.A. Gangs Division and Federal. I realize how abrupt this is, considering all you’ve been through, and I’d like you to know you all have our deepest admiration.” He held up a hand. “Technology is a beautiful thing. Since virtually everybody doing C.F.B. was non-responsive to pagers and cells, our department, which has been following the O-TANZ for interstate violations involving everything from grand theft to child pornography, was placed on tactical alert. When the WI-FI switch was engaged on Ms. Deerst’s laptop, an internet global position indicator automatically alerted an operator as to your whereabouts. We got here as fast as we could.” He took a deep breath. “Congratulations to you all. I want you to know my superiors will be apprised of your operation’s efficacy, and I’m certain they’ll recommend commendations from the city and an extension of this program. All I can say personally is: thank you for placing law and order above personal safety. And may God bless a world of officers keeping the peace, communities helping out, and citizens fighting back.”

5

John Megan Limo Christian Karl An’erim Mamuset Afar Franco Xhantu Massawa Old Harbor Aseb Kid Rebecca Solomon Tibor Worthless Mudhead Wildfeather

Chapter One John The old man rose through the darkness inch by inch, his fingers wriggling on the cold marble sink like maggots on hot china. A muted click, and a bright pink light was blinking urgently on the bathroom’s ceiling. Security’s in-house monitors flashed back and forth, phones rang in staggered time. Resuscitation equipment kicked to life. A second later every alarm in the mansion was howling. Old John stood clinging to the crystal faucet heads, horrified by his own reflection: sunken blue marbles for eyes, wasted nose plugged by dangling tubes, a gummy black gash of a mouth. In the strobelike light his lips writhed in slow motion, his eyes appeared to throb in their caves. Unable to turn away, he watched himself dissolve. “Kaw,” he croaked. The room sank six feet. He tightened his grip and fought for breath. “Kaw!” A scarlet froth broke from his nostrils and oozed down the tubes. The left side of his face seized and relaxed. Seized again. His right arm kicked. “Kawr!” he gasped. “Kawr, Kawr!” John’s body rocked like a newborn foal. A long black drop trickled down his hollow cheek, seeming, in the panting light, to jerk as it rolled. His image swam in and out of focus. He coughed, hard. A second later blood was streaming down the backs of his thighs. With all his strength he filled his crepe paper lungs and cried, “Karl!” The big Austrian slipped between the door and jamb without appearing the least flustered, 1

Microcosmia Megan though he’d dropped everything and sprinted the moment he realized John was off his respirator. He calmly killed the alarm with one hand, turned the wall plate’s polished nickel knob with the other. An array of cream-colored spears emanated from recessed fixtures in the ceiling and walls. Overhead, a fan’s heart-shaped blades began swimming without a whisper, stirring a deep pink pile underfoot. John staggered back from the sink, fluttering like a lame pigeon. With that same air of casual efficiency, Karl used a pink-on-cream bath towel to plug his master’s trembling bottom, simultaneously lifting him free of his bloodied and soiled pajamas. He lifted him effortlessly. At one hundred and three, John Beregard Vane weighed a mere sixty-eight pounds, so it was easy as pie for Karl, a former fullback forty years his junior, to scoop him into the Big Bedroom. Karl tenderly placed him on the silk-canopied bed, padded to the ruby-dusted bay window, and mechanically spread the room’s black shrouding curtains, all the while speaking as though the old man were a child. “You are so bad to move, John! This I tell you many times. You must never leave the bed without you call me first. It is no trouble for me to come. But you are such a bad boy to move. What are you thinking? What will I do with you?” Karl, now washed in bright California sun, crept back to the bed and pulled the cover to Vane’s chin. On the ventilator’s side-caddy were several bowls of pink roses surrounding a plush stuffed Winnie. Between the bear’s splayed knees was a ceramic pot labeled HONEY, and inside this pot rested the room’s fire engine-red rotary telephone. Karl pulled up a chair, reached into the pot, and lifted out the receiver. “Kar,” John moaned, his head lolling on the pillow. “Doctor be soon, John. This I promise.” But John’s head only rolled harder. In mid-roll the head stopped and faced the ceiling. The rooster neck arched, the tiny Adam’s apple shuddered. “Chrisha,” the old man gagged. “Chrisha, Chrisha.” Karl leaned closer, frowning. “John, this I now insist. Doctor Steinbaum here soon.” John tossed his head wildly, clutching the cover’s hem and kicking his feet. “Christian,” he gasped. “Christian!” Karl placed his big palm on John’s brow, lifted a withered eyelid with his thumb. He didn’t waste time on the pulse. He set the receiver on its cradle, immediately picked it back up, and dialed a new number without looking. “Simms! Wake! Find Cristian now! Bring here! And go hurry!” Karl’s pale blue eyes narrowed, his lips working hard as he sought words to explain the situation concisely and with finality. A storm brewing nigh on thirty years was about to break and take everything that mattered with it. He unclenched his toes, steadied his breathing, and pressed his lips against the mouthpiece. “This,” he hissed, “is it,” and gently replaced the receiver.

Like a bright ballerina on a softly shaken carpet, a golden hump of spume was swept laterally by the tide. Wave by wave the delicate mold progressed, at last dissolving on the sand. Farther along, a new hump was born. Twenty yards back, a quiet young man was observing this charming process as an event analogous to his own bullied existence. Like all depressives, he believed his personal fate was determined by a particularly cruel tide. 2

Microcosmia Megan Cristian knew he too was being watched; he could feel it. He didn’t budge, he merely rolled his eyes. A glistening brown woman, wearing only a thong bikini and half a pound of cocoa butter, was studying his profile. Her hair was golden blonde, her bikini the pink of cotton candy. She was flawless. “I know you,” she mumbled. “Don’t I know you?” Cristian wagged his head. “I would have remembered. Definitely. Eternally.” She leaned forward, palms on knees, intuitively going for the cheesecake close-up. “You’re in movies? A sitcom? Now where did I . . .” Cristian’s finger shot to his lips and his eyes darted warningly. “Nothing solid yet. But my agent keeps me hopping. Maybe we met at casting. There’re just so many pretties.” Perfect hands went to perfect hips. “Who’s your agent?” “Ah-ah-ah.” He wagged that same finger. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” The woman’s mouth fell open. Her nose turned up. “As if I need . . .” She straightened. “Just you . . . don’t you worry!” She took a few steps and whirled. Cristian could read her lips. His cheeks and ears burned. “Honey . . . Honey port . . . Honey pie. I . . . know you!” He watched her sashay up to her friends, looking back every other step. The women huddled. Their faces popped up, vanished, reappeared. It was time to go. Cristian grabbed his gear and tramped across the sand, intermittently peering over his shoulder. The women were now squealing hysterically, their bobble heads grouped behind a sleazy gossip newspaper. He made his way along a lightly-traveled access road below Pacific Coast Highway, cursing all nosy women and their stupid supermarket rags. Cristian Honey Vane’s ill humor, under Southern California’s golden therapeutic sun, was as conspicuous, and as incongruous, as his paranoia. He’d never lacked a thing in life. His health was good, his mind sound, his father staggeringly wealthy. He was moderately famous. The fame came not from talent or hard work, but from bearing the surname of one of the richest men in the western hemisphere. It was a hollow fame. And although Cristian hated media attention with every fiber of his being, he was forced to acknowledge that he, and all resident Vanes, born “Vane” or otherwise, were fair game for periodicals preying on the rich and famous. Not that his image was in such great demand; he wasn’t exactly handsome, nor was he particularly ugly. Cristian Honey, the enigmatic, camera-shy bachelor, was invariably captured mulling in a reasonably photogenic gray area, where Vane-watchers of either gender could love him or hate him, depending on the breeze. The rags delighted in spinning him both ways, portraying him as a hard-drinking womanizer to one audience and as a closet homosexual to the other. He was neither. Through no fault of his own, master Vane was that rare paradox, the compassionate misanthrope. Compassion was in his nature. The misanthropy resulted from nurture. Considering the bloodsuckers who made up his “family,” it was amazing he hadn‘t ended it long ago. Cristian’s boom box died on a dime. He shook it, punched the compact disk player a couple of times, and began rooting through his backpack. Inside were tennis shoes, half a cheese sandwich, a bottle of warm beer, and a reminder to bring extra batteries. He was just knocking the bottle back when his attention was arrested by a racing engine on the highway, quickly followed by a shriek of rubber on curb. The front end of a hot-pink Town Car appeared behind an emerald patch of carpetweed, and a moment later the red round face of Paris Simms popped into view. There was nowhere to turn, nowhere to hide; Simms was already frantically waving his arms. With a jerky little cry he rolled down the grade, scraped himself up, and pawed at Cristian’s arm. Cristian shook him off. “You’d better have eight D cell batteries, Paris, or we’re done here.” He slapped on his sneakers. Simms’s cheeks and forehead glistened below the bright pink limo cap. “H—” he managed. 3

Microcosmia Megan “H—” “Heart attack? Hangover?” Cristian shook the driver’s pudgy shoulders. “Damn it, man! How many syllables?” “No, Cris . . . hurry. It’s your father.” Simms wrapped his arms around a leg. “It’s time. We’ve got to go.” “It’s always time. We’ve always got to go.” Cristian grabbed his stuff and the men staggered up to the highway like a couple of drunks. The cream leather seats were handsomely polished, the interior gleaming with that all-around sheen only an intensely bored driver can produce. Usually the trunk would be agape; sanitized receptacles awaiting backpack, beach blanket, and sandy sneakers. The rear seat and carpet would be covered with fresh towels. An ice cold Grolsch and one of Cristian’s custom-made, exceedingly thin cheroots would be perched on the folding silver tray. Cristian would slide his bare feet into a new pair of sandals and sit low behind the compact pink limo’s tinted glass, quietly cursing the staring, grinning public. But this time the trunk was closed, the interior unprepared. Before his driver could waltz him in, Cristian twisted back an arm and wrestled him around, poising his rear end for a very rude entry. Simms squirmed out and slid to his knees, clinging. “Cris, let’s do it, man! Please . . . don’t fight me. Just get in.” “Fight you?” Cristian hauled him upright with one hand, peeled off his cap with the other. “Paris, you know I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He shoved him in and kicked the door shut, placed the cap squarely on his own head and stepped around the car. “I’ll drive, you ramble.”

John Beregard Vane’s American descent can be traced to one Bemford Pye V’aine, a wealthy colonist with interests in Connecticut potash, Jersey pig iron, and Chesapeake shellfish. Thanks to Bemford’s policy of disseminating deliberately conflicting accounts, the details surrounding his rapid acquisition of American capital will forever remain mysteries. What we do know is that Bemford, while still in his early thirties, was a ruthless industrialist, slave trader, and speculator playing both sides of the Atlantic. A virile and egocentric man, he kept eleven sons and four daughters in tatters while buying out every business he could get his hands on. Whenever he encountered resistance, V’aine hired gangs of hooligans to shut down competition. But he was no kingpin. The moment things got dicey he took his money and ran. He ran west, always investing as diversely as possible, always moving on once he’d wrung all he could from a town. His final breath came at the age of eighty-nine, in the high desert outside a frontier settlement named V’aineville. V’aine held commanding interests in over half that community’s profit-showing businesses. He owned the town. A week before his death, knowing it was his time, Bemford Pye cashed the town out—sold every business, withdrew every cent. He converted his entire worth to bullion and disappeared in the dead of night with a buggy and horses. His remains were discovered a month later. But not a gram of gold. Bemford’s surviving children, save one, thereupon entered the world in search of lives. That remaining one, young Milo, stayed behind into his late teens, caring for the ailing widow in the ramshackle, silver birch-columned three-story known as Old Spiderlegs. The woman’s dying wish 4

Microcosmia Megan was to be buried on-property, in a favorite outlook just at the shadow line of the Mighty Eagle Mountains. Her burial, spurned by the entire population of V’aineville, was witnessed by outlying officials and local reporters, and no one was more surprised than Milo when gravediggers encountered a space filled solid with Bemford’s bullion. The young heir changed his name to Vaine, picked up his father’s reins and went west, buying and selling, cornering and calculating. He’d learned from the old man: Milo made sure he owned a piece of everything. Eventually his teams of agents formed a web over the waking continent, keeping a toe in every seaport, in every major city, on every railway. Wherever the land was fairest, there would the spider drag his web. Unlike his father, Milo made an obscene spectacle of wealth; traveling like a prince, spending like a sailor: wives, children, estates, offices—all facets of his booming mien. His tremendous ego made him take tremendous risks, and he was, overall, tremendously successful. The Civil War was a godsend. Milo bent with the wind, profiting handsomely in Winchesters and whiskey, in cartwheels and coffins. The spider walked the line between North and South with vigor and with dash, all the way to the California lode. When he died, also well into the years, his was one of the first great migrating families to own a major piece of the sprawling bean fields that would one day become Los Angeles County. A grandson, Timothy Thomas, devoted himself to business while his siblings spent themselves into obscurity. Timothy foresaw the age of technology, and with it the Great War: the United States government became his biggest customer. Eventually prestigious beyond self-censure, T.T. nevertheless dropped that gaudy i from Vaine as he groomed himself for a Senate run, and his insular adult son, John Beregard, for the top executive office of his global business empire. Timothy, busted purchasing votes on a Monterey stopover, had his head blown off by a disillusioned supporter. John never married. And not until past seventy did he produce a child. In his prime his heart and soul were given entirely to business. Important men shared his time. Vane got an early hand in movie studios, in amusement parks, in public transportation, in fast food. Everything was fast in California, and getting faster. Vane stepped on the gas. Like Milo, he maintained a system of agents at home and abroad, and, as computers took a greater part in the dissemination and retrieval of information, engineered a corporation that, in an electronic haze of checks and balances, ran itself—he instituted Automated Investment Management, taking the brunt of guesswork out of investing. The AIMhigh corporation was a maze of integrated computers walled behind a fairly large, elegant office front in Hermosa Beach. Its lobby’s walnut double doors featured carved profiles of facing eagles breaking into flight. AIM-high in time became a solid institution employing over a thousand professionals devoted solely to the financial and emotional affairs of John Beregard Vane. And John built a palatial residence on the California coast, a monument to money. He named the estate Raptor’s Rest, and made its imperial house a showcase of luxurious living. To paint himself human, John purchased masterpieces for public exhibition. To paint that human a saint, he donated small fortunes to any institution willing to carry his name. Apparently the public was ready for a socially awkward, harmless old billionaire with an insatiable desire to impress. John caught on and, for a while there, the master of Raptor’s Rest was on top of the world. But as interest waned the old man’s fragile ego went right on down with it. Although Vane tried hard to recapture his moment in the sun, advancing age and displays of desperation only made him look foolish. His mind crashed, and with it his health. And one particularly bumpy day he handed the reins to Karl, the Austrian fullback who had served him, with loyalty and with love, for almost forty years. Those many years ago, John had been standing at 5

Microcosmia Megan knifepoint in Kapfenberg when Karl, hobbling from a tavern on his career-ending shattered ankle, decided to take out his self-pity on a completely surprised pair of muggers, breaking the face of one and rearranging the spine of the other. One of those inexplicable friendships soon blossomed, and Karl and John eventually grew inseparable. And so great became Karl’s love for John that John needed merely speak it for Karl to make it so. Therefore, throughout Vane’s later deterioration, those lavish displays meant to impress the world continued to accumulate, and with a growing accent on the bizarre. In his early seventies John took a prescribed vacation south of the border to recover from a series of nervous breakdowns. He returned a year later, sicker and loonier than ever, with an infant son he’d named Christian Honey after a messianic hallucination en route (the first name’s offending h was dropped by the boy at the onset of intellectual maturity, the mortifying middle name buried completely until dug up by gossip rags). On his arrival at Los Angeles International Airport, old John tearfully re-christened AIMhigh The Honey Foundation, ordered whipped cream pies all around, and collapsed in the arms of Karl. The eagle would soar no more. He was taken home to die.

Raptor’s Rest, a 318-acre estate overlooking the ocean, nestles in a broad line of salmon hills rising majestically above Pacific Coast Highway. Centered on a manufactured plateau, the Vane mansion is a six-armed pillbox virtually unnoticeable from the ground. From the air it appears as a gray and white asterisk with a gleaming hub. The asterisk leans to the sea, on a crazy checkerboard of green and brown. The Rest boasts six professional tennis courts. Nobody plays. Someday spectators will surely admire signed glossies set in gilded frames hung beneath the banner names of tennis greats and celebrity sports anchors. But for right now those frames are empty. Never has a coiffed commentator or bare-kneed luminary posed jauntily amid the figs and periwinkles. There’s a gorgeously manicured eighteen-hole golf course with a spiraling series of lakes, and a clubhouse containing all the amenities of a five star hotel. Yet that clubhouse is of little use other than as a winter stopover for swallows. And not a soul, other than staff, has set foot on the course since its construction. A long wooded private drive leads from Pacific Coast Highway to West Portico, the mansion’s ocean face. Only permanent occupants and V.I.P. guests are authorized to use this road. Art lovers and Vane admirers, on that glorious day they finally show in droves, will make their way by monorail on a little shocking pink train embellished with fancily-painted flames. The rail’s station is just inside the highway gate, in a small clearing made up to resemble a Guatemalan arroyo. The station itself is a whimsical recreation of a miniature cantina, with a flashing neon sign above its swinging pine doors declaring, cryptically, Welcome to Rosie’s. The rail climbs over groves of pink plantains into the denuded hills, curves above the La Bonita Hog Farm and Sausage Works, circumnavigates the sprawling Dulce Leche Honeybee Terraces, and concludes, after a dizzying glide through the Central American Flag Garden, on the mansion’s opposite side at East Portico’s equally whimsical Cinnamon Station. There delighted patrons will board a luxurious ten-wheeled tram, and so be delivered to the Corinthian-columned ramp leading directly to the spectacular los Visitors’ Lobby. Once inside they’ll encounter the stirring self-tribute to John Beregard Vane; philanthropist, 6

Microcosmia Megan visionary, and durable bedridden addict of the Home Shopping Network. Vane’s Hall Of Many Treasures boasts the world’s largest cubic zirconium collection, and is crammed with everything from Thighmasters to chia pets, each article mounted and enclosed in its own velvet-lined niche. The Hall’s Wall To The World is an ongoing mural of the Raptor himself, posed with captains of industry, heads of state, and his hero, the Juiceman. John, far too weak to stand, is invariably pictured sitting, an unlit Havana in one hand, a banana daiquiri in the other. After a safari-like tour of the eye-popping Vane Collection in Wings Northeast and Southeast, emotionally exhausted enthusiasts will one day embark upon an even grander return route; around the fantastic Mi Cara Firewalk, through Vane’s gilt-and-granite salute to great Guatemalan generals, and over an intricately tiled pink-and-cream wading pool for nonexistent children. The great man’s immense bedroom window offers a superb view of the monorail’s entire wending course. Sundays the little flame-covered train, stocked with gaily-dressed members of the groundskeepers’ families, makes several circuits for the ailing master. It works just fine. Those four wings not dedicated to public art exhibits are assigned to the men and women who actually reside in the mansion. The Southwest Wing houses the permanent Residents and their families. The Northwest Wing contains rooms for Help and Regulars, for the Raptor’s personal physician and nursing staff, and for Honey’s officers, both legal and security. Between these arms, spread wide to brace the sea, is the magnificent ocean view West Portico, known by Residents and Regulars as the Sunroom. This unique structure is built entirely of curved glass panes twenty feet high by ten feet wide, utilizing chromed steel braces and struts. The room’s Plaza doors, smaller than their surrounding panes but similarly shaped, are fashioned of fused cut crystal. The Sunroom, illuminated throughout the day by natural light, is lit by four humongous Waterford chandeliers from the moment the Pacific takes its first bite of the wild California Sun. Abutting the Sunroom is the Foyer, richly paneled and carpeted, featuring matching marble hearths on either side of an elegant, sausage-shaped arch leading into the Ballroom, the Rest’s great glass-domed heart. This Ballroom is a stunningly beautiful chamber of polished cedar, designed to accommodate a small orchestra and hundreds of immaculately dressed dancers. Over ten thousand petite pink roses thrive in ornate marble troughs arranged in a sweet, room-embracing hedge. The great dome’s outer surface is ground to produce prismatic effects with the passage of sun, the inner surface feathered to scatter the radiance of a hundred solid gold candelabra at night. But not a string has been plucked, not a keyboard played. Never has a couple graced that gleaming cedar floor. The Ballroom waits yawning, its candelabra cold. The North Wing belongs to John, the south to his son Cristian. Taken together, these two wings effectively bisect the mansion and are therefore considered a unit, the Grand Hall. The Grand Hall’s northern extreme contains the luxurious bedroom of the master, the rather austere quarters of his man Karl, and a number of rooms holding state-of-the-art test equipment and resuscitative devices. Cristian’s bohemian suite occupies the southern extreme. Adjacent rooms include a library, a small gymnasium, and a miniature observatory half a million dollars in the making. Stacked leaning between these extremes are the numerous genuine masterpieces and streetbought oddities which have transformed the splendid Grand Hall into an unruly and garish garage. Even deep into Vane’s madness the Honey Foundation continued to blindly take orders from his Austrian manservant, vigorously accumulating great works of art through a ruthless team of auctioneers. Meanwhile Karl, forever loyal to his master’s senile whims, purchased countless 7

Microcosmia Megan rubbishy curiosities from hucksters on the Venice Beach strand, and grudgingly invited into residency any unsung street freak who took the old man’s fancy. One by one these parasites contributed to the ever-swelling cast of Residents and Regulars. And piece by piece those many dear exhibits were mingled with all the worthless purchases, amassed side by side and heaped one on top of the other throughout the mansion. In the Grand Hall, in the Foyer, in the kitchens and bathrooms, near-priceless marble busts teetered between lava lamps and plaster waterfalls. Psychedelic posters and black velvet Elvises shared the walls with Monets and Eschers. Into this growing maze came a pallid, skinny young woman in a beat-up canary-yellow Pacer. Megan Griffin arrived in response to an ad in the Argonaut, one of several local papers utilized by Karl in his awkward search for a nanny. Once she realized the full measure of her staggering new circumstances, Meg got right to work on that flagging bedridden John. She insisted she was the boy’s actual mother. She nursed the idea . . . smuggled the idea . . . hammered the idea into his head: she and John had been intimate while cruising the Thames. Cristian was their love child. The Central American encounter was a fantasy, a filthy lie concocted by that devious schemer Karl. Megan replaced her paisley granny dress with a long black strapless gown, let her raven hair grow to her waist. Everything about her became funereal, as though her very demeanor might encourage John into the grave. Her one mistake was not covering her scent. Within a year she’d been tracked down by ex-husband Richard, who let the cat out of the bag even as he made his own play. Richard flattered John shamelessly. Long hours were spent bedside, recounting tales of personal hardship and a fatherless existence. One night the Raptor, terribly moved, tentatively called Richard “son.” Right then and there Richard knew. He was in. Richard’s awarded living chamber quickly turned into a teak-paneled, aquaria-filled weasel’s lair, where an endless parade of not-too-bright blondes were perpetually promised pieces of his assured inheritance. These used women, drunk and despondent, became temporary fixtures in the Foyer and Sunroom. Eventually, inevitably, they found their way to rehab, the gutter, or the morgue, and so passed forever from the mansion’s memory. Yet while in residency they made damned good spies: far from being the simple wry debauchee he appeared, Richard was in fact a cold-blooded compiler of gossip. But then, one dreary winter’s eve, a bizarrely-dressed young psychopath blew in unexpectedly and made straight for the marrow, setting the stage for a chain of increasingly ugly power plays between this dauntless trio of vultures, the Big Three. Jason Jute, or J.J., or simply Jayce, had been turning tricks for lines and drinks in a Santa Monica Boulevard parking lot when one of his backseat customers turned out to be a bitter young former AIMhigh attorney. Jayce became both live-in lover and partner in crime. With fraudulently notarized papers demonstrating Jayce’s incontestable claim to the Vane bloodline, the two quickly established a corner on John; one threatening Megan and Richard with bogus legal actions, the other with very imaginative feats of mayhem. Old John, relentlessly regaled with Jayce’s manufactured father-and-son anecdotes, miraculously began to remember. Two pairs of hands would joyously grip his; the tears would flow like champagne round the bed. But two clear blue Austrian eyes, staring coldly by the door, would remain dry. To stack the deck in his favor, Richard began importing some of the rowdier members of his old crowd. Jayce responded with a gang of his own, comprised mostly of flashy, hard-boiled perverts. Their war became an immature contest of airs—a superficial show of sophistication on one hand, of ostentation on the other. Richard and his friends favored tuxedos and business attire. Jayce’s 8

Microcosmia Megan group dressed with a flamboyance designed to shock and inflame. As word of the setup got around, the mansion became a magnet for ruffians and runaways, for hookers and drug addicts, for all manner of street people. Raptor’s Rest grew into a hangout, a home, and finally a battleground overrun by conscienceless marauders—dealing right from the premises, giving birth in bathrooms and tool sheds, warring amongst themselves in a setting luxurious beyond their imaginations. For the sake of party space they dragged statues, suits of armor, and bulky artifacts outside. Priceless items from the Vane Collection were left to the elements. Karl, reduced to a hulking eavesdropper, protected canvas and marble with raincoats, with garbage bags, with slabs of aluminum siding. The threat was clear. But the more adamantly Karl objected, the more frantically the Raptor resisted. It was John’s first taste of family. Only when Karl began to seriously fear for his master’s safety did he make the situation clear to the Hermosa Beach office. A security team arrived, along with a small army of Guatemalan housekeepers and groundskeepers. When old John learned he was about to lose his family a stroke nearly killed him. For his health’s sake, Residents and Regulars were permitted to remain, and the security team kept aboard on a permanent basis. The Raptor, convinced by Megan that Dr. Steinbaum was the angel of death, forever banned the man from residency. And Karl, fingered as a nark by Regulars, was ordered to keep his nose out of family affairs. It was a close call, but the scales had fallen from John’s sinking blue eyes. Only the Big Three could be trusted. Megan, Richard, and Jason, although fiercely competitive, maintained control by coalescing, allowing the general population to institute a pecking order as their natures dictated. The lowest peckers gravitated to wing extremes, occasionally cropping up in the Clubhouse, Pro Shop, and monorail station. This is where the security team was most effective; smoking out homeless and substance-dependent parties using the estate as a crash pad. Security was much less effective with Residents and Regulars. In the first place, John positively forbade their harassment. In the second, Security soon formed an uneasy alliance with the Big Three—the recipients of outrageously generous allowances. A prison-like economy went on indoors, with favors and penalties filtering from hub to extremes. Security earned far more working for the Big Three than for Honey. And sometimes they could get downright vicious. Curfew in the mansion began precisely when the Big Three were all turned in; anyone caught hanging about risked a godawful stomping. But every morning, punctually at three, the pink-andcream gnomes appeared as furtive silhouettes against the greater darkness, whispering espanol into walkie-talkies, cleaning and folding by the yellow spears of pencil-beam flashlights. As the months passed into years, the wings’ turf challenges were resolved through gang truces and Security beatings. Children were born and grew into their teens, relatives came and went. And still the old man refused to let go. On his centenary only the hardest of diehards celebrated with him. They included the Big Three, seventeen really bad-news Residents, a few of the scrappier Regulars, two masochistic transvestites brought in for kicks, and a roving pack of wasted bikers. And so moved was John that, at the stroke of midnight, he demanded the residing legal team draw up papers adopting everyone present. The celebrants, documents in hand, swaggered into the Foyer for drinks and petty squabbles. And to wait. Three long years more they waited, roasting birds in the Ballroom during the holidays, inviting in truckloads of buddies for beer bashes on hot summer nights. 9

Microcosmia Megan But now the wait was over. When Cristian reached the long private drive’s summit he was greeted only by silence. The tall rolling gates, with their matching wrought-iron descending eagles, were already wide-open. Not a soul was about. The polished cobblestones were clear all the way to West Portico Plaza, a circular tiled court under an enormous live oak. The limo was hearse-creeping along when Security guards, surreal in pink and cream, appeared out of nowhere. A hard face cut by dark glasses sprang at Cristian like a snake. “Move it, Fat Boy! What do you want, an escort?” When the face recognized Cristian it immediately became professional. “Sorry, Mr. Vane, sir. You’re cleared to go right through.” The face disappeared. “Please, Cris,” Simms moaned. “Just for decorum’s sake.” Cristian put the transmission in Park and climbed over the driver’s seat. Simms tumbled up front, slicked back his hair, and cruised up to the Plaza with as much gravity as he could squeeze out of a crawling hot-pink limousine. Before the car halted, the Sunroom’s crystal doors swung outward to reveal Megan in black, tiny on the glass bubble’s lip. An anxious crowd rolled behind her. Cristian took the rounded steps one at a time, mindful of the occasion’s solemnity. He paused meaningfully at the entrance, but Megan reached right into his forced aplomb, embraced him possessively, and dragged him inside. His arms and chin fell lifelessly. Every face was dead on him. Cristian looked up to find himself surrounded by a pack of nervous hyenas. He was home.

10

Chapter Two Megan As a lad Cristian was walked through these animals like a toy poodle through rottweilers, reminded again and again to distrust smiles and promises, to refuse treats and favors. Residents were introduced as aunts and uncles, Regulars as friends of the family, business associates, or art lovers. Each had capered for his affection, and perhaps he’d have leaned to one or the other, if not for the steely hand of Karl. For the longest time, even into his twenties, he believed that Karl was his true father, and that Karl’s own father was that festering nightmare in the Big Bedroom. His only experience with Woman, discounting those unsettling glimpses of Richard’s strumpets collapsed in their fumes, was Megan. Meg throve in the mansion; she blossomed, if that can be said of evil things. She became, in fact, extraordinarily beautiful, but not in a way that draws healthy men. Her face, a bone-white, eerily pretty, almost Oriental mask, possessed an apparent ability to absorb or reflect light according to mood. Sometimes circles appeared beneath her eyes, vanishing even as you stared. Her cheeks might be bruised one moment and alabaster the next. And her lips, poison and plum, could swell like leeches on a pig, or thin to two slowly pursing lines. Cristian’s paternal influence came through Karl, who had Megan pegged. But he couldn’t keep her in check forever: the Raptor, more senile by the day, nevertheless realized his son would suffocate without something resembling a mother. So old John instituted rotating possession periods. Cristian was reared alternately by both a mother figure and a father figure, permitting neither to establish a permanent chokehold on his soul. Theirs was a war of iron wills. Once in a while, however, John drifted back into the real world long enough to demand the two put up a parental front. On these occasions they could be seen coldly escorting the boy, each holding a hand as though he were a wishbone, paying no attention to Richard and Jayce, or to the ever-changing field of junkies, petty thieves, and lounging whores. They merely strolled, quietly and mechanically, sharing a hatred so deep it was rumored to cast its own shadow. 11

Microcosmia Megan Karl’s amazing self-control allowed him to respond to all things Megan with icy silence. He instructed the boy more as staunch lumbering mentor than as dedicated substitute father. Meg, for her part, possessed in spades the innate cunning of her gender—all those subtleties and sympathies and soft ways guaranteed to warp a sensitive youngster’s development. She practiced this ages-old witchcraft on Cristian with bloodless precision, from a possession period’s saccharine commencement to its histrionic demise. Right off the bat Mommy exposed Karl as a very, very bad man—a monster, an inarticulate felon whose every word was a lie devised solely to destroy young Cristian. This scheming pervert kept a sick old man prisoner in the Big Bedroom; the same Sick Old Man Cristian was periodically forced to view; a man like a dying fish in a diamond bowl. Karl’s one great goal in life was to poison little Cristian’s mind with hypnotic stories and “facts” out of his dirty books, and so blind him to the warmth and love only a mother could provide. Megan fought ice with fire: she smothered the boy— massaged him and caressed him and hugged him and kissed him; did all those naughty and emasculating things Karl warned of. Cristian was always “Mommy’s little man,” his upturned face ever nestled between her tight white breasts. And as the youngster approached puberty, he found his face urged deeper, and felt those bruising lips fuller, and lingering. The boy’s confusion and emotional scarring did not escape Karl. Unable to break through John’s delirium long enough to clearly describe Cristian’s danger, he could only respond with a greater emphasis on schooling. Karl’s possession periods became spartan affairs, Megan’s periods, in retaliation, brazenly sexual. Cristian Honey Vane grew into a morbid teenager trapped in a haunted house with an iron grip. During these critical formative years, a second woman further muddled his impulses. This lady didn’t like Mommy at all. She would show at the mansion irregularly, usually during one of Megan’s possession periods, and argue shrewishly while Karl, cold umbrella that he was, corralled the boy in a Foyer corner and monitored the action like a cobra. This lady, always dressed in a very severe woman’s business suit, didn’t want Mommy to hold Cristian too tightly, or to speak with him about Karl or the Sick Old Man. She could get really mad, and one day she made the staring men in the pink and white suits drag Mommy off. Once they were gone she held Cristian the way Mommy did, while Karl told him it was okay, okay, okay. But it just wasn’t the same. Cristian eventually concluded that the suited lady was Karl’s wife, though she’d appeared young enough to be his daughter. Megan, stomping in the next day, solved the paradox. The Other Lady, Mommy explained, was a witch working with Karl, who was a kind of man-witch. They both lived in the Big Bedroom under the Sick Old Man’s bed. They wanted to steal little Cristian’s soul. They wanted to keep him hypnotized in a big box in the Big Bedroom, and take him out every day for miscellaneous tortures. But they couldn’t work their evil so long as the Sick Old Man was alive. Mommy was here to protect him. Richard and Jayce, all the bogus aunts and uncles, all the “Security” men, and all the little brown people in the pink and cream costumes were zombies, manipulated by the man-witch and that skanky, overdressed Other Lady. The Sick Old Man’s passing would be marked by a terrible battle of Good and Evil. It was up to Cristian to hang onto Mommy, to look at no one but Mommy, to trust no one but Mommy. Together they would destroy all the bad people and live happily ever after in the mansion. That great battle had been slated to come any day. But now Cristian was twenty-nine, and he was numbly enduring Megan’s penultimate Sunroom embrace. All traces of blue were gone. Her lips were plumper than ever, her cheeks dappled with rose. And this embrace was nothing like the chilly enclosure that had accompanied him on his uncertain path to manhood. It was a vital hold, full of tremendous anticipation. It was the grip of a 12

Microcosmia Megan woman with good news. “Oh, Cris, oh . . . oh Cris! It’s John. He’s—I’m so afraid.” Cristian gently pried himself loose. “We all are.” A pair of middle-aged men, blocking the Foyer entryway like bodyguards, quietly watched him approach. They took their sweet time stepping aside. Megan hung back, her moist eyes hard. Richard’s sideward pace was as suave as his expression. He smiled wanly and offered Cristian a facetious nod, swishing a bourbon on the rocks in one hand while tapping ash off a Parliament with the other. Richard was now fifty-one, having lived in the mansion since he was Cristian’s present age. But he no longer despised the younger man. He’d learned to observe the sole blood heir to the Vane fortune with cynical admiration, as an aloof fellow predator; one who would certainly receive the bulk of the inheritance, but would nevertheless deal the choicest cuts to those who knew him best. Besides, Richard had some really sticky stuff to sling against Cristian, against gay Jayce, and against that conniving witch Megan—and some inspired accusations to hang on Karl, if need be. He was sure Cristian would be positively relieved to have Honey’s legal dogs turn over control of a few mega-holdings, rather than spend the rest of his days denying perfectly credible tales of homosexuality and parental abuse. The Rest’s self-proclaimed Top Dog was trolling for a large piece of the corpse, and for a nice chunk of hush money on the side. The other man’s step aside brought to mind the sideways advance of a slowly circling Sumo wrestler. Jayce was one of the scariest creatures the West Coast had spawned: obscenely tattooed and extravagantly pierced, with a face creatively slashed and sutured under a spiked platinum Mohawk. Scarier still was today’s choice of attire; a billowing silk apricot blouse draped by fifteen pounds of quarter-inch anodized steel chain, a blood-red miniskirt over leopard leggings and spurred platform shoes. On anyone other than Jayce the overall effect would have been supremely comical. But there wasn’t a damned thing funny about the man. Jayce hated Cristian, hated Richard, hated Megan, hated his gang almost as much as he hated himself. But no one on earth did he hate more than John Beregard Vane. He’d spent over two decades kissing up to that depressing cadaver, and he, like Richard and Megan, felt he’d done a sight more than the fair-haired son to earn the lion’s share. Cristian’s impact on the crowd was that of a stone on still water. Residents backpedaled into the Foyer, stepped on darting children, collided with Help. Help, in response, backed into furniture, spilled into the Ballroom. For once, Cristian made sure he didn’t miss a single darting residential eye. He’d deliberately blocked out names and particulars, remembering Residents simply as Uncle Bungle, Aunt Fat, etc. They’d raised their families in the mansion. Their children and grandparents used the Sunroom and Foyer as dayrooms. He spread them all like a hot knife through butter, only to pause tellingly on the Foyer steps before strolling across the Ballroom into the Grand Hall. Cristian zigzagged between the leaning busts and bric-a-brac until he met a pair of cold blue eyes. Karl unfolded his arms. The Big Bedroom’s heavy walnut door featured a gorgeous woodcut of an eagle in repose, its head buried between its wings. The Austrian lowered his head somberly and rapped twice. Half a minute later the quickly-reinstated Doctor Steinbaum appeared. He glowered at Cristian, then at the faces of Residents peering round the Ballroom’s Grand Hall arch. “Go ahead,” he sniffed. “I guess it’s too late for you to do any more harm.” The men avoided eye contact. “But behave yourself. I’ll stay well back against the wall; I’d be derelict if I left you two alone.” The Big Bedroom’s antiseptic smell only exaggerated the underlying stench of extreme age: Karl had scrubbed the floor and bedposts with isopropyl alcohol while awaiting the doctor’s arrival, and Steinbaum had applied a merthiolate solution to scrapes incurred in the old man’s bathroom fall. 13

Microcosmia Megan Karl had closed the curtains, leaving only a crack. Very little sunlight found its way in. John looked like he belonged on a slab instead of a bed. He appeared exactly as a cadaver—blue and white, stiff and supine, with deep blotches on his face and arms. The only proofs of life were the oxygen tubes fitted to his nostrils, a pair of chattering machines connected for ventilation and dialysis, an intravenous drip attached to his left arm, and a collection of thin wires leading from his chest to a portable monitor beside Pooh. Even as Cristian stared, that emaciated chest quivered, slowly rose an inch, and collapsed. The event was accompanied by a small pinging sound, and by a corresponding spike of light on the monitor. It seemed to Cristian, standing quietly in the dim room, that almost half a minute passed between pings. Steinbaum leaned back against the door and watched impassively as Cristian crept to the bed. The old man came off pretty much like last time, except for a couple of details only apparent to the three men now controlling the room. In the first place, that nauseating bruised-albino look was now profoundly underscored by purple patches that appeared to well and snake. John was hemorrhaging even as his son stared. In the second place, it was the first time the old man’s lips were not moving. On past visits John’s mouth had worked convulsively, even during deep sleep. As a child, a spellbound Cristian had observed that mouth in perpetual motion; sometimes operating thoughtlessly, sometimes reminding him what a good boy he was. Sooner or later John would begin to ramble. The rambling would diminish to jabbering, and the jabbering to silence. But still that mouth would writhe. Now Cristian considered the mouth with morbid curiosity. He had no familial interest in the repulsive creature beneath him. Long ago any natural concern he might have harbored had been replaced by disgust and impatience. The eyes rolled behind the lids. At last the mouth quivered. The eyes opened as if John had been kicked, and his chest filled with air. The eyes found Cristian. Cristian watched the lips pull apart until there was only a black hole girded by gray, freely bleeding gums. The eyes became desperate. “Please,” the corpse managed. “Say.” There was an urgent exchange just outside. Cristian heard Karl open the door and realized that members of the Foundation’s legal staff were working their way in. A strange hubbub blew down the Hall. Karl squeezed around Littleroth’s enormous posterior and closed the door. “I promise you, Father,” Cristian whispered, his eyes locked on John’s. “I promise to do you proud.” John shuddered head to toe. His back arched and relaxed. A few seconds later his right arm rose and hovered a foot off the bed. Karl, standing tearfully in the corner, punched a button on a wall plate. A fixture high on an adjacent wall immediately emitted a bright white beam that bathed John’s chest. As Karl continued to jab the button the beam rose slowly, an inch at a time, at last focusing on the old man’s twisted features. He depressed another button. The room’s lights dimmed until the Raptor’s purple face, flapping like a fish out of water, was cleanly lit for recording. Sickened, Cristian took a deep step back. Littleroth oozed right around him, his usually heavy hands a blur; vacant one instant, occupied the next. In a single sinuous motion, he flipped open his briefcase, swept it onto the bed, and extracted a fistful of papers. He wiggled his fingers. A gold pen materialized out of nowhere. Thyme, video camera poised at eye level, waltzed around Cristian effortlessly and melted onto one knee. Bryant seemed to glide to the bed’s far side, where he produced a small DAT recorder from a vest pocket with all the facility of a magician plucking a 14

Microcosmia Megan rabbit from a top hat. He one-handedly played the instrument’s controls like a keyboard while whisking the recorder’s microphone to within an inch of John’s spewing lips. All three men had moved smoothly, and in concert. The ghoulish precision made Cristian turn away, putting him nose-to-nose with Karl, instinctively advancing on these brutally efficient men surrounding his master. Cristian watched as a dark cloud cut off the light in those cool blue eyes. In slow motion Karl’s chin dropped onto the younger man’s shoulder. Cristian, reflexively extending his arms, found himself in an intensely uncomfortable embrace. He awkwardly patted the closest thing to a father he’d ever known. The room rolled backward. Karl’s arms fell to his sides, his chin to his chest. Both men listened to the small bedside sounds; the scuffing and shuffling, the whispers and whirrs, the painfully executed scratching of pen on paper. Karl stormed past with a little choking cry. There was the sound of paper being violently torn, a few mangled words. Cristian unclenched his fists. Taking the deepest breath of his life, he turned back to face the room.

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Chapter Three Limo Littleroth, Bryant, and Thyme navigated the Grand Hall, stamped resolutely across the Ballroom, and executed a no-nonsense parade rest on the Foyer steps. Cristian, for once the mansion’s dominant presence, took his final walk under the Ballroom’s gaping glass dome in an oblique shower of rose, his sneakers squeaking on the polished cedar floor. He walked with affected slowness, halting two steps down to gaze pensively through the Sunroom’s segmented glass face. Under the live oak’s broad umbrella squatted the candy-striped carousel where he’d sat, rain or shine, as Karl’s shy attentive pupil. The carousel’s conical roof was of buffed copper. Its raised circular floor simulated a chessboard, utilizing contrasting squares of bleached Chinese ash and polished Burmese teak. No horses remained on the structure. A glassenclosed library, a tall central gas lamp, and two steel folding chairs made up the floor plan. In the distance could be seen one length of the estate’s wrought-iron fence. There were no walls, nor any trace of shrubbery; nothing to obscure a fraction of the eternal Pacific. He stood casually, his hands folded on the small of his back, and waited. A child’s scream was followed by a quick double smack. A Resident’s son kicked a Regular’s daughter. The little girl shrieked and the crowd dissolved. Cristian turned. Uncle Goggle and Aunt Jabber peeled apart, allowing the bruised loveliness of Megan to slither through. She swayed hypnotically, wringing her pretty white hands and hyperventilating. Then she was all over him; clinging, smothering. Handling. Meg was Mommy again. “Oh I know it, sweetheart! I know it, know it, know it . . . I can see it in your dear blue eyes. You poor, poor, innocent thing.” She dragged him down the steps, pulling his face right into her chilly white bosom. “It’s all better now, baby.” Megan closed her eyes and hummed in his ear, nibbling the lobe. “Congratulations,” she breathed, “to the richest and sexiest young man in America.” Cristian grasped her shoulders and gently pushed her away. He looked around the room, said frostily, “Okay. The party’s over. As of right now you’re all off the Vane payroll.” 16

Microcosmia Limo The Foyer’s interior became the conical guts of a kaleidoscope, the Sunroom’s face a segmented screen. The crowd blew apart. When the room came to rest the Residents were all lopsided; out of focus, out of options. Faces sought others in slow motion. As the rooted centerpiece, Megan had not spun along. But her color had changed. Her face had run the entire range of blue, only the cheekbones and chin showing white. Something wild peeked from behind her eyes, retreated. Cristian backpedaled up the steps, placing John’s blood and Honey’s reps in direct opposition to the crowd. Lumped in with the others, Megan went scarlet. This was a woman new to Cristian. His eyes flickered as her voice climbed an emotional ladder, stomping on rungs along the way: “What the hell are you talking about? This isn’t about money. It’s about family.” She stood with one arm akimbo, a forefinger directed at the Big Bedroom like the finger of Death. But, unlike Death, Meg’s expression was defiant, as though a resuscitating charge crackled from that finger, penetrated the door, and shimmered around the departed. After so many years of urging John into the grave, Megan was realizing that, without him, she was utterly alone. “That . . . man, who clung so bravely to this world, would have been outraged! How dare you speak of money in the midst of all this grief? Are you on drugs? Have you lost your mind? I think you owe us all an apology here. No, damn it, I think we should demand an apology!” The maternal charade was over. This performance was for the house. “It’s a family of ghouls,” Cristian said through his teeth. “Don’t tell me this isn’t about money; you buzzards have been measuring my father’s pulse for almost thirty years.” He descended the steps with forced casualness, kicking a bright yellow beach ball across the Foyer. “That’s all history now. You won’t get a deed, you won’t get a dollar. “Control over father’s holdings will be maintained by the Honey Foundation. The only difference is, I’m its new chief executive officer, and as such have final say over all transactions of moment. Meaning my word on this estate is final.” Anodized chains rattled on one side of the room. Jayce pushed through his crowd until he was right in Cristian’s face, cocked his head, and whispered, “Cut the crap, Crissy.” Without looking away, he motioned his nearest partners nearer. “Can’t you see you’re spooking the happy campers?” But it was Richard who broke the pack, smiling pleasantly while swirling the cubes hard against his glass. “C’mon, Honey. This is hardly the time for levity.” Cristian held Jayce’s stare as long as he could. “It’s no joke, Dick. Father willed me the whole ball of wax. That means his properties and worldly possessions, along with every notarized item in his art collection. His stocks and bonds and futures, his holdings both foreign and domestic, the exclusive use of his personal name in each and every enterprise . . . in sum, everything.” He raised his hands and retreated a step. “As you are all rabidly aware, it was Father’s wish that the disposition of his estate wait until the very last moment. As you’re also aware, several documents were drawn up relating specifically to that last-minute decision. “Each of these documents contained a different configuration, describing various holdings for potential heirs; both for individuals and for groups. His signature on any one legally voided the others. Several of these documents were quite complex, involving some very creative provisions and cross checks. By making certain all potential recipients were legally obligated to these conditions, Father was guaranteeing that no party or parties would piss away his hard-earned fortune on mindless, gluttonous frenzies.” He sneered as he looked round the room. “Imagine him thinking that. “As you all know, there were also a few relatively simple documents, pertaining solely to three brutally-determined lampreys who’ve spent the last twenty-odd years convincing a sick and senile 17

Microcosmia Limo old man that they loved him dearly. These wills left all that was his to the aforementioned unmentionables. “There were, additionally, two documents transferring everything Father possessed to either his manservant, Karl Günfel, or to his only genuine son, Yours Truly. “Karl did the unthinkable. He tore up his personal will before my father’s dying eyes and told him he loved him.” Cristian looked out through the Sunroom, addressing the carousel. “John Beregard Vane has signed over the entirety of his estate to me. That miserable little ceremony, hardly a quarter hour cold, was witnessed by Littleroth, Bryant, and Thyme, along with Father’s lifelong physician Dr. Steinbaum, by his man Karl, and, of course, by me. The signing was recorded every which way. “You are all more than welcome—indeed, you’re enthusiastically invited—to view this document prior to your being genially ushered from this estate by myself, or, myself failing, by whatever amount of purchasable muscle will see the job through.” “Wait a minute.” Richard punched Cristian’s chest with his drink-fist. “What’s all this crap about stuff taking place behind closed doors? Don’t play with us, asshole.” Jayce threw all his weight against Cristian. He and Richard physically moved him back up the steps, slamming him side to side. “What do you mean, ‘off the payroll,’ prick? Since when is anybody on your ‘payroll’?” “Call it a fact or a figure of speech.” Cristian steadied himself against the top step. “You are now both on my property, and that’s all that matters, legally speaking. If you don’t, of your own volition, remove yourselves, I will have Security forcibly remove your selves for you.” “I,” Richard gnashed, “want to see this evidence of a ‘will’ brought before a court of law. You orchestrated the whole affair, worm, and it won’t stand.” Jayce looked one to the other, bristling at the phrase court of law. He backed off gradually, appearing to deliberate, then made a great show of signaling the Foyer barman. When he looked back his eyes had softened. “I suppose the cocktail onions are still on the house?” “Help yourself.” Richard smashed his glass on the steps and the Residents erupted like pigeons in the shadow of a tabby. Three security men immediately stomped over. He shook them off. “Gorillas! Touch me again, and I’ll not only have your jobs, I’ll have your ugly puppet heads!” The crowd broke into small circling packs. Richard shouldered his way into the Ballroom. Cristian was trembling head-to-toe as he walked back down the steps and straight up to the small knot of Security. Their captain, with Honey from the beginning, had always treated him like a degenerate little snot. He waited in the stance of a gunslinger, his Honey cap tilted aggressively, the pink and cream uniforms coalescing behind him. “William, I want your guys to clear this estate of all these bloodsuckers. Their claims and arguments are illegitimate. They are, as of this order, trespassers.” He snatched a framed photo from the south hearth and slung it like a Frisbee. “That means all the brats.” He slung another. “All the old goats . . . all the ‘in-laws’ . . . everybody!” Cristian raised his voice so that it scathed the house, one hand on a hip, the other pointing at the Big Bedroom in a childish impersonation of Meg. “Allow me to clarify! Only myself, officers of Honey, and the occupants of that room, living and dead, are legally authorized on these grounds once the turds have been flushed. After that, you and your men can all go home: you’re relieved. You can discuss severance with Honey. The Foundation will, in my name, guarantee compensation and placement for every man who has served this estate so well. I’ll take care of Help, indoors and out.” He stuffed his shaking hands in his pants’ pockets and lowered his voice. “Now, I want to thank all you guys personally for your invaluable 18

Microcosmia Limo service here. It’s been a real pleasure and a great privilege.” William stared back fiercely, his men’s eyes boring into the back of his skull. Cristian turned on his heel and raised his arms like a choirmaster. “All right! Listen up, listen up! I want everybody packed and out of here by the time I get back. You are no longer residents of this estate. Mister Bryant will be handling any claims levied against the Foundation, and I’m assuming there will be many. But that famous ‘adoption party’ was a total sham, and you know it. Those wonderful signed documents attesting to your legal claims to the Vane name are about to come crashing down. You’re all about to receive a very rude introduction to reality. Brace yourselves. “This is now my house. And I’ve learned a great lesson here, thank you very much. To wit: “Should I perchance someday reach my father’s advanced age and state of deterioration, I will make damned certain there are no bottom-feeders around to flatter and delude me. They say longevity is inherited. If that’s so, I’d rather die young, with drama and with dignity, than be a helpless victim of senility and the slime that feeds on it. “Honey will accommodate you in the process of relocating. This means that moving vans will be arriving shortly, and will be providing transportation for you-and-yours within, and not exceeding, the L.A. county line.” He looked at the toys on the furniture, at the new handprints on the walls, at the clothes draped casually over vases and busts. “I want all this personal crap out of here. Understand that any articles left behind will be accessible only through Honey. Once you have all passed out that gate you will not—repeat, will not—be coming back.” He faced the Plaza to hide his shakes. An arm jerked up, pointing at the Pacific. “William and his men will now assist you in sorting your property, and they will escort you out of this house and down that drive and onto that highway. I’m sure they will conduct themselves professionally, but they are hereby relieved of all those behavioral restraints previously imposed by the Foundation. “You are as of this announcement no longer welcome to the assistance of Help. If you harass them in any manner whatsoever you will appear in court. They are still under the wing of Honey, and will be placed elsewhere. “The kitchens and bars are hereby closed, as are all amenities of this house. You,” he screamed, “are evicted!” Cristian exploded out of the Sunroom onto the drive. His hands did a quick drum roll on the limo’s roof. Simms, passed out on the front seat, nearly knocked himself back out rising. One arm embraced the wheel while he searched wildly for his glasses. “I’m up, I’m up!” A fist crashed on the roof. “Now pay close attention here, Paris! I love you more than anyone else on the planet, man, but if you don’t get your fat ass out of this car, immediately, I will not be responsible for my actions. I’m two seconds away from genocide.” He jackknifed his body inside and tore the keys from the ignition. As he was backing out, a wide shadow fell on the Town Car’s side. “A pretty speech,” Littleroth wheezed. “But before you go a’jaunting, I’ve got a present for you.” He extracted an elegant pink and cream cell phone from a breast pocket, flipped it open. Inlaid jewels flashed in the sun. “Your life just got a whole lot busier, Cris.” Littleroth bowed wryly. “Mr. Vane.” He pointed out an intricate series of golden buttons beneath a liquid crystal display. “From now on you will be communicating solely through Denise. You can dial her directly by touching this lozenge-shaped button here, and she’ll link you to the various Foundation departments. Additionally, you may reach me whenever you have a legal question by sequentially touching buttons one, four, and five, followed by the asterisk. Denise will explain the screen and these ports, and how the device 19

Microcosmia Limo interfaces with the Lincoln’s computer. All incoming calls will be recorded, and you’ll have the option of recording outgoing calls. Just press the pound key and wait until you hear a triple-beep repeated twice. Then press it again. This phone has a miniature disk drive. What you record can be downloaded, the disk erased and reused. If you need help, go to the dash menu or ring up Denise.” He snapped the instrument shut. Mr. Vane took it as if it were a loaded gun. “Right.” He slammed the phone into its dash mount, slid onto the driver’s seat, and pulled his shades from the passenger-side visor. “But I’m dead-serious about kicking out those creeps. Enough is enough. You handle it personally—bust some chops, call in uniforms if you think that’ll expedite things. Get the hell away from the car, Paris.” Vane fought to relax, the shades’ lenses dancing with the sun. After a long minute he said curtly, “I’ll be in touch,” and placed the car in drive. He drove with both hands squeezing the wheel, watching the still round figures shrink in the rear-view mirror. It took all his willpower to follow the pretty little cobbled road clear to the gate without accelerating. Once he was out of sight he floored it, hammering his fist over and over on the dash as he deliberately thrashed the limo’s undercarriage on the road’s paved gutter. But that wasn’t good enough. He bashed fenders against tree trunks, tore up the transmission using the low gears and gas, whipped the car side to side with sudden dramatic yanks on the steering wheel. Vane ate up the whole right side in one long slow-motion swipe of birches. At the Highway gate he found himself leaning hard on the horn while repeatedly slamming a fist into the roof. He drove straight into the gate, backed up, smashed in the front end again. When Vane backed off the third collision, he left most of the limousine’s grille embedded in the horizontal bars. It was then he remembered the dash switch that electronically triggered the gate. He bullied the beat-up pink limousine through traffic; deaf to shouts, blind to gestures, responding to blaring horns by hitting the brakes or gunning the engine. Eventually his automatic pilot took over, making adjustments broad and fine. The Town Car fell in line. The cell phone chirruped in its mount. Vane glared at it. It challenged him again. He determined to follow the six-rings rule. Six rings, he’d been told, was the average time a caller would wait before concluding no one was home. After fourteen rings the sound was eating at him like a dentist’s drill. Vane tore the phone from its mount and seriously considered hurling it out the window. He took a deep breath before flipping it open. “Yes?” “This is Miss Waters, Mister Vane. Are you all right? We’ve been having problems connecting.” “I’m fine, Miss Waters. I was just stretching my legs.” “I understand, sir. But it’s very important to keep your phone handy at all times. The information-flow can become quite heavy.” “I was under the impression that Karl would monitor the critical calls, and that you, Denise, would field the general ones. It’s still pretty early in the game for me to be handling big decisions, and I’ve frankly had a pretty tough day.” “Of course, sir.” The voice was cautiously sympathetic. “We’re all deeply saddened by the loss of your father. However, your mention of Mr. Günfel leads us straight to the point of this call. He won’t be able to handle Honey’s major decisions. I’m going to have to coordinate with you.” The phone grew slippery in Vane’s hand. “Why? What’s wrong with Karl?” “He’s become incapacitated, the poor dear. He took your father’s passing very hard, and seems to have experienced some sort of cardiac event.” 20

Microcosmia Limo The drilling began in Vane’s temple. “So he’ll be all right?” “It’s very fortunate that John’s personal physician was on hand. He assured me that Mr. Günfel is resting comfortably.” “That’s good,” Vane said hollowly. He rolled his aching eyeballs. “Look, Denise, I’m about to make an executive decision here. Whatever your salary was, it’s doubled. I know nothing of Honey’s machinery; who handles payroll, et cetera. But if there are any questions about your raise, route those questions straight to me, and I’ll personally ream the son of a bitch. Today I learned all about dealing with tapeworms.” “Mr. Vane! I’m . . . I’m . . .” “Along with your raise, Denise, comes a quantum leap in your duties.” “Of course, Mr. Vane, sir.” “Your first responsibility is to address me as Cristian, or as Cris. You can even call me ‘hey you’ if you’d like. Anything but ‘sir.’ It appears we’ll be communicating a lot from now on, so we’d might as well be solely on a first name basis. “Additionally, Denise, you are for now basically running the show. Your title is to be commensurate with your pay raise. For the time being let’s just say you’re the acting president of Honey, and I’m the Foundation’s roving CEO. You’re taking over the station previously assigned to Karl by my father. Anyways, it’s no secret that Karl always went through you, and, to my knowledge, you’re the person in the best position to make quick decisions.” Perspiration was heavy on his brow. Vane flicked on the air conditioner, but didn’t think to raise the windows. “It’s going to take some time to get me up to speed, Denise. It was Father’s design that I obtain full control of the Vane empire, at home and abroad . . . but, to tell you the truth, I don’t know squat about accounting, stocks, legal proceedings, or international finance. Karl did all the inside work for Father, but he was hesitant about discussing details. He schooled me in a lot of things that are wonderful when it comes to handling abstract matters, and I’m certain that, psychologically, I’m in a much stronger position to deal with moral and ethical concerns than had he not been there for me. But as of today I’m beginning to realize he had no intention of preparing me for real-world success.” “You really think Mr. Günfel disliked you that much?” “No, Denise. I think he loved me that much. In his own way, I think he was setting me up for the slow explosion that’s taking place inside me right now. I think he knew I’d find myself caught between two worlds, and I think he knew that when my moment of decision came I’d make the right choice.” “Now hold on a minute, Cristian. Things aren’t as terrible as they may seem. You’re in a rough spot, and you need some space. But let me tell you something about business, darling. It’s a lot like mathematics. If you separate your emotions from your work, and are perfectly logical and alert, your figures will always add up. Success is slow metastasis. Show up, be patient, be honest, be dispassionate. Success forces a man to grow up. So before you go exploding all over the place, I want you to do a little meditating or yoga or whatever helps you relax. Do some swimming and jogging at the Rest. Enjoy your hobbies, make your peace with your father’s memory, and get rid of all those horrible people who’ve been feeding off him. When you’re all better, come back to me, honey. I’ll show you all the things Mr. Günfel forgot to teach you about business. I’ll make it fun. Teacher and pupil.” Vane massaged a temple. There was something inappropriately familiar in the woman’s tone, something that dug. “Please,” he whispered. “Don’t call me ‘Honey’.” No reply. “I’ll bring an apple,” he said tentatively. “Shiny and sweet.” He listened closely. 21

Microcosmia Limo “You’re a dear.” The response was neutral. “And when you’ve got a handle on all this you can start running it any way you want. I’ll play secretary, and I’ll keep you up on the ins and the outs. You really don’t want a woman fronting the Foundation for too long, Cris. There’s what I might term a Good Old Boy network that goes back over half a century. It’s international, it’s cold as ice, and it’s deadly waters for skirts and compromisers. You might even enjoy swimming here, sweetheart, but it’s no place for a woman.” “Thanks, Denise, but no thanks.” He wiped a hand over his face. “I’m taking everything you’ve told me seriously, and I’m banking on you all the way. I’m glad I took your call. I was this close to running over this damned phone.” “Don’t do that, Cristian! Please! That little device is your lifeline. It’s our physical link to getting business done, professionally and personally. If you lose it, or if you blow up and run over it after all, just look up Honey in the yellow pages. Ask for me directly.” “Okay, Denise. I feel . . . better. Thanks for talking me down.” “Wait, Cristian! Don’t hang up yet. I need some info from you. Just a quickie.” Vane controlled his breathing. “What now?” he asked quietly. There was a hard pause. Something made him focus. He pushed the phone against his ear. “Listen, Cris . . . did your father ever mention a woman he had a thing for . . . oh, maybe some thirty years ago, before . . . before you were born? She would have been a light-skinned Latina, an . . . entertainer he met in Central America. This was way before he started seriously slipping.” Vane thought a minute. “No bells.” There was a longer pause. “It’s not all that important.” “Then why bring her up?” “Another claim jumper. That was her sob story. Some nobody out of nowhere saying she’s a lost relative of one Cristian Vane.” Waters laughed without humor. “This one takes the cake. Says she’s actually your mother, that she and your father . . . well, you know, were intimate at some junction in their lives when they were both desperately needy. And she says—get this—that your father paid her off when he found out she was pregnant and later took the child back across the border and tried to bring him up with a nanny, but that this nanny took over John’s failing mind in order to control the boy’s inheritance.” Vane’s mind dissected, sincerely tried, but came up with only shadows. “No . . .” “Anyways,” Waters gushed, “at least I can cross that one off now. I was sure you’d know if there was even a grain of truth in it.” “Sorry,” Vane said. “Zilch.” “Good. Because for a while there this crackpot really had me going. Every time she mentioned you it tugged at my heartstrings. I could have sworn she just loved you all to pieces. And do you know what she had to say about you, Cris?” “No,” Vane muttered. He was becoming annoyed. “How could I?” “She said you were way too nice a guy to go out in the world without guidance. She said the world would eat you alive. And she said she would be watching over you wherever you went, and would support you in whatever you did, because you were all that mattered. And she said she’d dreamed about you her whole adult life. Phony or not, I understood where she was coming from. She sounded like she had very strong maternal instincts.” “Miss Waters, I’m really not in the mood for a sermon on the undying love of mothers, thank you very much. I never had one, and I think I turned out pretty okay, all things considered. A mother who loved me would have been behind me right now. Instead I get a blank space followed by some conniving imposter dressed like Dracula’s daughter. And now this. A real mother would have stuck 22

Microcosmia Limo with me all the way, supporting me. Not just physically . . . spiritually. And she’d be proud of me, whether I went on making billions or gave it all to charity. Miss Waters,” he said with finality, “I know all about these people. Believe it or not. I grew up with them, in a very posh cage. So you can tell this soulless, underhanded slut just what she can do with it, okay? I don’t need her. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody.” “Okay,” Waters whispered. “Okay. Just relax, Cristian. Enjoy your drive. I promise not to call you unless it’s important.” Vane crammed the phone in its mount and switched on the radio. With soulless Muzak in his ears, he took the 10 inland, got off on La Brea, and passively headed north. He had no idea where he was, no idea where he was going, no idea what to do when he got there. He only knew he had to keep moving. But inevitably he did stop, halfway into an intersection on a dark unfamiliar street. To a casual observer Vane might have been a dead man, sitting slumped behind a wheel with the engine humming and the transmission in PARK, his bloodless face running red, amber, and green. Drivers honked repeatedly, screamed obscenities, sped around him. The cell phone rang insistently, but it was as numbing as Muzak. A glockenspiel chimed in his left ear: HEL LO O? The voice tried again, louder. “Hell—LOW—

ey

MISTER!

... Are you, like, okay?” oh? Hey-ey-ey-ey-eyVane rolled his head until he came nose-to-nose with a skinny girl in her mid-teens. He closed one eye and squinted with the other: fine brown hair crackling in spears of neon, flat nose pushed to the side, tiny teeth way too perfect to be real. Three eyelid piercings, two tongue studs, a row of bunched hoops hanging from one sagging lobe. Some weird things done with makeup; a deliberate Halloween mask for a face. But most disturbing was the deep blue liner under her eyes. Old memories stirred his pain. She was posed inquisitively; one palm on the limousine’s roof, the other displayed like a waitress with an imaginary tray. “Well, y’know, you can’t just sit here. You’re blocking traffic, man.” The girl looked around nervously. “Are you frying, mister, or what?” She peered cross-eyed through the windshield, leaned back, lightly shook his shoulder. Vane heaved a sigh. “Oh, thank goodness! It’s alive. Alive!” She flapped her hands. “Look, man, you’ve just got to get me out of here. There’s these like super-grungy guys who’ve been following me, and I’m totally freaking out. So can I get in? I mean, can we just go? Oh, pretty, pretty, pretty-please?” There was a light clopping to his right. A splash of cool night air. The voice popped into his other ear. “Dude, it’s like what’re you doing, anyway? Taking this thing to the great queer body shop in the sky?” A door slammed. The smell of cheap perfume hit his nostrils. Plastic nails danced up his wheel hand and tapped on the gearshift. “It’s like this long bar,” the voice said. “You have to move it over, from the little P to the little D. Then the car goes forward.” He raised his head and her eyes sparkled. Tiny teeth flashed between heavily painted lips. Vane grinned back. “No wonder I wasn’t going anywhere.” He took a long peek in the rear-view mirror. “What’d you say about being followed?” The girl jumped all over the car’s accessories, punching buttons and spinning knobs. “Wow, man! Who do you drive for, anyway?” She pecked the console’s computer keyboard with rainbowglitter nails, saying, “Dear Mom. It’s like, wow. I mean, I’m being kidnapped by this handsome limousine driver. His name’s . . .” She paused in her play-typing. “Cristian.” “. . . Cristian, but I just call him Limo, ’cause Cristian makes him sound like some kind of 23

Microcosmia Limo geeky priest or something. He drives this great big thrashed-out pink car for Elton John and George Hamilton, with a gay bar in the back and everything. He may have kidnapped me, mom, but I stole his heart. We’re up in Hollywood on Cahuenga, and we’re gonna go pick up some, like, major movie stars and party heavy all night. So don’t wait up. Love, Prissy.” “Prissy?” She stuck out her tongue. “Priscilla. What is it with parents, anyway?” She jammed her plastic sequined pumps against the glove box. One heel was loose. Prissy wiggled down her butt and got comfortable, the short red dress sliding up her skinny white legs. A second later she was all over the place; bouncing up and down, yanking on the visor’s vanity mirror, opening and closing the glove box, corkscrewing her torso to work the radio. “Yuk! What are you listening to, anyway? No wonder you’re so spaced out.” She looked him over while poking the SEEK button, her mouth turned down. “Can’t your boss afford one of those cute limo driver hats?” Prissy found a rock station and broke into an awkward little dance with her upper body. Vane had to laugh. She looked daggers for a second, then laughed right back. He put the car in gear and squared his shoulders. “So where do you live?” “It’s not far. A few more blocks, up on the right.” Following her directions, Vane pulled the big pink car into a hotel’s parking lot. “You live in a hotel?” She stared sarcastically and showed him her palm. “C’mon, man. Are we tripping here, or what?” Vane drew a blank. He slowly pulled out his wallet and exposed the bills. Prissy took a fifty and a twenty. “That’s just for now. Wait here.” She stepped out and sashayed up to the office, enormous purse slung over scrawny shoulder. Vane turned down the radio and zoned out. He was just starting the car when that same small voice popped back in his head. “Okay, let’s go. But put up the windows and make sure everything’s locked tight. Even so, I told the manager to keep an eye on this boat.” She rubbed her thumb against the first two fingers meaningfully. “And I told him you’d be remembrandt in the allet-way, if you get my drift.” Vane touched the dash switch that armored the vehicle. Windows hissed shut, doors locked in conjunction, red lights winked on latches and dash. Remembering the cell phone, he plucked it free and stuck it in his right rear pocket. Vane double-checked the locks before following Prissy into room seventeen. It was as he’d expected: bed, dresser, television, bathroom. He sat on the bed. Prissy closed the door and hung her purse on the knob. “I can’t ever get the porno channel, but there’s plenty of magazines in the dresser if you need ’em.” She kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned her blouse, and stepped out of her skirt. The bony body looked deathly pale in the room’s dirty yellow light. Vane glanced at the old scars and fresh scabs. “How old are you?” he asked quietly. She peeled off her panties. “I like to keep the bra on.” “I’m not surprised.” The girl fumed: foal on fire. “Look, mister. You’ve already paid, so you’d might as well get what you paid for.” “Fifteen? Fourteen?” “Jesus!” Prissy stomped to her purse, tore out a California identification card, and gave it a fling. She sat hard as he bent to retrieve it, a scabby hand on his thigh. Vane tilted the card to catch the light. It appeared genuine. One Priscilla Ellen Hartley would be nineteen come the sixth of February. 24

Microcosmia Limo “Why is ID always so important? Why ruin the illusion?” “Men are funny like that,” he muttered. “For some reason the thought of spending a healthy chunk of your life in state prison tends to sour the experience.” She unzipped his fly and reached in. “Is that what soured it for you?” Vane fell back on the bed. Depression enveloped him like fog. “It’s okay,” Prissy whispered, releasing the catch on his trousers. She pulled off his shirt and sneakers, expertly slid down his pants and shorts. Vane drifted along in that fog; without meaning, without mooring. After a while he thought he heard his voice say, “No, it’s not. It’s never okay.” He was so far gone he didn’t realize she’d been busy for over a minute. The goofy face popped back into view. Prissy pulled herself up using his knees for support, yawned, and reclined on an elbow. “I can get the manager to find the porno channel if you want.” “Forget it.” The room died. After a while she said, “What’s killing you, man?” “I don’t know. Things change.” He clasped his hands behind his head. “I lost my father today. That could be part of it.” Prissy dipped a thumb and forefinger into her bra and pulled out a small zippered pouch. From this she extracted a sloppily rolled cigarette and disposable lighter. “I always come prepared.” She lit, hit, and passed the joint. It was a new experience for Vane, so he copied the girl’s actions; drawing deeply, holding in the smoke as long as he could. That tiny voice said, “I’ll need some money. I’m going for two dimes.” “Sorry,” Vane mumbled. “I don’t have any change.” The girl laughed and picked up his trousers. “You’re cute.” She fished out his wallet, removed a twenty, and stuffed the wallet back in his pants pocket. “Hold onto this for me.” Prissy gave him her little pouch and kissed his cheek. She already seemed to have matured five years since their meeting. “I’ll be right back.” She pulled on her skirt and blouse and, barefoot, stepped outside and softly closed the door. Brand new impressions seeped into Vane’s fog. Something was playing with the tension in his neck and shoulders, something was tightening and loosening his eardrums. Odd. The ceiling light was throbbing with his pulse, the room breathing right along with him. Vane stared up at that fly-specked bulb for years, too drained to react. Finally the bed rocked again, and a slender hand pried the pouch from his fingers. He sat up. Prissy took a tiny glass pipe from the pouch, pulled a white chunk about the size of a hearing aid battery from one of two miniature Ziploc plastic bags, carefully placed the little chunk in the pipe’s steel bowl, and flicked her Bic. She closed her eyes and rocked gently while drawing, then lovingly handed the pipe and lighter to Vane. Again playing copycat, he sucked slowly until the rock had expired. Prissy plucked the pipe from his fingers and continued to draw, turning the bowl under the flame to get every molecule of residue. Vane’s lips were numb, his loins liquid. His brain relaxed and sharpened, relaxed and sharpened. He laid back. Prissy pulled off her blouse and slid out of her skirt. Her lips found his. Her tongue rolled over his chin and down his body, fluttering like a wet butterfly. The butterfly rolled back up. Vane brushed her moist hair from his face, wiped the dew out of his eyes. “You’ve been driving too long, Limo. You need to learn how to cool.” Prissy sat up, swaying languidly. She found her pouch and second little Ziploc bag, then helped him to a sitting position. Vane was allowed to hit the pipe first this time. He fell back as she killed the bowl. 25

Microcosmia Limo The bed rocked. Prissy picked up the television’s remote control unit and a sudden voice blared, “—contacted Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasa—” She muted the sound, stepped to the wall plate and switched off the overhead light. The room was now lit only by deep reds and blues. The bed rocked again. The scrawny body smacked into his. “Let go, Limo!” Vane let his head roll, felt her hot breath wash against his lips. He half-parted his lids. Prissy’s eyes were closed, her lips preening. As the shadows played over her face, the flesh round her eyes appeared to bruise and heal, bruise and heal. Her lips became a pair of writhing purple leeches; pursing, pouting, reaching for his throat like the sweet undead. Not since he was a teenager had Vane felt his body come alive. His tingling fingers clenched and unclenched, his hands found her breasts. The drowned face rolled back up. Fingers came wet in his hair, pulled his lips to a breast, slowly drew his face deeper. The similarity to Megan was maddening. Vane fought to break away, but she bit hard on his lower lip, climbed on top, and guided him in. The room was a pounding, squeezing cube. Vane’s brain went fuzzy, contracted, released. It all happened very fast. When the jack blew out of the box he was left empty and cold, anchored but adrift. Slowly the fog lifted. Prissy flopped off and rubbed his sweaty belly. He heard her voice in a dream, “Thanks, Limo. That was sweet.” She walked her fingers up and down his chest. “You’ve deflowered me, baby. I’ve never had a trick get off while calling me ‘mommy’ before. It was kind of cool.” Vane’s head rolled on the pillow. His expression was frightening. “Shut up.” Prissy shivered, her eyes gleaming between the half-closed lids. She looped her arms around his neck and smiled cozily, flattered by a sweetheart. The phrase shut up came as the emotional equivalent of I love you. “Yes master,” she whispered huskily. “Yes, Daddy.” “I mean it,” Vane said. “You’re playing with forces you couldn’t possibly understand.” He sat up on the bed, hauling her up with him. She nibbled on his earlobe. He pulled away. “Give me another twenty,” Prissy said, clinging. “You’ll cheer up fast enough. Or make it thirty. I can score right in this hotel if the money’s right.” “Forget it. I can’t think as it is.” She pushed him away with disgust, cussed him up and down, and two seconds later was hanging all over him again. Vane couldn’t peel her off for the life of him. They leaned against each other quietly, using flesh for emotional support. The televised images, blowing around the room, made grim shadow puppets of their heads. Vane was experiencing an exaggerated sense of the sordid, unaccustomed as he was to the sticky underbelly of society. All he wanted was a long scalding shower. “Why do you live like this?” he wondered aloud. “Why don’t you find a decent guy and settle down?” Prissy laughed harshly. “Like you, Limo? Don’t judge me, man. And don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou crap about finding a ‘nice guy’.” She pulled away. “I know all about men, probably more than you do. There are no ‘nice guys.’ A man is either horny or he’s not. If he is, then all his ‘niceness’ is a load of BS. He’ll say and do anything to get what he wants. And if he isn’t horny, then what good is he? You think I want to listen to him bitch and whine about how there aren’t any ‘good girls?’ You think I want to listen to him snivel about what a great guy he is, and about how the slut who left him didn’t appreciate how he busted his ass, day in and day out, for her, baby, only for her?” She swung her legs off the bed. “In my line of work I hear more bullcrap than a bartender. I’ve heard it all. Mostly it’s the daughter thing, dig? Like, I’ll be laying there with some freak who’s paying top dollar to get off on a chick just because she reminds him of his daughter, and then this 26

Microcosmia Limo bozo’s gonna lecture me about how I should be a ‘good girl,’ and go back to daddy.” She looked like she wanted to heave. Vane hunched gloomily. He’d been preparing to tell the girl precisely this. “Everybody,” he fumbled, “needs a father. Someone who can guide you. In decisions. In love. Someone with experience.” Prissy squeezed his hands. Her eyes were dancing. “Let me tell you about fathers, Limo. Let me tell you about men.” She hooked a foot under his leg and stared at the ceiling. Backlit strangely, Prissy became a wise, caring tutor, a mother figure poised naked on a grave. And bruised, so very bruised. Her head fell forward and her eyes reached into his. “There have been two loves in my life, Limo. “The first was my father. “Daddy was an alcoholic with a bad streak. I mean bad. He used to kick the crap out of my mother, every single blessed night of the year; twice on birthdays and holidays. He worked at the foundry in our little town in Paso County, New Mexico, and each morning he brought a thermos filled with Jack Daniels to the job. That’s what the other workers called him. They called him Jack: Jackie D. Somehow or other he managed to bluff his way through work every day. Eventually even his friends despised him; first for the way he had to get his paws on anything female, second for the way he went ballistic on anybody who objected. The heavier the tension got at work, the heavier it got at home. Then one day he got fired for breaking the foreman’s jaw. I remember seeing mama, swollen and bleeding, crying and spitting out teeth. I remember her falling on me to protect me, screaming in my little face while Daddy kicked her in the head and spine. I must have been—what— maybe thirteen, maybe fourteen, and I remember seeing his bleary eyes sort of shining, and his mouth twisting as he looked down at me. “Y’see, Daddy was getting ready to teach me all about you poor, misunderstood men. “He grabbed mama by the hair and hauled her off me. I think she was unconscious, but things were too weird at the time to tell. Then he took me by the front of my blouse and just kind of fell on me. I think his original idea was to pick me up, but he’d wore himself out thumping on mama. He rested there on me, and I was, like, gagging on his whiskey breath, and also I couldn’t breathe because he was so heavy and I was so tiny.” Prissy’s grip on Vane’s hands became passionate. Her eyes burned in the surreal, glancing light. “And I said ‘please, Daddy.’ I said please, Limo! “I think I must have meant no. But it was Daddy. And he wasn’t touching mama any more. He was touching me! “And I remember seeing his fist rise above me and just kind of hover there. And I remember screaming, ‘I love you, Daddy, I love you!’ And seeing that fist, big as a Christmas ham, come slamming down.” Prissy hugged herself, shivering. “Poor Daddy broke my nose so bad it took three surgeries to fix it. But I was young, and he was sorry, and it all came out okay.” She beamed prettily. “See?” Vane clasped his ankles. The rock’s effects were passing. Part of him wanted to say he understood, he was sorry, but the reds and blues had done their number on his soul. “There was so much blood,” Prissy said rapturously, “that I couldn’t see his expression. I had to see with my other senses. And they told me Daddy was real busy. His hands were all over me. He tore off my pretty blouse, and he tore down my pretty panties. He had me pinned, Limo. And he loved me real. Then, when he was done, he clenched his fists and started whaling on me again. “And I remember waking up in his arms. He was crying, man, and he was telling me how much he loved me. There was blood all over the place; on the walls, in his moustache, on our faces. 27

Microcosmia Limo He was crying like a faucet while he told me how much he loved me, and every third breath he proved it with his fist. “In the hospital they let me and mama share a room. We spent a lot of time holding hands between operations, talking about how life was going to get better. Daddy had busted up something in mama’s spine, and she went through these freaky trips where she’d get all spastic and foamy. The doctors would rush her out and wheel her back in, then wheel me out and whisk me back in. They gave me some new teeth and fixed a funny clot in my head. We were there, like, forever, man. “All this time mama kept getting worse, no matter how many tubes they stuck in her. She started to drift. I made like I was all concerned and stuff, but secretly I was on a total high. I knew she was gonna die, and then there wouldn’t be anybody between me and Daddy.” She paused to study Vane’s face in the creepy light. He stared back woodenly. The TV’s images bounced off the walls, froze with the screen, bounced some more. “One day a Jehovah’s Witness came in and scored big time with mama. She clamped on his rap like a pit bull on a postman. He tried me too, but I wasn’t buying. I gotta hand it to those guys, though; he hung with mama like a real trooper. When they wheeled her out for the last time he was still telling her how lucky she was. “Now there was nobody around to dump on Daddy. I laid there dreaming about the day I’d get out of that morgue—about how I’d tell Daddy that I was pregnant by him, and about how happy he’d look when he loved me real. “But then, just when I was getting ready to be released, this social worker bitch comes in and breaks it to me. Poor Daddy’d stuck a gun in his mouth and blew his freaking brains out. So this social worker throws me in this halfway house with a bunch of total losers, like she’s doing me a favor or something. I split and was just cruising on the streets, but I got caught and thrown in juvie. The old broad bails me out. More favors. Next thing I know I’m living in this big condo in Marina del Rey with my new foster parents. It’s no mystery why they didn’t have any kids of their own. Their idea of a good time was balancing checkbooks over chai latte. I was always Poor Prissy. Sweet Prissy. They liked to show me off to their geek friends, liked to show them what great parents they were. I was out of my mind, Limo. One night I told ’em I was gonna go admire the stupid sailboats or something, but I stuck out my thumb and got a ride down Lincoln to the freeway. After a couple more rides I wound up in Hollywood, cold and hungry and pregnant. That’s when I met Jeremy.” “Jeremy?” Prissy hugged herself again. She closed her eyes and began gently rocking back and forth. “The second love of my life. Jeremy’s a biker-slash-philosopher. He pulled me out of the gutter and put me to work. I could make him a grand a day by going down on the daughter freaks, Limo. It was easy. All I had to do was look lost and helpless. They’d launch into these long teary raps about what wonderful fathers they were, and tell me over and over again how much I reminded them of their darling daughters. The hornier they got, the higher I jacked up the price. Jeremy schooled me on the freaks. They’re scared, he’d tell me, and they’re all tore up inside by guilt. But they’re horny as all get-out, or they wouldn’t be there.” She shrugged. “They’re guys. “Jeremy began slapping me around after each trick to make me work harder, and the harder he hit me, the deeper I fell in love with him. When I started to show, he got super-pissed. He thought I wasn’t being up front with him on account of I didn’t tell him I’d been knocked up by Daddy. He beat me better than ever, but kept me in circulation. I learned to use makeup creatively. When the bruises got too loud I’d do my face up like a sissy punker. The johns really dug that. They wanted to punish their little girl for looking rebellious. Some of ’em could get pretty Neanderthal. But none were ever as good as Jeremy.” 28

Microcosmia Limo Her eyes looked directly into Vane’s. “I’m not boring you?” He closed his mouth and forced a casual shrug. “You must know by now I’m no talker.” The girl considered this. “I guess that’s cool, when you drive a limousine for a living.” She beamed. “I’ll bet you never made a grand a day steering that big old pink hearse around.” “I wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of money.” Prissy ran a hand along his thigh. “You could spend it on me.” “And it would all just go to Jeremy.” She smiled sweetly. Vane was again taken by the way she seemed to be maturing before his eyes. “One night,” she went on, “one of Jeremy’s best clients complained that little Prissy wasn’t so little after all. The guy was so mad about Jeremy’s business ethics that he said he was gonna spread the word around town that Jeremy was a scammer. Nothing my man could say or do would make that creep change his mind, so Jeremy put him down. He had to, Limo. It was either that or go out of business. And Jeremy couldn’t let that happen. He had these, like, major bills to pay: Jeremy was in way-deep with the Mexican Mafia. So he rents a van and a bunch of tools and takes this guy’s body out to the Mojave Desert. He lines the inside of the van with these heavy plastic drop cloths, gets naked and stashes his clothes up front. Then he climbs in the back with the saws and the sledge hammers and gets busy. “He worked all that day and night. Jeremy told me he had to do an eightball of meth and a quart of Kentucky bourbon just to get through it. But after he was done he had a hundred and eightyfive pounds of primo lizard food. He poured the ex-trick down a gully, took out the drop cloths, covered them with gas, and let them burn. Now the van was good as new. He’d brought along one of those big fifty-five gallon drums, filled to the brim with soapy water. Jeremy said he sat in that drum for three hours soaking out the gore. Then he put the tools in the drum and innocently cruised out of there like some lost hippie looking for a Dead concert. Halfway home he stopped, poured out the funky water, and dried the tools and drum in the sun. While the speed was still keeping him jazzed he scrubbed out the drum, oiled and polished the tools, and even had the van detailed. When he got home I made him tell me all about it. He laid it down, then calmly reached back and slugged me in the tummy just as hard as he could. “In the emergency room they told me the baby had been killed instantly. Now you see why I love the man, Limo? He’s a real problem solver. The doctors also said my spleen had to go, but that I’d get along fine without it. Did you know all the stuff you’ve got inside you that you really don’t need?” She ticked them off on the fingers of one hand. “Gall bladder, appendix, tonsils, one kidney, one lung . . .” “You can lose your arms and legs, too,” Vane countered, “and life’ll still go on. But I’d rather keep what I’ve got.” Prissy nodded cozily. “I’m hip to that, baby. I’m keeping what I’ve got too. Do you know what a good man can do with a propane torch and a pair of needle-nosed pliers?” “Shut up, man! You’re wearing me out.” Her eyes gleamed. “So now you’re all mad at me.” “No, I’m not mad at you. I’m just starting to see how stupid I am to feel sorry for myself.” “Yes you are, you totally limp loser. Mama’s boy. You’re all pissed off, you pink limo pig faggot. You’re just not man enough to deal with it.” “Oh, for Christ’s—” She slapped him right across the face. “Then get pissed!” The blow was not only accurately placed; it was well-timed. Vane never saw it coming. He grabbed her right wrist with his left hand, caught her left hand in his right, and shook his head. No one had ever struck him like that. 29

Microcosmia Limo The girl kept right on throwing her arms, but his weight and upper body strength had her pinned. It was an interesting position. Sitting on the bed with her heels under her thighs and her arms gripped at ten and two o’clock, Prissy was completely helpless. All Vane had to do was lean forward and hold on. He had leverage. She spat in his face, lurched back and forth and side to side, did everything she could to free herself. When she finally relented, smiling demurely, her voice was sweet as treacle. “Doesn’t anything make you mad, lover?” “Not mad enough to hit a woman.” “Not mad enough to hit a child?” “Or a child.” “Even if that child lied to you? Even if that child set you up?” She batted her eyelashes comically. “What if you were looking at hard time for having paid sex with a minor? And what if that minor copped your license plate number so her man could add you to his list? What if this minor had the hotel manager photograph you entering the room with her? And Limo, what if all the stuff I just told you about were parts of a big plan that goes down every night, starting on that very corner where this what-if chick got picked up by a certain limousine driver? It’s like goin’ fishing, baby; the names on Jeremy’s List could fill a small phone book. Now, think about it, honey. How many paychecks would you be willing to turn over before you got really mad? Cons don’t like new-meat molesters, Limo. Not at all. So wouldn’t it kinda bug you if some strange chick did this to you? Wouldn’t it make you just a teensy bit upset?” Vane gripped her wrists fiercely. “Your ID says you’re of legal age.” He shook her limp arms. “My father’s company hired tons of Guatemalans. I’ve checked out green cards and I.N.S. papers. I know good California ID when I see it.” “And so does the Mexican Mafia, darlin’. They’ve had plenty of experience creating false ID for illegals. And Jeremy makes sure his girls get the best cover possible. Like I told you, he’s a real problem solver.” She shook off his hands. For a moment Vane saw red. When his mind cleared he found himself with one hand in her hair and one fist poised to obliterate that crooked, ready smile. Prissy was teetering on the lip of climax. Vane unclenched his fist and pushed her away. It was not an act of passion, nor of passion controlled. The night was over. He got off the bed and picked up his trousers. Five rainbow-painted trowels tore down his back. He turned. “Don’t go, Limo! I need a ride, baby. Bust my ass out of here!” She was now on all fours on the bed, her head lolling, the fine brown hair clinging to moist spots on her face and shoulders. Her eyes were black caves, her mouth a livid, groping sea anemone. A string of saliva, red and blue, hung from her lower lip. “Do me right, driver daddy. Lock me down and roll. Bash my funky face in, baby. Beat me sweet.” “Little lady,” Vane said politely, pointing back and forth like a special education teacher demonstrating for a particularly slow student, “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. We’ve never even met. You’re going to have to get your kicks, figuratively and literally, from somebody else. I’m out of here.” Prissy collapsed on her side. She drew up her legs and thrust her hands between her knees. The tears began, gently at first. In half a minute she was a blubbering wretch. “That won’t work either,” Vane said solidly. “I’ve endured the charade of femininity since childhood. The whole self-serving gamut: tender concern, maternal warmth, petty jealousy, and, of course . . . lachrymosity. As a matter of fact, crying’s the worst thing you can do to make a man care. 30

Microcosmia Limo We’re organizers. All it does is make the situation unmanageable.” The girl began to wail. “What’re you crying for, anyway?” he said nervously. It must have sounded like a cat was being tortured in room seventeen. “Finally you’re in the company of a man who treats you with a little respect, and you act like the world’s coming to an end. You should be happy, girl. Your whole head’s turned inside-out.” She lunged and threw her arms around his waist. The wailing diminished to sniffles and gulps. Vane stood still, fighting the urge to put an arm around her shoulders. He let his trousers unfurl from one hand, used the other to pluck out his wallet, and let all the bills rain onto the bed. It was a flutter of mostly tens and twenties; a few fifties. Maybe four and change. “I’ve got to go. I’d like to say it’s been nice.” Prissy snatched up the bills with one hand, still clinging with the other. “Mine?” “On the condition you don’t give it to Jeremy.” “If it’s mine I’m using it any way I want.” She stuffed the bills into the open body of his pants. “I’m hiring you. It’s my turn to be the trick.” “Hiring me for what?” “Just to be here with me. Let your boss wait. Tell him you’re at the beautician’s or something.” Vane fell back beside her. “But no more drugs for a while. Not so long as I’m here. Deal?” “Deal. Let’s just talk.” They stretched out and snuggled. “Tell me,” Prissy ventured, “about the real Limo.” Vane was silent for a minute, watching the dumb interplay of images on the screen. “Well, for starters my life is nowhere near as interesting as yours. I live in a great big house with a whole lot of people I don’t really know, and nothing much ever happens.” He was struck by the accuracy of this little revelation. “Except for today. My father died and everybody moved out.” After a while Prissy said dully, “That’s interesting.” Vane was catching on: the girl was less than a fireball without fresh drugs in her system. It was also becoming plain that sobriety didn’t do a hell of a lot for his own personality. “What a couple of losers.” “Monsters,” Prissy agreed. She leaned across his chest, scooped up the television’s remote control unit, cranked up the volume and began surfing the high channels, muttering, “This room gets crappy cable.” Finally she settled on a broadcast apparently highlighting the glorious wildlife of Africa’s savannah. She curled up and nestled in his arm. Both were glad to let the set do the talking. The announcer explained that all Africa was not the wild land of savage beauty portrayed by Hollywood. The film cut to an aerial shot of an achingly dry desert, which he described as the Danakil Depression in northeastern Ethiopia. Now a small plane’s camera, receding at around a hundred feet, exposed a crescent of smoothed hillocks. A few seconds later an even wider view revealed an immense impact crater with a very low, highly-weathered rim. The crater was partly bisected by a ridge continuous with the outer desert, giving the site a shape something like the letter Q. Only its hellish location could have kept such a tremendous natural phenomenon unknown to geologists. The viewers were informed that an American spy satellite, monitoring suspected Eritrean troop insurgences in the unmapped Danakil, had stumbled upon this huge crater and the thousands of nomadic pastoralists calmly starving to death within. Nothing would compel these people, the Afar, to leave. The voice said the area, and the crater by extension, were known to the Afar as Mamuset. He explained that this could be translated as both came and waiting. This was all the proof the voice 31

Microcosmia Limo needed: the half-dead Afar had an appointment with Jesus. The film cut to a close shot of a nondescript desert location. The camera panned across numberless people dead and dying; desperately malnourished, parching in the sun. The next shot, also nondescript, was of relief workers passing out rations from the backs of a few dusty pickup trucks. Sagging in the distance was a large canvas Red Cross tent, the nether arm of the cross extended downward with paint to create the symbolic cross of Calvary. It was all very pathetic. According to the announcer, a drought of unprecedented magnitude had decimated the Horn of Africa. The ensuing famine was already the worst on record, with a projected death toll in the several millions. Typhus and cholera, along with the slow but steady march of AIDS, had so weakened the pastoral population that many victims were succumbing without struggle. Taped sounds of weeping and moaning burbled over a brief clip of a little boy and his sister smothered by flies. The boy was dead, his sister clinging. Right behind this came a wide still featuring an entire family in rigor mortis, their cadavers being fought over by hyenas. “Only on cable,” Vane muttered. Prissy shuddered and clung tighter. “What’s going on? What . . . why are they showing all these suffering people?” “It’s a religious organization,” he explained absently, “looking for subscribers. They want to bleed viewers dry, and they’re savvy enough to be as graphic as possible. You don’t break hearts with picnic scenes.” The frozen horror was replaced by a worried-looking man posing before a large group of famine victims. He was dressed for safari. “That guy there,” Vane continued, “is a kind of barker for the organization. It’s his job to soak the rubes by appealing to their consciences. The actual problem is very compelling, yet it takes a real performance to hold a crowd. It’s just human nature. Everybody’s a rubberneck at a pileup, but it’s the rare individual who’ll become passionately involved. The barker encourages them to stay. He plays upon their guilt, making it difficult for them to return to the workaday without feeling ashamed. Cash solves the whole problem. The contributor has done something. Now he not only sees himself as that one in a million who cares, but he can go back to chasing profit, pleasure, and status without all those damned skinny black beggars making him feel guilty. “Scamming’s always most effective when it’s done in the name of religion, like on this program. The believer at home is caught between a real big rock and a real hard place, almost as if his conscience is staring him in the face while his deity watches over his shoulder. What’s he gonna do? Offend his God in order to save a few bucks? But I’ll guarantee you the barker and all his cameramen get first-class catering, depths of Africa or no.” They watched the man pass his microphone like a censer over the passive black faces, all the while shaking his head and pouting. The camera zoomed wide and remained on the paltry mission while additional footage, of desert outside the crater, was superimposed. These new images were appalling. Whole tribes were shown wiped out by famine, bodies and personal belongings strewn amidst thatch huts. Camels and cattle lay rotting as far as the lens could capture. A new voice came over, explaining that a combination of factors had produced a situation that could impact the region for decades. Danakil, one of the hottest places on Earth, was in the grip of an exceptionally intense eleven-year cycle. No stranger to drought and famine, the region now appeared to be the focal point of an event much wider than any recorded in East Africa’s history. Kenya, Sudan, Somalia—all were being affected by rapid desertification. The Nile was shrinking visibly, while the Sahara gradually ate away its perimeter like a slowly welling pool, etching arable earth into sand. Even Saudi lands, far 32

Microcosmia Limo across the Red Sea, were slowly losing fertile ground to desert sand. Doomsayers could wail all they wanted about acid rain and the ozone layer, but the pouting man with the microphone, once again at center stage, knew that a far greater Hand was at work. The man on the mic freely admitted he wasn’t smart enough to know why his All-loving God would so cavalierly allow His precious children to suffer so. He only knew it was absolutely none of his mortal business. Two things, however, he was ready to claim with complete certainty. One was that man’s wickedness was somehow to blame, the other that the sinful viewer could immediately take the edge off at least a part of that wickedness by pulling out a credit card and dialing the toll-free number now throbbing orgasmically across the screen. He pumped the viewers to dig deeper, that these innocent babies might smile in the omniscient Eye of God. The camera zoomed onto a logy old woman holding a pair of dying infants to her burned-out teats. The infants were little pot-bellied black skeletons, mouths wide and eyes shut tight. Their tiny fists beat the stifling air in slow motion. Vane felt Prissy’s nails digging into his chest. He turned his head to find her quietly crying. “Why,” she whined, “why doesn’t somebody do something?” “I could change the channel.” “Don’t joke, Limo. That won’t save those babies.” He picked up the remote and muted the sound. “My dear, what you just saw was a taped recording, not a live broadcast. I guarantee you those children are out of their misery by now.” From the primal womb rose a piercing, nails-on-a-blackboard wail that gradually tapered to a long suffering sigh. Vane’s hair stood on end. Something in that very basic, very feminine plaint had gouged a nerve in his heart fortress. Prissy seemed to fill out as he stared, until she appeared fully opposite the scrawny, backstabbing runaway he thought he knew. At that moment Vane thought he had a lot to learn about women, when in reality he had lot to learn about testosterone. The sequence could have been the reverse—he could have encountered a mature woman and watched her morph into a teenager. Nature was hypnotizing him, stirring his hormones, trying to convert him from a procrastinator to a procreator. And now, watching agape in the crazy light, he could have sworn her lips plumped as her cheeks ran alabaster and blue. He was looking at Megan; he was looking at Mother the way she intended, as prisoner for life. Vane slammed a fist on his thigh and swung his legs off the bed. “God damn you all! Just leave me fucking be!” Prissy blinked rapidly. “Dude, it’s like what’re you rapping about? Who shoved a bug up your butt, anyway?” He stepped into his trousers, pushing the trapped bills through the legs and out onto the carpet. He let them lie. “Limo?” Vane turned, said, “My name’s not Limo,” and caught her hand before the intended slap could reach his face. He threw down the hand and shrugged on his shirt. “And you should know me better by now.” He watched her closely while dressing. Stepping round the bed, he found himself paused in front of the TV, mesmerized for perhaps half a minute by images of children and adults rotting in the savage African sun. There was a general look to these people; the look of worthless animals resigned to their fate. He was reminded of photographs of Jews liberated from Auschwitz and Treblinka. Staring skeletons. Faces too wasted to express gratitude or relief. The innocent Afar were freaks in a two-dimensional sideshow, exploited by an evangelical gang of trespassing profiteers. Vane, grimacing, ran down the channels until he reached a cartoon. Some kind of bear and a hound dog were bashing each other with mallets. 33

Microcosmia Limo “This is more your speed, Priscilla.” There was a familiar burring under the bed. Prissy showed him her tongue and leaned over the side. A moment later she resurfaced holding Vane’s cell phone. “Wow!” she said, fascinated by the blinking pink jewels on the sculpted cream case. “It’s so pretty!” Vane stomped over and plucked it from her hand. He flipped it open, placed it against his ear. Prissy’s jaw dropped as she watched the phone’s colored lights winking in response to the transmitted signal. In the throbbing red and blue darkness Vane looked like some kind of futuristic explorer preparing to beam up. At last he closed his eyes and winced. “Here,” he said, handing her the phone. “It’s for you.” He turned on his heel and drew open the door. Without another word he stepped outside and was swallowed by the night.

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Chapter Four Christian Vane burst through the sugarplums, spat out a mouthful of leaves, and collapsed on the beautifully groomed hilltop overlooking Oceanside Cemetery’s most exclusive real estate. Before him was an immaculate garden sheltering spotless crypts of the departed well-to-do, behind him a weedy green expanse holding endless rows of simple white crosses for faceless American servicemen. The part behind him was accessible to any old Joe with a car and a window sticker. Reaching the exclusive side meant getting past roving armed security, seven feet of ivy-draped chain link, and sensor-equipped warning signs embedded in triple-looped razor wire. It took all his waterdamaged ID, and a phoned confirmation from one Denise Waters of the famous Honey Foundation, for permission to wander the grounds barefoot and without supervision. No one was comfortable with the raggedy unshaven drunk, staggering between the tombs and statuary, scaring the hell out of everybody. But now it was twilight. The place was thinning fast. Vane rolled in the grass, embracing a half-full fifth of gin—one more grudging concession by the Cemetery Director. Honey’s name worked wonders: the Foundation’s ubiquitous hand was deep in nitrates, in floral concessions, in marble and pine. And of course there was The Monolith. Oceanside is visually dominated by an enormous manufactured plateau. Upon that plateau squats a stone fortress fit for Pharaoh, from the air resembling nothing so much as a west-leaning asterisk. The structure’s name, inscribed in Roman capitals on projecting friezes, is Raptor’s Rest. Superficially at least, the Rest is an outstanding reproduction of the palatial Vane mansion. The mausoleum rises above a canopy of willows, elms, and magnolias like a castle on a cloud, awing elite visitors, but remaining sheltered from the boulevard’s prying eyes by a long rank of eucalyptus sentinels. Like its namesake, the Rest is surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron fence. A long serpentine brick path climbs from the cobbled road to the fence’s magnificent wing-shaped gates. Beyond those gates the path is all polished tile. Only persons cleared by Honey are permitted within 35

Microcosmia Christian hailing distance of the mausoleum. Four privately owned, pink rose-lined lanes abut the Rest. They are not to be traveled, even by Oceanside’s workers, without permission from the Foundation. They are named Rosarita Road, Bonita Boulevard, Alvarado Avenue, and Christian’s Crossing. But every day a crew of highly trained Guatemalan groundskeepers in hot-pink jumpsuits is led across the Crossing, scanned through the gates, and dispersed to scrub the structure and mother the grounds. Not a scrap of litter, not a wayward leaf, not a pigeon dropping dares mar the final resting place of the man who refused to die. Many years ago these groundskeepers, and anything else reminiscent of the lesser world, would be rushed elsewhere whenever young Simms pulled in the limo for a visit from Meg and Chris. Christian spent many a Sunday in this place, released by Megan to play for hours while she reclined with a paperback, a sack lunch, and a thermos of Bloody Mary. Blissfully alone, he would creep shadow to shadow, drawn to the mysteries of hollow and stone. The mausoleum possessed the structural familiarity of home, but without all the ugly aunts and uncles and funny foreign ladies, and especially without the Sick Old Man. Most of little Christian’s nightmares revolved around that bedridden, soundlessly jabbering monster. And once Megan was dozing and the shadows were cool, Christian would steal away to his favorite spot in the neat old building. You didn’t attain this groovy place by just blithely following the many blind halls while admiring polished granite facsimiles of busts and vases. You had to know when to embrace, rather than shrink from, the darkness. Then, if you were really adventurous, you reached the top of a staircase. Below lurked a blackness no amount of peering could penetrate. The walls surrounding this staircase were intricately carved to resemble the walls of a grotto. On his first three visits Christian sat on the stone perch he’d named Top Step, whistling in the dark, tenderly running his fingers over the fascinating stonework. But on his fourth visit those fingers encountered the fat plastic cap of a dimmer switch. The room the boy illuminated by degrees was a low artificial cavern, populated by the stone figures of unfamiliar mythological creatures milling about a large filled pool. In that pool a pink marble Neptune was captured in the act of rising, his triton raised protectively over an oblong granite box. The box was open, waiting. Blocking the pool stood a tilted, highly polished black marble slab, its inscription at eye-level for little Christian. He read it over and over, until that very personal message was burned into memory. The inscription read: John Beregard Vane Just below this, the numbers 1898 were followed by a long dash. No numbers succeeded the dash. Beneath numbers and dash was a disturbing paragraph. The paragraph was disturbing in that it rambled, and in that it proved, handsomely, that a stonecutter will do anything for money. Pioneer and captain of industry. Loving father. Creator of empires great and small. Employer of the unemployed, legal always. Patron and presenter of the arts, established as such and otherwise. Adopter of those who are all his always legal children. Legal father of Christian Honey Vane. Loves Christian Honey, legal always. Signed John Beregard Vane. Christian Honey. Christian Honey. Papa loves his hot li’l pink honey pot. God is not a Christian. The boy would dash back up the steps harboring a mental photograph of the crypt, then slowly, bravely tease the dimmer until he again stood in pitch. He’d weave through the silent halls to the 36

Microcosmia Christian marble staircase, take the steps three at a time to the roof. Christian would creep to the railing and peep down on the cemetery’s parking lot, where Karl’s personal kelly-green station wagon would be parked in its usual secluded space. Having caught the glint of sun on Karl’s binoculars, he’d lay low and watch planes approaching L.A.X. until the sun fell and he could count their lights in a long descending line. Now Vane, having relived all those buried childhood memories on a single drunken reel, found himself unspeakably blue. He pushed himself to his feet, empowered by another mouthful of gin. The stuff was tough to swallow, harder to keep down. It was medicine nonetheless. The last of the bereaved were filtering from the rose garden into the reception hall for drinks and farewells. It had been a frightfully unattended funeral for such a well-known and influential man, and, as far as Vane could tell, only one of the Rest’s Residents was interested enough to show. The mourners were mostly sequestered clusters of Guatemalan workers and family members, confused and intimidated by the proceedings. John Beregard Vane had been their indestructible symbol of America. Prior to the awkward assemblage of workers, a bizarre scene had unfolded on the polished tile path leading to the mausoleum’s entrance steps. At least it had seemed bizarre to Vane. A woman had exited the reception hall pushing a broken old man in a wheelchair. The woman was so solicitous, and the old man so wretchedly hunched, that Vane at first refused to accept these remade figures as Megan and Karl. He followed carefully, tree to tree, as they slowly traveled that long winding path to the beautiful gates. Vane watched Megan swipe her pink and cream card in the scanner, then somberly push Karl up the tiles to the bleached granite steps. Karl, wrapped in a heavy shawl in the magnolias’ leaning shade, remained crumpled in the chair while she massaged his neck and shoulders. Occasionally she would stare long and hard at the mausoleum’s roof. Her gaze would fall to thoroughly inspect the grounds, her face running blue in the shade. Finally she inclined her head and spoke a few words in Karl’s ear. Karl’s trembling hand rose and fell. Meg kissed the top of his head, turned the chair and rolled him out the gate, her eyes locked on the trees obscuring Vane; all the way down the winding path, along Christian’s Crossing, up to the rose garden, and into the building. After a respectful pause, a starchy middle-aged woman appeared, leading a wide parade of conservatively-dressed men and women from the reception hall to the Rest. Her dress, her carriage, her expression, were all business, and somehow all familiar to Vane. In a woozy flash he remembered: it was that lady who’d interfered at the mansion when he was just a kid. He wiped his lips and took another careful swallow. The old man was dead, and here she was, meddling still. This woman, her pink-and-cream breast-badge flashing with each step, walked the solemn ranks to the mausoleum and delivered a very businesslike eulogy beneath the main arch. The men and women were then admitted in groups of ten. These were the still-active members of the Honey Family. Vane, watching carefully, saw not a hint of commiseration. With John gone and his tumultuous heir out of the picture for the last three days, the infighting must have been fierce. The Honey Family exited John’s grotto with looks of barely contained amusement, making Vane break into a fit of uncontrollable snickering that left him just short of vomiting. He looked back up through watering eyes. The stiff woman ushered everyone back out the gates and down the cobbled path to Christian’s Crossing. She watched the relieved Family clamber anxiously up the path. When they had all filed into the reception hall she wheeled and hiked back to the mausoleum gates. It was getting dark. She pulled a cell phone from her handbag and punched out a number, spoke a few words. Seconds later floodlights lit the Rest dazzlingly, fully illuminating even those 37

Microcosmia Christian deepest recesses of false windows. She spoke into the phone again. The floods’ beams slowly expired, and the mausoleum’s muted internal arrangement took over. Pale green light emanated from partial chimneys spaced between arches, exposing columns and cornices. At cornices marking wing entrances, pairs of electronically-lit gas candles admitted cheerless orange prominences. A row of sunken lights pulsed softly on either side of the path, from the cursive gates all the way up to the granite steps. The woman replaced her phone and swiped a card. The gates separated smoothly. She went down on one knee, placed an envelope neatly on the path, rose, and took a last look around. Vane blearily watched her recede, an intense, lava-like burning in his esophagus. He squeezed shut his eyes and swallowed repeatedly. By the time he reopened his eyes the woman was gone. It was now fully dark. Vane stumbled down the grade, the grass cold and wet between his toes. He paused twice, taking cautious swallows of gin. He really didn’t want to be here, wasn’t even sure why he’d come; the last few days were pretty much a blank. Shell-shocked and borderline-suicidal, he’d hitched a ride to Venice Beach, mooched meals in the churches, made friends with a variety of street people, slept on the sand. Blending in had been a snap. The Town Car’s discovery in a sleazy hotel parking lot was big news on the local stations. Anchors probed every species of disgusting activity, talk show-hosts basked in urgent calls from madams and drug counselors, tabloid dailies trumpeted endless accounts of foul play. A banner headline in one of these papers first made him aware of his brutal kidnapping and eight-figure ransom. That rag’s front page featured a photograph of a much younger, much happier Vane, comfortably juxtaposed with an airbrushed photo of his father on the Aegean, a banana daiquiri in one hand and a fat cigar in the other. From this paper he also learned of John’s funeral date, and of the heart-stopping cavalcade of celebrities slated to pay their final respects. Paparazzi were warned to back off or risk arrest. Now Vane, crouching unsteadily at the gate, ripped open one end of the envelope and tore out the single, neatly folded page. Under the pink HONEY letterhead was the missive: Cristian, I’ve left your father’s crypt accessible for the night. The groundskeepers will seal it tomorrow. My heart goes out to you. I realize you’re in a tough spot, and need time to be with your thoughts. Take that time, knowing I’m handling your interests well. But you must grab the reins, no matter which course you feel is best for HONEY. And for you. Call me, Cris. Please contact me the moment you feel rested and ready. Yours, Denise Waters Below were business, home, and cell numbers. Vane lost his balance cramming the letter in his rear pocket, turned an ankle and bent back a toe. He shook his hurt foot in the air, whispering curses at the edifice. The next thing he knew he was flat on his back, arms folded across his chest. His instinct had been to save the bottle rather than his bottom. 38

Microcosmia Christian Vane had no idea how drunk he’d become. He rolled onto his stomach and clawed up the steps, jacked himself to his feet at the top. This was his first view of the mausoleum at night, and not since a teenager. The Rest’s ghastly orange-and-green interior whispered a sick Halloween welcomeback. The black granite entrance was a faultless recreation of East Portico; in John’s damaged mind his mourners would be salivating Visitors, anxious to explore the treasures within. Vane followed half-seen walls until he reached the great polished-stone staircase leading from the simulated Ballroom to the structure’s roof. He was tempted to go for it, but the imagined effort blew him right off the idea. Suddenly nauseous, he hugged an icy column, slammed along a familiar wall, and so came upon the illuminated crypt’s stairwell. Vane teetered on Top Step, blinking. When he was a boy the lights had been many, and of a buttery hue. Now they were few and irregularly spaced, emitting a muted hot-pink glow. He staggered down, bouncing against the left-hand wall for balance. The place was just as he remembered: frozen figures of satyrs and nymphs, poised behind polished stalagmites and columns. The Minotaur and unicorn, graceful and proud. And, carved from the faux-marble walls, those same detailed trees and vines in bas-relief. But now it was a stage set in Hell. The new pink lighting lent the figures a burnt hue, made the central pool a low vat of blood. Neptune still rose to protect the Raptor’s hold, but with the greater accent on shadow his eyes were empty orbits, his angry dignity a frustrated snarl. Likewise those smaller figures, once dancing in blissful ignorance, appeared as miniature lechers and whores, sneaking around pustule and pit. Capering animals had become infuriated beasts. Trees bristled with poison, vines coiled and reared. Vane stumbled to the black marble slab and forced a swallow, shuddering as a night breeze ran down the steps and up his spine. He traced his father’s engraved name with a finger, cleaning the area of dust and prints, and let his eyes surrender to the pool. The bolted-shut stone coffin appeared to be floating, waiting. Vane’s voice boomed in the stillness. “Old man? Y’home?” He stepped side to side, his bare feet peeling off the damp floor with bright flatulent sounds. “Is me, Crishun.” He rapped a knuckle on the slab. “You know,” he snarled, “your pink little . . . hot little . . . your . . . honey.” He spat the word. “I come, I guess, say goodbye.” Before he could gather a breath, his eyes and knees crossed, his spine caved. He looked around desperately. “Christ, old man! But you . . . forgive me.” One hand found the pool’s flat stone rim. Hardly aware of his actions, Vane stood the bottle upright and fumbled urgently with his fly. “Oh God, oh God, I’m so . . . so sorry.” He kept up a garbled monologue, trying to drown out the sound of his stream contributing to the pool. At last he drew back, almost losing his feet. “I die,” he vowed, “swear be least one freaking restroom . . . visitor!” He snatched up the bottle, took a careful swallow and studied the contents. Two fingers left. His eyes sizzled while the crypt did a slow pirouette. He puffed out his cheeks and tightly shut his eyes, again suppressing the urge to vomit. Tears squeezed between his lids. “You, old man, richest sons bitches . . . planet. What good you do? What your . . . goodness?” Vane clung to this one point like a man clinging to a life preserver. “What good it? What good you do it?” He stared at the hollow-eyed, gaping statuary. A satyr grinned back viciously. “All this . . . crap? Why . . . why you couldn’t better something? Some . . . body. Some . . . where!” He raised the bottle. At the liquor’s smell a hundred alarms went off in his brain. Vane released the bottle’s neck as though he‘d just picked up a rattlesnake. The bottle did not break, but rolled loudly into a wall niche. “Old man, what goodm I? What good you do me? You had . . . time. You had chance. You should . . . I should . . . greatness, old man.” Vane gulped the cold air. “You want me follow footstep. Why? So I one-up you on . . . this?” He waved an arm at the room. 39

Microcosmia Christian This? the crypt echoed. “I been busy last few day old . . . doing nothing.” Vane sat hard on the pool’s broad lip. “I hadda get away. Hadda! I hung at beach . . . no money. Slept there, panhandled, ate sack lunches . . . churches. Met all kindsa people, people who didn’t . . . y’know what, old man? Life sucks! Big surprise you. But people . . . live. Simple rules! Ethics! Friendship! Don’t just . . . don’t just buy everything. They ’dapt. They . . . sacrifices. An’ grow. In own ways . . . stronger. Not just . . . not just . . . older.” There was something else bugging him, something else he’d come to say. One minute he was searching for the words, the next he was on his knees, searching for the bottle. Once the neck was in his fist he felt better. Vane reeled back to the pool and took a breath so deep it nearly knocked him out. “What good money really do old man? I mean, did it clot . . . blood and crap squeeze out ev’ry . . . or’fice you useless old body? Make you better man . . . better man . . . wiser man. Better, better, better . . . father? When I say what good it, I mean what good it do? God damn you, old man, where’s the goodness?” Vane staggered around the pool into the ogre garden, took a gulp, spat it right back out. “ALL CRAP!” he spewed, and smashed the bottle on a shrinking fawn. As he pitched face-first onto a spiny stalagmite the place erupted. He rolled onto his back. Vane’s collapse was the call for a general uprising. That same satyr leaned over him, grinning maniacally. A buzzard the size of a roc enveloped them both in its wings. The face of a Cyclops appeared, eclipsing a crazy montage of spurting shadows and throbbing pink lights. Two whore nymphs laughed madly, tearing at their eyes. When their hands came away the sockets were bare, the eyes rolling down their melting faces. Vane tried to scream, but the satyr’s claws were at his throat. Systematically shutting down the twisted light, the shapes came together above him, silhouette marrying silhouette, until there was only a black expanse with seams bleeding pink.

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Chapter Five Karl A pair of dust devils on collision course tore across the flat desert floor, leaving matching plumes on either side of the old road linking Massawa and An’erim. Just at the point of impact, the devils gained the road, banked hard, and shot, as a single driving force, to meet a long convoy lumbering west in groups of five and ten. The convoy consisted of forty large trucks—flatbeds, reefers, and tractor trailers—and a fading tail of buses, vans, and pickups, all led by a battered silver Land Rover with a sawed-off roof. The Land Rover, named Isis, contained Cristian Vane and his translator-guide Mudahid AsafuAdjaye. As Mudahid had repeatedly, adamantly, and occasionally with passion pointed out, his name was pronounced Moo-DAH-heed. But no matter how many times Vane tried, it always came out Mudhead. Like most civilized souls in East Africa, Somali-born Mudahid was a Muslim. Though he persisted in wearing the headpiece and traditional robes of his faith, a rebellious streak allowed him to refuse to face Mecca five times a day, to drink and smoke on occasion, and to eat whatever he wanted whenever he felt like it. To be sure, in his heart Mudahid was no Muslim at all. Nor was he an outright hedonist. He straddled the fence, leaning one way and the other, his conscience forever snagged on the barbs. As a young man he’d been a longshoreman and itinerant handyman, making his way around Saudi Arabia, the Mediterranean, and the Horn of Africa. Back then he ran guns, trafficked in opium, did anything he could to survive. And he’d worked for lords of crime, and twice had to kill a man. Eventually he lost his stomach for it, found Islam, and embarked upon life’s second half as a wandering wannabe cleric and dark dreamer. The key to Islam is submission, a revolting thing to a man. But the flip side is that submission can be an endurance test, an attractive thing to a man. That was Mudahid’s edge. He embraced 41

Microcosmia Karl sacrifice and prayer like a man in solitary confinement with a barbell. And Islam made him strong, and kept him strong. He fasted and thirsted, he bowed and scraped with the best of them. He prayed himself dizzy and tithed himself dry, made his required pilgrimage to Mecca, was jostled and bruised in the Great Mosque corral. Then one day during the holy month of Ramadan, in the prime of middle age and peak of health, Mudahid, too weak for discipline and too strong for suicide, for no apparent reason broke down; pigged out, drank himself silly. He expected the consequences to be overwhelming self-hatred and abysmal depression. When he came out of it feeling more a man and less a mannequin, he began to rethink himself. He’d spent way too long mechanically worshipping Muhammad, an unknown messenger, and Allah, an unseen deity. It was time to meet Mudahid, a character certainly deserving a life of his own. Now Mudhead, at sixty-two years of age, was testing his ability to believe in anything. That waffling spirit had served as a magnet for the morbid personality of Cristian Honey Vane on the docks of Port Massawa. Other qualities made the two men gel. Mudhead, whose English was quite broken, was able to almost incidentally encapsulate Vane’s lonesome trains of thought, and so make simple sense of seemingly complex problems. This process could also be self-illuminating. As Mudhead explained his compromise with religion on that night of their meeting, over whiskey and burgers in a very-underground Port Massawa dive: “Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye can be Muslimman, still keep self. Can be Muslimman plus drink, smoke, fool around, gamble, even eat pork in pinch. Other Muslimman starve first. But Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye not robot. If Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye can pray five time day, Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye can sin five time day.” Vane saluted him that night, and gave him his new nickname. And Mudhead came to accept it as his own, though such a name could be considered a great insult in the Islamic world. The familiar use of the name Cristian, however, was a hurdle too high for a man so steeped in the Koran. Vane from then on was simply Bossman. Their glaring contrasts were complementary: Mudhead, black as coal, kindled Vane’s California glow. His spotless white robes were startlingly formal against his employer’s dirty T-shirt, khaki shorts, and grungy blue canvas deck shoes. His tiny round rimless glasses seemed almost a deliberate counterpoint to the American’s broad dark shades. Mudhead’s rigid personality brought out Vane’s latent gallows humor. Vane, in rebelling against his own dumb luck, allowed Mudhead to find justification in rebelling against his own blind faith. Vane rejected his wealth-determined status by impulsively bending whenever leadership was called for. Mudhead grimly teased Vane into being a goofy kind of B’wana, and Vane, out of his element, teased him right back by playing along. This relationship was exclusive; the men Vane hired were illiterate blacks who spoke not a word of English. They watched coldly as the friendship of Vane and Mudhead grew, seeing openness as weakness, and closeness as a mutual death throe. They hated Vane’s guts, while secretly measuring his stamina and adaptability. So alien were they to his way of thinking that he’d have believed their icy demeanor was simply their style, had not Mudhead informed him otherwise. There in the roofless Land Rover, Vane automatically leaned into his friend, who was once again completely under the spell of Sinatra. Vane’s ample CD collection was both blessing and curse; Western music kept the African occupied when Vane needed to be alone with his thoughts, but dragging Mudhead away from the headphones was like pulling a man out of rapid eye movement sleep. Now Mudhead shook him off and leaned away. After a few more seconds he removed the 42

Microcosmia Karl headphones and popped the cord out of the jack. He waited for the closing storm of All Or Nothing At All to fade out entirely before switching off the player. Mudhead then nodded vigorously while pointing out a double gleam preceding the approaching dust devils. Vane raised and repeatedly crossed his arms. The driver of the following truck, a flatbed stacked with rolled canvas tarps, made a complicated gesture out the window with his left arm. The convoy slowed to a halt. “Jeeps?” “Police,” Mudhead said shortly. “Mudahid advise Bossman handle discreet.” The devils braked laterally to block the road, plumes of dust billowing behind them. Four cops stepped out of each jeep like men looking for a brawl. These were some of the blackest blacks Vane had ever seen; Mudhead, by comparison, was a fair-skinned specimen of East African descent. They plodded around the Land Rover, slowly and with great deliberation; like sumo wrestlers sizing opponents. All were very solidly built: barrel chests, high rears, protruding bellies. The police uniform was a spotless white headpiece, bleached polo shirt and shorts, black belt, and knee-high white athletic socks under highly polished steel-toed Army boots. Only the boots and belts did not scream white. Each belt held a holstered Luger, nightstick, mace canister, dart gun, walkie-talkie, and leather-sheathed seven-inch knife. Vane could feel their unmistakable contempt for his Aryan fairness. He and Mudhead were motioned out of the Rover. The senior policeman, by his brass chevrons a captain, stepped directly in front of Vane. Two more from his vehicle, along with the other jeep’s occupants, began walking truck-to-truck, ordering trailers opened. The captain’s driver, a young bull of a man, stood smartly behind his superior, spine straight and hands gripped behind the back. It was a very military stance. The captain was older than his men by twenty years, and heavier by a good fifty pounds. Planting himself as squarely as he could, he looked the sunburned American dead-on. Vane, who had removed his dark glasses prior to stepping out of the Land Rover, had difficulty with the black pools of the captain’s shades. It was like looking into the twin barrels of a shotgun. Worse, the man’s expression was that of a cruel and very personal bully. Vane instinctively lowered his eyes, looking back up cautiously when the captain turned to follow the movements of his men. Those custom-made sunglasses, which appeared quite expensive, bore a gold engraved figure running the length of each arm. The general impression was a prone griffin, but the figure’s head belonged to an animal unfamiliar to Vane. All the policemen wore sunglasses with this gold design. The captain’s shades, however, had the distinction of bearing three tiny diamonds above the winged figure’s raised tail. “Good afternoon, officer,” Vane enunciated, minimizing the English nuances. “We’re on our way to an area called Mamuset in the Danakil. The tract was purchased by the Honey Foundation, an American entity dealing directly with Addis Ababa. We have state clearance for roads, railways, and airfields. The papers are in the glove box.” The shotgun barrels swung back until they were aimed directly at Vane’s absurdly blue eyes. The thick lips split apart. “Relax, Honey.” The voice was a basso profundo rumble. “This is not a traffic citation.” Vane inclined his head respectfully, gritted his teeth and kept silent. The sunglasses swerved to his left. The captain spent much longer on Mudhead. A loathing incomprehensible to Vane arced between the two men until the air seemed charged. At last Mudhead turned away like the meeker of two strays. The face swung back. The captain, addressing the sky, said, “I am not interested in your papers, Honey. You may be surprised to learn that we are not overwhelmingly impressed by rich Americans here. We do not follow their exploits with delight and envy. So you will perhaps show no offense if I do not seek your 43

Microcosmia Karl autograph, or beg to be photographed in your famous presence.” “I appreciate that, sir.” The great black head drew back. “Is it true that all Americans are so . . . chatty? Must they comment on an officer’s every statement, as if his words, heartfelt and well-intended, were merely tidbits to pass with the Beluga and Dom Perignon? Honey, in Africa there is time without end, but not a moment to waste on the droll and mundane.” As calculated, the captain’s command of English greatly heightened his presence. The tactic must have been terribly effective on his inferiors. “Perhaps the fight for survival, which is inherent in all creatures here, precludes us from the pleasantries of easy conversation. We in Africa do not ‘run with the mouth,’ as you Americans like to say; we come directly to the point and are done with it. This deferential reticence may seem crude and primitive to you, naked as it is of dalliance and whimsicality. Our respect is for culture, for age, and for authority. “Culture, because it is ingrained in all of us. The men and women you will encounter on this continent are steeped in ways that control every aspect of their personalities. They are not gailyjetting free spirits. “Age, because a man who has attained his later years obviously possesses the physical and psychological wherewithal needed to survive his full span. He knows the ways of Africa and he knows the ways of men. “Authority, because therein a man learns his place. If he intends to stay alive in Africa he respects authority absolutely. He knows that his Beverly Hills playmates cannot help him here. He is quietly respectful. In this way he survives another day.” The captain took a labored breath. “Evidence of your coming, and of your willingness to tamper with systems timeless and beloved, has far preceded you. I speak not of the new paved road bridging your purchased land and An’erim, but of this great pipeline across our homeland, Awash to Mamuset. For five months now we have watched this dirty plastic headache growing like a tendril.” He squeezed his hands together and rocked side to side, bettering his temper. “Now, Honey, I realize this must all seem an ugly dry waste to you. I understand you feel you are doing us an immeasurable favor by flooding a hellish crater of value to no one. Or maybe our wretchedness breeds myopia. Could it be that a swimming hole in the desert is sorely needed? In either case, I am certain your North American fans will get a real ‘kick’ out of it. They will surely see you as a most clever and sophisticated little Honey.” The captain stopped rocking. “Over those five months I have been your closest ally. Believe it or not. The land at Mamuset is essentially a fraction of my precinct, so I have protected your monster from the decent indigenous people who wish it destroyed, and who despair over your blasé trashing of a landscape that has filled the eyes of long-forgotten ancestors with a kind of love that I’m sure you would find laughable, were you able to comprehend it at all. “I did not protect this pipeline out of concern for you and your endeavors. Indeed, I have spent many nights with those decent people, sharing their fantasies of polyvinyl chloride mayhem. “But I have protected the Eyesore. I have done so because it is my job.” The captain turned slightly to the south, as though visualizing Mamuset’s new water source over seventy miles distant. “I spoke with engineers at Awash only last week. They informed me that the pipeline is complete and already under operation. As your arrival coincides with its completion, I must assume you are here to stay.” His sunglasses blazed as he turned back. “You may be surprised to learn that you, and all your trespasses, are my personal assignment. I know all about you, Honey; I know far 44

Microcosmia Karl more than I would have freely sought to know. I know that every detail of your operation is covered, and cleared, by a State Department lackey in Addis Ababa named Mohammed Tibor. I am also aware that Tibor runs under the reins of this powerful American organization that shares your name. “I am further aware that your account has been won by Banke Internationale in Addis Ababa. The figure rumored would make a conglomerate of sheiks shriek with envy. I am no spy, Honey; I flounder in the endless wake of paperwork your presence generates.” He nodded. “There is great rejoicing; not only at the bank, but in our government—the enterprises of a powerful American are dug everywhere into Ethiopian soil. The red carpet hungers for his feet. There is even speculation his appearance may prove an auger toward happier relationships between his country and mine. There seems nothing to stand in his way here.” He hammered his fist on his palm. “Every aspect of his operation is legal and one hundred percent aboveboard. As a man of law I see this and am pleased. But as a son of Ityop’iya I see this and am haunted by nightmares of losing myself. “In these nightmares I become a crazed black beast seeking the throat of anything rich, blond, and foreign. These are very troubling dreams, Honey; they will not allow me a moment’s sleep.” The captain dismissed him with a turn of the head. “Fortunately, there is bicarbonate of soda.” He glared at Mudhead, praying the African would speak. A minute later he strolled off, head held high and hands behind his back. Vane’s whole body caved. “Thank goodness he went straight to the point.” Mudhead spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Bossman be glad. Captain like.” “It’s that stinking rich, devil-may-care charm. So what now, Sacagawea? It sure doesn’t look like he likes you.” Mudhead shrugged. “Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye know too much.” “You’ve got something on him?” “Not thing he sure. Bossman see fancy sunglass, little gold lion on arm?” “Sure. Nice shades.” “Shade not nice shade. Man wear shade belong Armaan. Armaan strongman. Do what want, take what want. Anything go down Ethiopia, Armaan get piece.” “Oh, cut it out, Mudhead. They’re cops; cops in the desert. Just wearing a uniform doesn’t make a man a Nazi. If the government of Ethiopia was as corrupt as you think, they’d just cut our throats, take our stuff, and be done with us.” “Bossman,” Mudhead said solemnly, “in Africa throat sometime cut little bit at time.” They stood in the sun for the better part of an hour. At last the captain strolled back to Isis with a hide-lined clipboard in his big hand. “An interesting manifest. My men have thoroughly inspected your cargo, and I find myself much perplexed. Frozen whole foods in the refrigerated trailers. On two of the flatbeds are what appear to be several hundred canvas tents or the like, tightly rolled and stacked along with pallet upon pallet of some kind of . . .” he underlined the description with a forefinger as he read, “. . . ‘hollow square steel bars with regularly spaced holes drilled on all sides.’ Additionally, we have uncovered, in one forty-eight foot trailer, a pair of speaker cabinets, each at least a dozen feet high, and a maze of sophisticated sound equipment crammed between very powerful amplifiers and generators.” He looked back up. “You are perhaps planning a concert for the Danakil, Honey? Afar-aid? And are we invited to the party?” Vane ground his teeth. The captain glanced at Mudhead, absorbed in a ruminative study of the sun. 45

Microcosmia Karl “Excellent. We will bring our own beer. Now, I have not mentioned the school buses full of students from the universities in Gondar and Addis Ababa, nor the vans stocked with nurses and doctors. The former are typical fresh-faced liberals excited to be members of your entourage, the latter respectable professionals with credentials from institutions in at least four countries. There are also to be noted a tanker truck porting a thousand gallons of gasoline, and a truck hauling a propane tank the size of a small submarine. Running almost as an afterthought is the train of pickup trucks loaded with bags of cement. “Again, everything is aboveboard.” The captain backpedaled six feet and stood with his legs wide and his hands clasped casually behind his back, one corner of the clipboard showing at his hip. His great belly preceded him, the muscles of his heavy legs bunching and relaxing as he effortlessly raised and lowered himself with his toes. Despite the massiveness of his midsection and rear, there was nothing fat about the man, at least not in the sense Vane had known back home. The captain was like a huge blind bullfrog using its senses to target gnats. They stood in the equatorial sun forever. Mudhead appeared unaffected, but Vane’s eyelids were drooping. His shoulders sagged, his back screamed for a break. He was sure he’d faint any second. The captain clicked his heels sharply. “Your cargo is in order, sir. I hope our humble country will not be too great a disappointment.” His men strode to their jeeps, staring back with open hostility. The captain came up nose-to-nose. Sweat was pouring off Vane’s face. “Enjoy your stay, Honey. You may photograph, but not touch, the lepers. Avoid those afflicted with elephantiasis, typhus, AIDS, and either the pneumonic or bubonic form of African plague. Carrion birds are not for hunting. They perform a very important function in our ecosystem. Kindly confine yourself to bird watching.” He half-turned, stopped, and turned back, this time standing nose-to-nose with Mudhead while addressing Vane. “Also, Honey, I would be derelict were I not to warn you about your crew. As you are new here, your ignorance is excusable.” He sprayed saliva in Mudhead’s face with each exhalation. Mudhead did not move. “The men driving your trucks are exclusively Shankili. This is very singular. Yet I cannot hold you responsible for your hiring practices. I am sure that to you all Africans look the same. “All Africans are not the same. “A continent this immense produces a tremendous variety of types, all with enduring allegiances. A newcomer’s indigenous confidant would be fully aware of these differences. He would make sure his employer hired only reputable drivers. “As this is not the case, I would find it entirely forgivable were his employer to take drastic measures.” The captain turned. He took his time walking back to the jeep. When he was comfortably aboard, his driver threw it in first, then floored it while playing with the clutch. The second jeep followed suit. Pounds of dust blew over the American and his guide. The double-plume tore off into the desert. “Shankili?” Vane coughed. Mudhead’s expression was hurt. “Shankiliman drive good anyman else. Bossman ask Mudahid find many driver. Each man tell friend. Friend tell friend. All show on dock, Bossman hire.” He dusted himself down. “Bossman not be impress by police. Captain scared, or never mention Shankiliman.” Mudhead thought about it a minute, seeking an apt comparison. “Africa tribe, caste, class, equal America neighborhood, religion, race. Ethnic group. Man over time learn neighbor way; 46

Microcosmia Karl become neighbor. Neighbor have enemy, that enemy now enemy man number one. Everyman have allegiance.” “Gangs,” Vane muttered. Mudhead raised an eyebrow. “Muslimman no gangman. Holy brotherhood. But captain try say Africa root run deep. Prick modernman, wake savageman. Allman same only democracy. In Africa Lubjaraman smell Wambetsuman. Wambetsuman feel Oromoman. All look same Westernman. But all same, all different.” “Thanks for clarifying.” They climbed into Isis. “No problem, Bossman. No worry Africa mosaic. Westernman think too much. Try pet lion. Lion bite Westernman nose off. Westernman wonder how he offend lion.” Mudhead shook his head gravely. “Africaman see lion, give lion space. Lion respect man, man respect lion. This what captain try say Bossman: respect authority, captain not bite nose off. Save captain trouble. So here be respectful Africaman, not disrespectful Western richboyman. Then everyman have space. Plenty space Ethiopia.” “True,” Vane sighed as they bumped along. “Plenty of space.” In certain places the old road was so potted even the Land Rover had trouble. At impasses the volunteers made shade while the doctors huddled. Drivers rolled out the Caterpillar and other earth moving equipment. During these breaks Mudhead would clamp on the headphones and blow his mind with psychedelic rock while Vane took long walks with his notebook and binoculars. The drought’s signature was everywhere. Acacia and mimosa were in shock, their fronds and spines blanched and desiccated. Dik-diks peered out of the scrub, much leaner and less energetic than expected. Once they were back in gear Vane would take a bushel’s worth of snapshots with his Nikon, his wanderlust still blinding him to the miserable state of his surroundings. But an ugly silence grew outside the convoy’s persistent rumble. Along the Kobar’s rim, small villages lined the road like beggars; they were merely thatched ghost towns. Inhabited sites became rarer, tribesmen increasingly lethargic, crops nonexistent. Soon human remains showed amidst the bones of cattle and sheep. The air, suffocating the desert like a great blanket, grew perceptibly hotter as they approached the Depression. Vane dozed off and on, the great master plan burning on the back of his eyelids. In his imagination he looked down at Mamuset as though at a snapshot, raptly revisiting his one long glimpse from a rented Cessna. Prior to that flyover he’d been following the conduit’s progress along its tortuous seventy miles-plus course, taking notes and making rough drawings in charcoal. The pipeline below was of PVC tubing with a six foot bore, cemented in lengths varying from eighteen to thirty-two feet. The whole affair rested in a seemingly endless, constantly zigzagging ditch, supported by cross-struts positioned every twelve feet, and protected from sun and blowing sand by a series of tent-like canvas sheaths. The canvas, so as not to scream the rich American‘s presence, was dyed in tones of the great Ethiopian desert. In places frequented by herders, the Honey Foundation had provided equally inconspicuous prefabricated bridges capable of supporting both nomad and stock. There in the bucking Rover, Vane’s mental snapshot gradually took on depth and perspective, becoming an expanding relief map, a revolving fish-eye chart viewed from all sides, and finally a topographical model partitioned by grid lines extending well beyond his visual periphery. He looked down on a huge, partly-bisected crater, its floor as absolutely flat as the desert without, scrunched in the heart of a dead, nearly featureless plain. The ridge making up the crater’s rim, smoothed over the ages by heavy seasonal rains, was at present barely a hundred feet at its highest point, less than forty 47

Microcosmia Karl at the lowest. Those life-giving rains were no-shows for several years now; the Mamuset crater was dry as a kiln in Hell. But when the region was active it would annually fill into a startlingly anomalous lake. One section of the rim facing the Red Sea had eroded in several places, allowing the site to drain, like everything else in the area, to the east. During his flyover Vane had observed his excavators aggressively rebuilding that section with cement and steel. North and west of Mamuset are the broad highlands of Ethiopia. Brutal desert stretches to the south, ancient volcanic peaks and the fifty mile-wide swath of Eritrea, backed by the Red Sea, to the north and east. Southeast is a glistening, 2,000-square mile bed of salt, Lake Assale, in places over three miles thick. Farther south runs a dirty blue worm known as the River Awash. The whole wretched area north of that worm is the Danakil Desert, home of the Great Danakil Depression. In this place all waterways die; rolling water simply surrenders to earth and sun, never reaching the Sea. Daytime temperatures can reach 145 degrees. Vane caught himself drifting. He refocused on the crater. His memory took a shy peek inside . . . there were thousands of scrawny black people in there, staring up fearfully at his buzzing little Cessna! Jesus. Were they hiding from him, or were they waiting for him? And who the hell was he to come sneaking overhead, anyway? He relaxed as he saw all that heavy equipment, mere toys from his altitude, efficiently creating the project’s foundation. He was their savior, the great white miracle worker. Vane wanted to be sick. And again he saw the intermittent stream of planes, camels, and small trucks bringing survival supplies and medicine. Not enough, not nearly enough. His skin crawled with the closing miles. With the pipeline operational and the project actually under way, he was finally out of distractions and forced to face reality: at some strange forgotten point he had determined, for some strange forgotten reason, to take a healthy sample of a foreign population and experiment with its destiny as though the conscientious, spiritual, plans-and-dreams members were mere laboratory rats. It had looked good on paper. All the parts came together smoothly to form a seamless, entirely workable blueprint. The imagined participants followed instructions without question while Vane, the invisible benign overseer, boldly forged ahead in complete disregard of the human element. But now he was sweating. Young Christian had been raised to believe that it was his obligation to dream big, and that, so long as he remained true to this inherent commitment, he could go out with a bang or a fizzle, and bring the rest of the planet right along with him. Yet, because of that very upbringing, he couldn’t genuinely care. To Cristian Honey Vane, people were just bugs; flitting here, crawling there. To his great credit, he didn’t see himself as anything greater. He was simply another bug, doomed to be crushed and recycled. The difference was in his schooling. He could crawl along with the best of them, while another aspect of his consciousness looked on indifferently, noting patterns and postures. In this sense he was very unbuglike. Somewhere along the line Vane had, by some fuzzy extension of that distant schooling, begun to envision his bugs as permanent tenants on a large level field, and seen himself as a similarly situated insect. And he had begun visualizing this imaginary field as though from a cloud. The field was partitioned as an enormous grid, from the cloud appearing as a mesh screen. Vane’s imagination could zoom on the Grid, telescopic and wide, allowing him to check fine points or study overall. And so his utopia was constructed from on high, in advance of his presence. Vane’s coign of vantage was about thirty degrees off the horizontal plane, looking almost dead east. From this vantage point the Mamuset experiment lay before him as an expanded chessboard. That imagined chessboard appeared to stretch without end, its most distant squares showing tinier and tinier still, until they faded to black in the low rim’s hazy embrace. (It was easiest to systematize such a vast projected community using the typical chessboard arrangement of alternating light and 48

Microcosmia Karl dark squares, rather than visualizing all squares an identical shade). The Mamuset community would have five thousand Squares in all. A block of a hundred Squares comprised a Sector. These fifty communal Sectors of one hundred Squares apiece would take up the eastern half of the crater, as defined by the partlybisecting hilly ridge. An equivalent tract to the west would be given over to cultivated Fields. Mamuset, the community, would therefore be a single site divided into five thousand equal sub-sites. Those sub-site Squares would each be fifty feet by fifty feet, or twenty-five hundred square feet. Vane had to step back, figuratively, to comfortably imagine Sectors. But at each corner of each Sector he visualized a blank Square. These were Utility Squares. There would be four per Sector, one at each Sector corner. Each would serve a quarter of the Sector, or a total of twenty-four Squares. The quarter-Sectors would be known as Quadrants, or Quads. And, since each Sector would have a Utility Square at each corner, the common corner of four Sectors would be a grouping of four Utility Squares: Utility Quads, or UQs. Mamuset would contain fifty UQs, or two hundred Utility Squares, in all. Utility Squares were to be storage areas. Each Utility Square would house the twenty-four sets of implements for its Sector’s Quad, along with water reserves, fodder, fertilizer, seeds, etc. Strings of solar panels situated on arbors above Utility Squares would charge banks of batteries for Street lamps. Streets were the ten-foot-wide, crisscrossing ways separating Squares. Mamuset would require no fences; each Square would have a Street on every side. The success of this entire concept relied on a crucial, untested notion: If a man’s neighbors were to copy his competent efforts step-for-step, then a number of equivalent copies of his project would be produced. Additionally, if these neighbors’ efforts were, in turn, copied by their neighbors, a multitude of surrounding copies, mirroring the best efforts of the original, would be produced. The ripple effect would, in theory, eventually produce a community of copies that were functionally and aesthetically as stable or unstable as the prototype; Mamuset was to be the sum of thousands of independent attempts to mimic a single effort. Practically speaking, if ground zero was the ideal, the standard would be a diminishing return relative to that prototype, with the outskirts harboring those copies of highest imperfection. In time the rough edges would be smoothed. The Ideal would spread ever outward, until the plain was absolutely level, not only spatially but qualitatively. Cristian Vane’s completed project would be a perfect multicellular organism, cooperative, disinterested, functional; an organism evolved in real time on the example of a prototypical Square. And Vane would be the architect of that prototypical Square. He knew he could do it, because he’d spent weeks creating and recreating one on a godforsaken field in Arizona, under the watchful eyes of six hired engineers, a trio of Arizona State professors, and a Texan fitness trainer-nutritionist. Those engineers and professors, using Vane’s raw ideas, had hammered out a step-by-step plan, and educated him on everything from structural dynamics to pH systems and micronutrients. They designed a basic domicile for the intense conditions of Danakil, and referred Vane to Army specialists who gave him the skinny on survival techniques in arid extremes. And he’d boned up on physical and emotional tolerances, studied nutrition and personal irrigation, learned basic first aid procedures and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The radical differences in adaptive constitution were striking; despite their gaunt and moribund appearance, these desert people were far hardier than he. The big leap for the indigenous population would be learning to settle down. They were born to wander. Vane saw it as his challenge to entice them to settle, and as his mission to save them from themselves. 49

Microcosmia Karl He had a mind-boggling fortune at his disposal, and was unshakably ensconced in a philosophy of education by reiteration. He’d been schooled by Karl, an unexceptional, but terribly persistent man. Karl’s method had been to present a new fact each new day, and incorporate that fact into an old lesson. He began with the mansion, his house, and moved on to the solar system, with every lesson including house. If teaching an adjective or noun, that adjective or noun would have to pertain, even by extension, to the mansion. It was a great house on a greater world, in the greatest universe of all. Karl, quite naturally, exploited the carousel library. He advanced systematically, grandiloquently describing how all things revolved around the mansion, until, one typically awkward day, he stumbled upon Copernicus. Humility did not come to the former fullback without a fight. There, in that candy-striped carousel under the broad live oak, he impressed upon little Christian that, although all men are but motes in the insufferable scheme of things, certain individuals are bound, by propitious circumstance, to take a larger role than that assigned to the common man. These predestined individuals have a duty to repay this gift by working beyond their selves. It is they who map the universe. It is they who make the world turn, while the bugs run over it, ignorant of its greatness. Unfortunately this was not Aristotle tutoring young Alexander; in this case the sculptor was unworthy of his clay. Defining the universe became the toughest job of Karl’s life. He proceeded, understandably, from the clear and present to the humbling bounds of perception, only to find that, like all men of average intelligence, he was utterly incapable of grasping the concept of infinity, a word introduced by Socrates and blown to pieces by Webster. Yet his damnable persistence kept him at it. It became central to his cause that his little pupil, destined for greatness, fully understand that single, paramount concept. The boy had to be infused with the all-encompassing cognizance that would elevate him, psychologically, above mere bugs. Of course Karl’s pursuit of infinity was hopeless. His normal, healthy brain, designed by nature to deal with the physical world via the senses, automatically revolted at abstractions. But the man was persistent. He began haunting book stores and municipal libraries, demanding to see space maps. When the stupid people lost patience with his awkward verbiage, Karl resorted to gestures and expressions to convey his meaning, but received nothing profounder than children’s pictorial charts of constellations. Still he went back for more, coming away with material that was evermore sophisticated. These new tomes only confused him further. Karl eventually came to the conclusion that, wherever it was, Infinity was a place nobody was in any kind of hurry to get to any time soon. By now his poor, persistent brain was beginning to smolder. When inevitably he recognized he could scratch an abstraction no further, his attention did a complete about-face and hurtled toward home where it belonged. Karl trudged back to the carousel library for the last time, stomping on bugs all the way. His new pursuit led him to the zodiac, and thence to the celestial sphere. Nights he would wonder aloud, staring upward lost in thought, muttering crabbily while the boy watched him dreamily, sleepy eyes falling. Karl was flustered by the idea of people and animals making up the constellations. In the first place, he found such descriptions absurd: those stellar patterns could have been anything, they could have been nothing. In the second place, they were curiously inactive for beings. He finally concluded, rightly, that they were just a lot of dumb stars encumbered by the perpetual silliness of human imagination. The celestial sphere was a concept more comforting than the Copernican system, for simple Karl’s soul was yearning for the geocentric. He’d come to realize that no inns await the spacewalker. Azimuthal maps were even closer to his heart. But curvature frustrated him in ways he couldn’t 50

Microcosmia Karl understand. The very mathematical, very martial, very flat structure of a football field had been branded on his subconscious. That reliable grid-iron had been the sole focus of his youthful ideals and discipline. Thinking hadn’t been so important then. The coach took care of all that nonsense. What had been important was persistence. When Karl first seriously studied a world wall map he had an experience akin to a spiritual revelation. The lines of longitude and latitude were like a pair of gridirons, one overlaid perpendicular to the other. From this vantage it was easy to dispense with the confounding nuisance of true spatial dynamics, and visualize the grid as proceeding in four directions to that funny place called Infinity. Furthermore, he reckoned that any depiction of a grid could be understood to be simply a fraction of a larger grid. This concept could even be illustrated by including a little arrowhead at the terminus of each longitudinal and latitudinal line, thereby depicting continuity. Excitedly, he drew these arrow-tipped grid lines over and over in the dirt with a stick while little Christian watched on hands and knees. Karl had done it. He had mapped the universe. More important, he’d begun to extrapolate inversely, making his grid, sans arrowheads, representative of an ever smaller area. Finally the grid became, by diminution, no longer perceivable as a grid at all. Karl shared his frustration with Christian, incidentally encouraging the boy to ponder the imponderable. He ranted and raved over paradoxes for weeks in his futilely persistent way. Christian, wanting to please, stayed out of his way and timidly approached Euclid for perspective. Karl fried his brain trying to visualize a grid smaller than small, then smallest of all. At last he tromped up to Christian triumphantly, tears in his eyes. He jabbed the stick in the ground and plucked it free, revealing a single point. Karl had done it again. He had defined finitude. From then on, Christian’s place in the universe was the centermost square of any grid. But the cosmos did not revolve around him. It went beyond him, in four directions. Those points were the principle points of the compass. Karl demonstrated how the mansion, as a physical extension of the boy, could also be placed in the central square. He used a bright red hotel off a Monopoly board to represent the mansion. And during that same demonstration he took a jar full of beetles and attempted to place one in each surrounding square. Some of the bugs froze in place, others scampered off in all directions. Enraged by this revolt, Karl stamped savagely, smashing the insects and obliterating his grid. Christian took this very hard, carnage being a far more powerful lesson than math. For the next demonstration, Karl first suffocated the beetles. These good bugs stayed put. But Christian cried again, and himself destroyed the latest grid in the dirt, running, for some reason, to the ready arms of Karl’s nemesis Megan. And so the tutor learned from his pupil. Karl watched the boy from the live oak’s shade, knowing he was unequal to his task. But he knew one thing else. He would persist.

51

Chapter Six An’erim “An’erim,” Mudhead coughed. Vane sat up and reached for his binoculars. An’erim, a military outpost abandoned by the Italians in 1941, was all but history; faded, collapsed, corroded by time and seasonal torrents. Over the decades the cement-and-brick buildings on the white mound of naked rock had dissolved like sand castles, leaving a single burned-out, roofless structure of crumbling stone at the mound’s base—sitting right where the wretched old road ended and Vane’s handsome new, paved road began. Clumped about this heap were a few ragged army tents, a pair of lean-to sheds, and several dry huts constructed of thatch on flexed and bound sticks. Stepping up the mound’s east face were regularly spaced hovels, each a bit larger than its predecessor, the largest of all sagging on the crown. Vane twirled a languid hand. “Crazyman church,” Mudhead explained. “Christ In Box.” Vane cleaned his sunglasses on his T-shirt. “That’s downright sad. What a feeble statement.” “Worse. Corpse farm.” In the open squatted a battered jeep, the rusting centerpiece for a dusty display of rickety wooden wagons. Leaning inward, like charred sticks stacked in a campfire, a number of jet-black men and women waited in a crowd of naked children, mesmerized by the approaching convoy. These were classic famine specimens; the adults emaciated and lethargic, the children all outsized heads and distended bellies. One man now broke from his spell and loped like a great gangly water spider to the standing structure’s doorway. He thrust his head around a hanging canvas sheet. A tanned arm swept the sheet aside, and a blond man looked out with an odd expression. He was in his late forties, lean, wearing a light sleeveless khaki jumpsuit and dirty tennis shoes. His face swung from Isis to the trailing vehicles and back. He stepped out slowly. As the Land Rover pulled up he approached with 52

Microcosmia An’erim his hand extended. “Good afternoon, sir, good afternoon! And welcome to the Church of Christ Compassionate.” The blond head cocked. “American, are you? I’m not used to such treats. Name’s Lyle Preston.” “Cristian Vane.” Their handshake was neutral. Preston smiled. “Christian? What a marvelous surname.” Vane did not return the smile. “An unfortunate homophone, Mr. Preston. I’m afraid I don’t share your views.” He stirred the dirt. “Yes, I’m an American. I’m on my way to a tract I’ve purchased in the Danakil Depression. Except for some desert cops, you’re our first sign of civilization.” He looked around. Those structures stepping up the slope were strange little buildings of scrap tin, appearing as unstable as houses of cards. Each bore a large white cross painted on either side of a single doorway. The large structure on the summit had a sunken spired roof. Leaning west on that roof was a cross constructed of long sticks tied into bundles. Preston seemed distracted. “You say you . . . you purchased land in the Depression? Whatever for, sir? And all these trucks . . . I—for a minute there I was hoping . . .” He licked his cracked lips. “As it stands, those policemen you ran into are not exactly our link to survival. They are Muslims of the worst sort.” He made this statement frankly, indifferent to Mudhead in his bleached white robes. “Still, we are holding our own, Mr. Vane.” Preston raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t, perchance, be related to the ‘California Vains’?” This was the tabloids’ pet name for those shady packs of Residents captured incidentally in Rest photographs. Vane bowed ironically. “The very same. I didn’t know you received those gossip rags out here.” Preston returned the bow. “And you arrive as . . . what—a speculator? You’re surveying? You’ve obviously brought a lot of equipment. There is little to mine in the Danakil other than salt, and the Afar have preceded you in that regard by a factor of some centuries.” “Let’s just say,” Vane just said, “that we’re engaged in charitable work. Similar to yours, but with dissimilar motivation.” “Really? What motivation could one have in this place other than saving the Lord’s children?” Vane, bowing deeper, clicked his rubber heels. “I can only respond, Mr. Preston, by repeating that I do not share your religious convictions. My motivation in addressing these people stems from a concern for their bodies rather than for their so-called souls.” Preston tilted his head side to side, his expression one of intense concentration. Suddenly his eyes were on fire. “It’s you!” He got right in Vane’s face. “You’re the one responsible for all those caravans! That light plane! The road pavers! You . . . Mamuset. How blind of me!” He rocked back as though measuring Vane for a punch. Little by little the tension passed from his frame. “Well, well, well. I’ve wanted to come face to face with you, in the worst way, for the last six months.” Vane recovered his balance. “What’s your problem, man? I don’t even know you.” “But I know you.” Preston unclenched his fists and closed his eyes. When he looked back up he was all conciliation. “Perhaps you misapprehend me, sir. Perhaps you misapprehend our church. We do dearly love these people.” Stuck for words, Vane rolled his shoulders and tried to relax. After a moment he said levelly, “I respect that. You’re a survivor. I sincerely applaud your temerity.” Preston plunged his hands into his jumpsuit’s pockets. “Please follow me, Mr. Vane. I am your host, so you must allow me the honor of being your guide. And as for temerity, let us just say that a real strength arises from conviction.” He tipped his head. “And I would suppose that an analogous strength comes from . . . inestimable wealth.” 53

Microcosmia An’erim Vane’s blood was still up. “Great wealth, Mr. Preston, used with great moral conviction, can produce great results.” He waved a hand irritably. “Real results, far surpassing those produced by great religious conviction. Concrete results.” Preston’s smile was patronizing. “Greatness, sir, is not of this world.” “I,” Vane said curtly, “disagree.” He rolled his shoulders and changed the subject. “Mister Preston, what are these structures, and especially that larger one situated above us? I take it to be, by the cross on its roof, your physical church, as opposed to ‘Church’ in the sense of your organization?” “Not so.” The men began climbing a worn path. “That edifice is the most important building in this compound.” Preston measured his words, eyeing the path thoughtfully. “We in the Church of Christ Compassionate have made several small compromises in our work here, Mr. Vane. The spiritual composition of contemporary Ethiopia includes Muslims of both the orthodox and the selfserving varieties, latter and modern day Christians, and countless animist communities caught up in barbarous indigenous practices. Those people we serve are primarily animists, and they have real problems dealing with monotheism.” He waved an arm. “The structures we are passing—these minor hovels and sheds—represent certain portals in a gradual climb to salvation.” “These sheds are steps in a gradation?” “. . . only in a physical sense.” “Then I take it this grade—this physical ascent—represents the climb out of their dark, primitive religion to your bright, sophisticated one?” “You have an annoying obsession with symbols.” “I don’t erect ’em,” Vane muttered. “So what’s the compromise of your Church?” “The compromise is that we compromise at all. Ideally the road back to Nazareth should not be an untested one, but this bleak country necessitates certain illuminating stops along the way. These people are being saved here. It is not the road that is important, Mr. Vane. It’s the destination.” “Saved whether they like it or not? Saved whether they understand it or not?” “They,” Preston said with exaggerated patience, “are being saved. A road need not be traveled by a limousine to be traveled successfully.” Vane’s eyes slid away. “Nor need it be lined with psalms and promises.” They halted at the summit, independently studying the desert beyond. It was clear to both men that they simply didn’t get on. “This structure, then,” Vane went on distantly, “is symbolic of what?” He caught himself. “And I’m using the word symbolic in deference to all we’ve discussed, Mr. Preston, and not out of disrespect. It’s where they learn of monotheism, of Christianity? Of Jesus?” “Yes. Yes and no. It’s where they leave behind not only their primitive beliefs but their clinging selves.” The view was spectacular: perhaps a mile away sprawled a huge, almost circular depression dotted with clumsy wooden structures and markers, backed by a hundred square miles of rolling desert. Even from this distance Vane could see an occasional wandering black stick-figure. “This,” Preston said, indicating the leaning structure’s caving doorway, “is the Way of Christ. It is where those wayfaring men and women, starved and smitten by plague and stone, have risen, through the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, to surrender their sins into the loving Arms of our father God in Heaven.” “Amen,” Vane said drearily. “So this is where they’re brought to die?” “No-o-o . . . this is where they are brought to be born!” Vane noticed a winding path leading from the distant cemetery’s entrance to An’erim’s far side and continuing, presumably, to an exit at the rear of the structure. “In one door and out the other.” He 54

Microcosmia An’erim and Preston sauntered back down the path, small in the dust and sun. It was Preston who broke the silence. “Mister Vane . . . the famine of ’83 and ’84 was responsible for the deaths of millions in Ethiopia, despite independent charity groups, and despite the best humanitarian efforts of Europe and America. Massive quantities of food and medical supplies went nowhere. Some of the kindest, mostcaring individuals one could ever pray to meet bled and wept themselves dry in a passionate attempt to control it. Only time and the love of God preserved this place. But the cycle goes on, and our Maker does not apply His healing touch willy-nilly. I am certain the disaster unfolding about us right now will dwarf even the Great Plague of London. And I am sure, too, that every man doing the Lord’s work here, no matter how paltry the effects of his labors may seem, is doing infinitely more than all you sunshine altruists combined, and more than all those governmental bodies merely seeking to apportion surpluses.” Vane halted mid-stride. “Preston, blind aid is, in my opinion, the practical equivalent of blind faith. In one sense I agree with you wholly. But now listen to this, and mark me well, as I’m not likely to repeat it. I am not a sentimental hands-wringer, here to kiss the poor darlings and make them better. Nor am I, as everybody seems to think, a bored rich boy playing chess using the dying for pawns. What I intend to do here is not about me, it’s about Principle. I realize that, as a mere mortal, I can’t significantly affect the big picture. There are famines in India and China and in other parts of Africa. Always have been, always will be. I can’t fix this planet. But for the short time I’m on it I can use the tremendous opportunity of my inheritance to make a difference, if even in a small way. Who knows; maybe I can set a precedent, maybe I can serve as an example. Or maybe I’ll fall flat on my face. But at least I’ll have tried.” “And maybe, Mr. Vane, maybe you’ll take down a whole lot of people with you. Life is not an experiment in free will at all. It’s an extension of God’s will. Besides,” he sniffed, “not everybody has the opportunity, or the audacity, to tamper with ordained systems.” “All the more reason for those who do to energetically apply themselves. As long as their motives are good.” “The motives of man, unless they are solely aligned with those of God, are inherently selfish. It is man’s very selfishness that prevents him from seeing himself as selfish.” Vane conceded the point. “It’s a shame. It’s always a shame. But you solve problems by addressing them realistically. Not by pontificating and proselytizing.” “Your appreciation of this ‘problem,’ as you put it, defines the narrowness of your scope. This ‘problem’ allows you to philosophize about a modern tragedy. This ‘problem’ allows you to minimize a calamity rearing upon the Horn of Africa like a tsunami.” “An ‘Act of God,’ Mr. Preston?” Preston ignored him. “Let me give you an idea of what life in Africa is really like. “Back when our church was still setting up, a terrible drought took this land. We at Christ Compassionate witnessed an extraordinary plague of grasshoppers coming out of Sudan, darkening the sky for miles, as deep as it was wide. All crops had failed by this time, and little remained but stunted acacia and shriveled euphorbia, yet this terrible storm came on; ravenous, relentless. There was nowhere we could run, sir, nowhere at all. We cringed inside our trucks with the windows tightly closed, crammed into one another like pranking college kids stuffed in a phone booth. The day was absolutely black. Hour upon hour we remained there, buried under a constant stream of hammering grasshoppers. The sound was like that of an endless hailstorm. The insects would spatter on our truck’s roof and their slimy corpses roll down the glass. Some had already died of starvation in their final blind descent, others appeared to be cannibalizing the dead. 55

Microcosmia An’erim “After the plague had passed we exited our vehicles into a nightmare world of barren trees and dead grasshoppers. The beasts had stripped the bark from the acacias in their frenzy. The ground was slippery with their bodies. A bloody, chitinous slime coated everything, clogging the trucks’ grilles and vents, oozing over anything solid. And in the east the great frantic cloud could still be seen, its extremes dipping and rising surreally, like the slowly flapping wings of a gigantic passing wraith. As we drove on we came upon the bodies of wildlife, and then of people, buried under mounds of these dead and dying insects. Squirming green humps for graves. We could only bless the fallen and truck them to a common burial site between Mekele and Gondar, where an entire string of villages had been denuded by the storm. No hurricane has ever been so thorough.” “A rude Ethiopian baptism.” “This was before we had begun the long haul into the Northern Highlands. Our party, as you see it now, was originally distributed among various tribes, working most where they were needed most. But as the effects of the drought increased and famine became widespread, tribes began to break up into family units that wandered off on their own, in desperate pursuits of sustenance. This is one of the great tragedies of lack of organization, Mr. Vane. What little support the government is willing to provide for its pastoral population is rendered academic by said tribes’ timeless habits and cultures. In a country so vast it is difficult to reach them, if they can even be located. Those who wander of course die, and those who remain under the umbrella of some kind of tribal leadership simply die a little slower. Many people have for time immemorial followed a nomadic existence based upon moving their camels and cattle from watering hole to watering hole. Most of those holes are now dried up. The beasts are skin and bones, the owners dull, wizened stickmen. Our Church intervened whenever possible. Utilizing a spotter plane, we were able to locate those sites best able to water their animals, and so led many thousands of these nomads in great caravans, using our vehicles as guides and maintaining tight radio contact. Otherwise we would certainly have become lost. The people were docile. Ages-old tribal conflicts were forgotten in their common need. For a time there I began to believe I could actually make a difference.” Preston spread his arms. “The ultimate site to which all these needy people were led is perhaps three miles north of us.” “I know of it. A series of rank pools growing feebler by the day.” “Its present state is immaterial. When we first elected to make it the permanent site of our Church there was more than enough for brute and nomad, and all signs pointed to a huge assemblage of tribes living as one under the loving eye of God. But these people soon began to diverge and follow their old ways, wandering off in their hundreds to watering places they have visited regularly, cyclically, over many generations.” Preston stamped the ground for emphasis. “Mr. Vane, these people were well aware their traditional sites were exhausted! They knew—their elders knew—that they were committing suicide when they began their treks. But they went! To this day their customs hold sway over even the most basic instincts of self-preservation. This, Mr. Vane, greater than any logistical or financial struggle you may find yourself facing, will be your real undoing here. You will never be able to cause these people to behave in a manner that runs contrary to their adaptive programming. For you, educated and rational Westerner that you no doubt are, sir, will be confounded over and over by a phenomenon too simple for a plain man to comprehend. Time and again, Mr. Vane, you will lead the horses to water. But only in Jesus will their thirst truly be slaked.” He rolled his shoulders squarely. “Their husks are expendable.” “Their ‘husks’ are not expendable! Man—you almost make it sound like you prefer these people in a weakened, more pliable state.” Preston drew himself erect. “That’s either a clumsy attempt at levity or a direct insult.” “Then why aren’t you taking a hard line with the government? Why aren’t you clamoring for 56

Microcosmia An’erim supplies? Why aren’t you working to relocate these people? What’s wrong with this picture, Preston? If you really cared you’d be directing them my way, instead of ushering them up to your little morgue. Your operation here isn’t Godly. It’s ghoulish.” Preston said through his teeth, “In case you haven’t noticed, this country is at war with the nation next door. The government of Ethiopia will not be bothered. I couldn’t begin to tell you how I’ve begged for assistance, or how many I’ve watched die; men, women, and children.” He snapped his fingers. “But you become inured to it. You see God rearranging His clay and you cease attempting to stay His hand. Meanwhile, the Word gets around. Would you have these people arrive and not find salvation? Do you think their own government cares a whit for their salvation? What more would you have us do here?” “Fight for them,” Vane said. “Fight for their lives. Focus on their natural drives, their tenacity. Feed them and educate them. Encourage them to fend for their selves. Fear for their blood and their breath and every jot of nervous energy they can manage. Marvel at each twitch and tingle, at every gleam of perception. Worry about their hides. Let your god worry about their souls.” “Bravo, Mr. Vane. Bravely spoken. But feed them what? Dirt and promises? You see what we have to work with. I’ve argued like a lunatic for supplies. When I saw your convoy I thought for sure my pleas had been answered.” He shook his head angrily. “Instead I suddenly find myself with a rich hippie for a neighbor. No offense,” he said, and his expression was anything but inoffensive, “but your intentions as I understand them, no matter how well-meaning, can only disrupt the work of our church and divert these innocent people from receiving the Lord’s Word at the most important moment of their lives.” That did it. “The ‘most important moment of their lives?’ Y’know, Preston, people like you really make me sick. Men like you will step on anything and anybody to achieve their personal or corporate goals.” “And do you know what, Mr. Vane? People like you only make me love the Lord all the more. What do you know of goals? Look at you. Richer than Croesus and nothing to do but vacation in sunny Ethiopia with a boatload of goodies and an obscenely wealthy liberal’s half-baked philosophy about rescuing the needy. Do me a favor. Pose for your pictures and pass out your parcels and take your entourage back where you came from. Take your silly Geldofs and your Harrisons and your Bonos with you. Go find another cause.” They had reached the bottom of the path. Vane turned on him. “No dice, Preston. And I’m not a Geldof. This isn’t about my ego. If I were to walk out of here after what I’ve witnessed I’d be treating these people with the same contempt you’re showing them. So get used to it: you’ll be seeing a whole lot of me from now on. And I won’t be citing scripture or building death holes for the living.” “And I tell you to go! This is not a playground for the nouveaux riche! I have solid friends in Addis Ababa, and they dwell high above sophistry and bribery. They are men who will move mountains to see the Lord’s work done.” “I too have friends, Preston. So don’t toy with me. I wasn’t able to get state clearance, unrestricted use of roads and airstrips, and the go-ahead to set up my operation where and when I choose, simply because the Ethiopians think I’m such a nice guy. My account was won by Banke Internationale in Addis Ababa. As a consequence, my friends in this nation’s capitol are, I daresay, a sight more interested in my welfare than yours.” Vane looked away, ground his teeth, took a deep breath. “Look, I’ll make a deal with you. You pick up your operation and come along with me. Forget your private campaign and become a team player. I’ll provide transportation for you, these people, and whatever staff you may have. I’m not asking you to make any concessions. You can set 57

Microcosmia An’erim up this same system if you want; I’ll even provide you with sturdy structures to replace these tents and sheds. Regardless of my personal viewpoint considering the Big Picture, it is my understanding that human beings typically have a very deep, sometimes overwhelming spiritual need, as real as the libido. I’m assuming that applies no less to animists than to ‘compassionate’ Christians.” “It’s called the soul. And no, you won’t find it on an anatomy chart. And no, it’s not hormonal in nature. It radiates from God.” “Some other time, man. One of these days you and I can sit down and have a good long gabfest about the meaning of life, if any. But for right now I’ll make the offer again. Grab your gear and gather your group and join us in Mamuset, where you can make a difference.” Preston’s expression was that of a man who didn’t know which way to spit. He blew out his cheeks and exhaled explosively. “And when your resources are exhausted, what then? How next will you attempt to seduce these poor people? You may gratify your ego by buying their worldly adoration, but it will only be a temporary fix.” Preston surprised Vane by double-twitching the first and middle fingers of each hand, the lowbrow gesture for quotation marks. “You accuse me of being involved in a ‘private campaign,’ as you put it, as if I, personally, have something to gain by doing the Lord’s work in a place where it is so desperately needed. This is not about me, sir, and that is something that you, as a man of the world, are literally incapable of comprehending. This is about abnegation, about denial of the thing that is Me. I am doing God’s business, as his grateful tool. My gratification is derived solely from the joy of humility. Some day, Mr. Vane, you will either lose your unbelievable wealth or outlive its appeal. Some day you will find yourself facing a death that right here and now seems only a prospect for losers. Then, when you seek and find the Lord, you will truly understand the meaning of enrichment. Then your efforts will be selfless and glorious. Until then, sir, you and I share nothing.” “You’re giving up on me? I’m not worth saving all of a sudden?” “Nothing sudden about it.” Preston’s gaze rolled truck-to-truck, settling on a thin sheath of fog around one of the refrigerated trailers. “Save yourself. Get rid of your wealth, your appetite, and your vanity. And when you have nothing left to lose and everything to gain, come here and join the Lord.” “That’s just not going to happen. Because ‘here’ isn’t going to be here. I give this place a month, Preston, half a year max. You talk about the ‘Word’ getting around. You don’t think these people are hearing about Mamuset? I’ll make a gentleman’s bet with you. I’ll bet these suffering people choose my house over your crypt. Man, I’ll bet they leave in droves.” “Get out of here!” Preston whispered nastily. “Leave these people be.” “Not a chance.” Their eyes locked. Preston hissed, “Atheist!” and drew a line in the sand with the toe of his sneaker. At the same moment Mudhead turned over the Land Rover. “The deal still stands,” Vane said evenly. He used his own shoe to delete the line. “We don’t have to like each other. We don’t have to agree philosophically. Pretty soon this site is going to be as deserted as those villages we’ve been passing. And it’s you who’ll be responsible, not your ‘god’.” Preston took a step forward, his fists clenched. He pointed one at Vane’s nose, said, “Don’t tempt me!” and turned on his heel. He stomped to the crumbled building, threw aside the canvas curtain, and disappeared inside. “Let’s go,” Vane said, swinging a leg into Isis. Mudhead put the Land Rover in gear. The trucks fired almost in unison. The newly paved road was a tremendous improvement, but Vane couldn’t stop squirming. Finally he sat up straight. “Damn the man! He’s too interested in his silly ecumenical theatrics to realize he’s doing more harm than good.” 58

Microcosmia An’erim Mudhead searched for the right words as he drove. “Allman have angle. Difference is: Africaman angle survival. Whiteman not worry survival. Whiteman worry shine brighter everyman else. All time worry how otherman see. Big Camera always on. Whiteman try convince everyman else he most specialman.” Mudhead gestured behind them with his head. “Even worry impress god. Think can fool god like fool everyman else.” “Everybody’s an actor.” “In Africa,” Mudhead said, “noman fool anyman. Africa too big. Africa yawn play-actor.” Vane stewed for another minute. “Everybody thinks I’m on vacation here.” He kicked the dash. “Nobody’ll take me seriously. Same thing back where I come from.” He kicked the dash harder. “Called me a flipping Geldof! Where’s the justice in this world? I don’t want a goddamned medal, but you’d think people would be happy when they see someone trying to make a positive change. What’s so wrong about trying to do the right thing?” Mudhead once again chose his words carefully. “Justice whiteman plaything. All good idea come from democratman. All sound very nice, very cozy. Everyman same. Man same woman. Man love woman, man love man—all same democratman. Everyman have right. Crazyman have right. Thief have right. Child have right. Whiteman dog have same right whiteman. Whiteman dog democrat dog. Good dog. Democrat dog respect cat, learn meow. Whiteman lobby congress, open special school for sensitive dog. Good dog. Cat forgive. Good cat. All good. All ‘justice.’ Everyman happy. Now everyman like everyman else, whether everyman like everyman else or not.” Mudhead smiled without humor. “Everyman crazy. “Everyman full guilt if no see everyman same everyman else.” He softly pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “But everyman no respect everyman else. Respect cheap as like. Cheap as justice. Democratman must respect everyman else. But phony respect.” He nodded as he drove. “Phony as like. Phony as justice.” Vane rolled his head deliriously. “Well! That sure cleared things up! I ask a simple question and . . . aw . . . what’s the use.” “Question not simple. Justice not simple. Respect not simple. Mudahid not respect simpleman, respect Bossman.” Vane tilted back his shades and studied Mudhead’s expression. “Why? Why do you respect this crazy democratic white man?” There was no pause from Mudhead. “Bossman take chance. Could stay home, play prince.” He shook his head. “Bossman desertman. Skyman. Heart big as all Africa.” “Nonsense. You’re the first man, Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye, to accuse me of having a heart. I’m an empty shell. Cold as a dead man’s prayer.” “Not necessary be warm have heart. And Bossman shell fill fast enough. All said, Bossman rock world. Someday Bossman be Africaman.” Vane sank deeper into his seat. Well-meaning words couldn’t undo reality. He’d run from responsibility like a hypochondriac from a handshake. And the world he’d run into didn’t appear a whole hell of a lot better. It was simply different. He’d flattered his species, pretending that human beings, stripped of the encumbrance of having, would be devoted to intellectual and ethical pursuits. They would be fundamentally wise, eager only for spiritual enrichment. All the people he’d encountered on this side of the world were just a poorer, grittier breed of buzzard. Stripped of their religious and cultural trappings, the only real difference was a lack of sophistication in chicanery. Anything could be had with a wink and a Jackson. Pirated cargo was sold on the Red Sea, unresisting orphans on either coast. Islam, on the surface affecting every aspect of 59

Microcosmia An’erim this world’s consciousness, was just as open to corruption as Christianity, as politics, as liberal ideology . . . The pastoralists Vane observed were beyond ideas, hardened to a wretchedness he would have previously found unimaginable. The most pathetic dumpster diver the States could offer lived like a king compared to the blank-eyed skeletons staring back from pastoral Africa. So he drifted uneasily between philosophical extremes. He despised the flashy avaricious almost beyond words. But he was having a real tough time falling in love with the other side. The other side was dumb, it was diseased, it was repulsive. He felt more akin to that hollow spouter Preston than to this dirty black horror that was too depleted to care. Paving on the An’erim-Mamuset road, under construction for four months, was from both ends toward the middle. That middle was all but complete. Now the vibrations of Vane’s trailers shook up the quiet afternoon as they slammed around vehicles entrenched for the long haul. Clusters of workers, looking like limp black coolies, sifted from burrows with spades and picks. They immediately set to: breaking up rocks, shoveling clumps and grit onto rousted dump trucks. These trucks began distributing dirt onto unfinished patches of road too weak to support the heavy tractor trailers. It was slow, hot work. The convoy crept along for a few miles, only to halt for an hour or more while the larger rigs pushed out trucks caught in sudden shifts of earth. There was no end to it. Vane’s Mamuset Highway was in no manner a direct route. Heavy equipment had worked it over those months, compromising often. Wherever the new road encountered tricky chasms it simply went around, despite great distances, or followed rims until their walls were low enough to cut ramps down one side and up the other. At 0130 hours the convoy ground to an inevitable halt, mired by hunger and exhaustion. Mudhead, approaching to wish his boss a good night, was mildly upset to find Vane flat on his back on Isis’s hood, staring dully at the stars. “Mudahid not sleep,” he muttered, “when Bossman fidget.” He looked up. “Sky too big?” “It’s not the sky,” Vane said after a minute. “I’ve been listening to Mamuset, Mudhead. Long distance. I can hear all those frustrated stomachs growling from here.” Mudhead rapped his knuckles on Vane’s temple. “Bad connection. Bossman hear own stomach.” The American propped himself on his elbows. “Goddamn it, this road was supposed to be ready! My people shouldn’t have to suffer a single minute because the freaking road crew can’t get it together. That’s not fair; it’s not fair at all.” He blew out a sigh. “Now Mudhead, I want you to make a few enemies. Go roust all the drivers and tell them we’re pushing on or they’re fired on the spot.” He ran a hand over his face. “Wait, wait! That won’t do. Offer a hundred U.S. dollars to every man who’ll pull with me.” Mudhead’s teeth and eyes gleamed under the stars. “No problem, Bossman. Muslimman not afraid step on sleeping snake. Hang on money. Mudahid know secret tongue.” In ten minutes the trucks and buses were idling, waiting for Isis to lead them on. The laborers, having scrambled back out from under the trucks, were huddled on the hillside. Vane turned around in his seat, trading stares with the driver in the rig behind. He knew he was trading stares because he could see two cold pools suspended behind the glass, trained on him without blinking or shifting. It was like being in a dark cave, watching something watching you back. The stare went on and on. Finally the great windshield wipers swept the glass thrice. Vane waited another half minute. The wipers swept once more. He turned to Mudhead, who pumped the clutch and shifted into first. 60

Microcosmia An’erim “So how’d you get them up so fast?” “Mudahid tap door eleven time. Driver look up, see Mudahid hand show seven finger total. Driver up fast enough.” “Eleven and seven? What’s the significance there? Those are pretty lucky numbers.” Mudhead shook his head. “No, Bossman. Not to Shankiliman. To Shankiliman 5, 10 important.” Vane nodded. “I’m guessing that’s because there’s five digits on each hand and foot; ten fingers and ten toes altogether?” Mudhead frowned at his employer’s lameness. “No, Bossman. 5, 10 sacred number. Magic number. Take number 5, add together number either side. 4 plus 6 equal ten. Keep moving. 3 plus 7 equal ten. 2 plus 8 equal ten. 1 plus 9 also. Amazing.” “A child’s game.” “Pretty amazing child. Same go order. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 equal 15. 15 divide by five. Sacred number. Go higher. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 equal 40. 40 divide by 5. Sacred number. Or five in row start anywhere. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 equal 20. 20 divide by 5. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 equal 45. 45 divide by 5. All sacred number. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 equal 25. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 equal 30. Incredible. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 equal 50. 50 cardinal number: divide equal by five or ten! 5, 10 very deep spiritual healing number, use center every Shankiliman ceremony, childbirth through funeral. But 7 alone, 11 alone? Bad number, two of worst. When Shankiliman see 7, 11, like see whole life odd number: birth odd number, death another. Bossman watch. Bossman before not notice sometime extra space between number 5 truck and 6 truck, between number 10 truck and 11 truck. This because Shankiliman alter order according to message pass down line. But now Shankiliman get message from up front! Truck now drive permanent group five. Also, Bossman see driver show hand every bad pass; show maybe four finger, maybe three, maybe two, maybe one. All depend how bad pass. Sign language deeper than superstition, Mr. America.” Vane laughed. “What if you’ve got a driver who’s lost a finger? Talk about a chain reaction fender bender!” Mudhead didn’t smile. “No Shankiliman drive four finger. Maybe only one hand, all finger. Maybe no hand. Never both hand, one with evil number finger.” He looked to the side guiltily. “All big joke to modernman in dirty black Africa. See superstition, magic, must laugh. Bossman see Mudahid as ignorant black Muslimman. But Bossman not know Africa. Here blood, terror, premonition equal logic. Whiteman see dead wildebeest under duoma, think see innocent nature in infinite give, take. See Afar woman, mushal wrap left, think she make fashion statement.” He clucked schoolmarmishly. “Bossman, every beauty Africa cover horror unimaginable to modern, civilized Western Americaman. Mudhead try point beauty, but Mudahid very serious recommend Bossman be suspicious anything off-pattern. From now, when give direction driver, Mudahid translate so driver know Bossman odd number. Man to fear.” “Thanks very much. But I already know I’m an odd number.” “Look trunk.” Turning, Vane for the first time noticed that his driver had drawn a series of vertical slashes with a broad-tipped felt pen. He counted thirteen lines. “That’s an unpleasant number where I come from, too.” “Protect like guard dog,” Mudhead said matter-of-factly. “Bossman sleep car, back seat. Mudahid sleep front seat. Bossman watch for odd number.” Mudhead gripped the wheel tightly and stamped his left foot. “Bossman not laugh! Mudahid cannot be all-vigilant.” But Vane couldn’t help himself, laughing out loud under the warm gorgeous sky. He grabbed a 61

Microcosmia An’erim couple of Heinekens from the cooler, broke the caps on the dash and thrust a foaming-over bottle at his friend. “Cheers, Mudhead! Drink to the hot African night, for tomorrow we die. God willing, there’ll be no DUIs tonight, but I want you to keep at least one mystical eye peeled for the rabid intangible. You never know when the desert will erupt with censer-shaking ghouls and witch doctors hitching a ride. But at least we’ll be ready. If they’re hitching with a thumb, pass ’em by. But all five fingers, load the bastards in. It’ll be clear sailing all the way.” Mudhead frowned at the alcohol, then nodded five times quickly to the east and snatched the bottle. “Noman hitchhike desert, Bossman.” He drove intuitively, his eyes glued to the rear-view mirror. Vane knew Mudhead was doing what he could to hold the gaze of the driver just behind them. The great rig’s headlight beams swept left and right and up and down as its enormous tires negotiated the Highway’s rough edge. The convoy moved with extreme slowness, in groups of five and ten, feeling its way around the ancient lava spills and rolling hillocks that bordered the flat plain of the desert with a pattern like that left by a retreating tide. The air grew hotter as they gradually descended into the depression, the sky wider and more intense than Vane had ever imagined. It seemed to be exploding with brand new stars as he watched. And the jackals stopped walking in the hills to stare at the miniscule worm of the rich boy’s segmented convoy below, painstakingly making its way nowhere, all its itsy headlights, taken together, producing a slowly sweeping white mark feebler than the faintest star. The jackals, yawning at the moon, laid down one by one to watch the worm wasting precious energy as it pushed itself into that insatiable, bone-dry hole. It would take a while for the worm to expire, and a while longer for its strange metal skin to crack and expose the vital juices within. But Africa could wait.

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Chapter Seven Mamuset Precisely one minute and five seconds before the day’s first ray burned across the Great Danakil Depression, a chord like thunder resounded over a dark sea of small hide huts. Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra had been employed theatrically, and with outstanding effect, by everybody from Presley to Kubrick. Although Vane was sincere about using it to make an astronomical point, the power of the piece, the near-audible crack of dawn, and his elevated station before an audience of thousands almost swept him up in his own ego. Heads, popping out singly and in clusters, ratcheted wonderingly as the ascending theme blew out of a fourteen-foot speaker cabinet. Earlier that morning the cabinet had been toted in by a dozen men, pallbearers to a giant; up the new road’s narrowing asphalt stream and down into the crater proper, around and behind the series of low tapering hills, and so up the final mound to a strategic spot opposite the crater’s eastern rim. A soundless procession had crept behind, bearing computer and amplifier, batteries and hookups, wires and patch cables. Ever so gently, the cabinet was placed facing the uncountable sleeping huts. Vane’s dream had always been to make his entrance a memorable one, but he was way too shy to appear without some kind of dazzling distraction. That shyness was evinced in his five a.m. tiptoe-approach up the southern rim with Mudhead, and in his careful peek at the unconscious village below. It had been so very still under the stars; for a minute Vane was sure he’d arrived too late. In the darkness the little huts looked like ranks of tombstones. Only the still profiles of sleeping donkeys and camels prevented the scene having all the appearance of a desert cemetery. He and Mudhead, accompanied by a pair of engineers, had first circumnavigated the crater in Isis, halting at West Rim to conduct tests at the Reservoir, a canvas-covered concrete retaining pool twenty feet deep and holding sixty thousand cubic feet of river water. Flow was controlled by a series of wheeled valves. Months earlier, a chunk had been dynamited out of the rim for Reservoir’s steel conduit, and the new gap filled with cement. Vane’s engineers were checking West Rim for stress 63

Microcosmia Mamuset fractures at points of ingress and egress. A well-worn path proved the Afar had been hiking over the crater’s wall to collect their drinking water. The Ridge, folding right up out of the desert to partly bisect the crater, had been planed to provide an access road for tractor trailers. Vane christened this road into Mamuset the Onramp. Like a kid, he took delight in naming everything. Ridge Highway ended a little over halfway across the crater, where the ridge itself terminated in a few uneven mounds. On the final in the series, a flat table some hundred yards square had been hewn from the hillside. The table faced east, and was known as the Stage. This was Vane’s command center, with short wave radio, amplification system, microphones, and alarm triggers; all patched into an eight-foot-long motherboard. The Stage Wall featured a huge clock showing Greenwich and Danakil times, moon phases and barometric readings. It would be computer-driven. An enormous canvas canopy, the Big Tarp, was already in place over the Stage. The Stage’s cradle, that final soft hill, was known as the Mount. Behind the Mount were two great oblong excavations, designated Basement and Cellar (for perishables and beverages, respectively). Both were lined with cinder blocks, and were separated by an area the size of a football field known as Warehouse, the holding zone for materials and dry goods. The Highway’s physical terminus was Dock, a concrete unloading platform abutting Warehouse. Kitchen, one specialized component of that group of eager young university volunteers, had been hard at work since four that morning, boiling meat and vegetables out on the Onramp over propane in fifty-five gallon drums. Those drums had then been carted back aboard trailers to await transport to Dock post-Strauss, where thousands of half-gallon Bowls would be unloaded and stacked. Bowls were numbered: Sector, Quadrant, Square. They were of high impact plastic, of Vane’s own design, mass produced at one of Honey’s Cairo factories and shipped through Suez to Port Massawa. Part of the Bowl mold was a foot-long, slightly curved handle, making the instrument resemble an outsize ladle. Opposite the handle was a flat protuberance for gripping with forefinger and thumb. Fighting the urge to play air maestro, Vane now let his finger hover over the STOP button on the CD player’s remote. Recorded music was clearly a new experience for the Afar. They stood outside their little round huts under the lightening sky, their smiles growing as the music peaked. So that the crescendo and first ray would occur in sync on a daily basis, the computer had been programmed to activate the player at precisely one minute and five seconds before each consecutive sunrise, as regulated by its internal calendar. Computer and amplifiers were powered by marine batteries. Those batteries would be recharging via solar panels arriving on the next convoy. “Let’s do it,” Vane said nervously. Mudhead, having raised the microphone to translate, peered aside dubiously. Vane’s throat clenched. A great unseen brush washed the desert red. Suddenly the African sun was a blinding blood-spotlight. “Good morning!” he blurted out. “And welcome to Mamuset!” Mudhead’s arm fell. “We fly Delta, Bossman?” Vane blew out his cheeks. “This isn’t easy for me either, man. I’ve got to come off as a nice guy, not like some kind of holy roller.” Mudhead thereupon delivered what sounded like a scathing diatribe. More people crept around their huts, regarding Vane intently. The American’s stomach knotted. “What’d you just do, introduce me as the entrée?” He’d never been so aware of his fairness. “Mudahid tell Afarman whole Bossman story. What say now?” 64

Microcosmia Mamuset Vane chewed his lip. “It breaks my heart to have to do it, but I’m gonna have to order them to take down their huts. We need a flat playing field.” He flexed his fingers and forced a few deep breaths. “This could get very ugly very fast.” “No problem, Bossman.” Mudhead barked out a string of commands and the crowd immediately began dismantling their huts. Vane watched amazed as the hut city dissolved in an uncannily smooth receding sweep. In minutes the nearest huts were neatly rolled bundles. “What’d you tell them, man?” Bundles were being tied to camels. “They’re leaving! Jesus, Mudhead, you weren’t supposed to threaten them.” “No threat, Bossman.” Mudhead frowned. “No leave.” He gestured broadly. “No problem!” Those same men were now clearing sitting spaces beside their camels. Distant huts were still coming down. “Mudahid tell everyman what Bossman say. Neighbor pass command to next neighbor. So on, so on. Mudahid tell like Bossman tell Mudahid tell.” “Yes! We’re on! This’s gonna happen—it‘s got to happen! Keep working ’em, Mudhead.” He skidded down the Mount’s northeast slope, hopped in Isis, and raced to Dock. Volunteers and drivers were already unrolling the eight 30 х 60 canvas spools that would make up the great Warehouse canopy. Vane handed all the young doctors walkie-talkies from the Land Rover, and ordered field reports radioed to Doctor ’Lijah, the group’s pedantic and incomprehensible senior medical officer. He pulled a dozen hyper volunteers aside. Many were still in their teens. “I want you guys circulating. Pick the healthiest men out of these Afar and lead them to the Mount. I’m designating them ‘Runners.’ They’ll be doing all the distributing, at least until everybody’s able to contribute equally. Tell Kitchen to make sure these Runners get a couple of eggs in with their soup. See that the weakest people out there start on broth, and work your way up. Anybody reasonably fluent in Saho, now’s the time to step up to the plate.” Three girls and a boy were nudged forward. “Okay,” giggled one of the girls, “‘Bossman’.” A friend punched her arm. Vane shooed them in different directions and strode back up the incline with his juices flowing. Soon a long line of Afar were snaking through the crowd, directed by doctors, nurses, and a constantly reforming mass of volunteers. These Afar men, strongest of the lot though they were, seemed lamentably lean to the privileged young American. He was surprised by their gentleness and compliance. Each was given a Bowl and shown how to scoop it half-full of broth. Cooks then used elongated colanders to fish out carrots, rice, beans, bits of meat, and two hard-boiled eggs per man. The men wolfed the solid food, greedily but gratefully, and carefully slurped the steaming liquid. Volunteers juggled Bowls of broth to the needier sites, marked by flags on long sticks. The anguish of those not being served was radiant; men and women turned their heads like wolves at the trailing aroma, children wailed as the broth passed them by. These people had been subsisting on Vane’s cold dry care packages for almost half a year. The sound of want easily pierced Vane’s emotional armor. By the time he reached the Stage he was tearing at his nails. He forced himself to relax. They were only bugs. After a while he said coldly, “Order them to face this way.” The African snarled into his microphone and heads immediately turned. A camel roared at the feedback’s squeal. Children screamed and wept. “Enough! Tell the damned Runners to scoop quarter-Bowls, food and broth. Tell them to pass them out indiscriminately. That way there won’t be much lost when the crowd starts fighting over food. We can pass around second and third helpings later. Please don’t shout. Just ask everybody to pass the Bowls back when they’re empty.” Mudhead’s spectacles flashed as he turned. “Africaman not fight food. Afarman gentleman. Accustom very little. Grateful even less.” 65

Microcosmia Mamuset “Be right, Mudhead. I’ve had nightmares about this moment. You know the kind. Feeding frenzies. Morsels torn from the mouths of babes.” “Africaman slow, not greedy. Too much space. Too much time. Not like . . . State. Americaman rush. Have more than need, but never enough. Never enough space. Never enough time. Whiteman greedy have all.” “Later. Wait till I’m in the mood for guilt-trips. But you’re absolutely right about Whiteman disease. Now let’s just hope you’re on the money about Afar etiquette.” Sure enough, Bowls were neither hoarded nor fought over. The Afar sipped broth, plucked morsels with their fingers, shoved the food into their children’s mouths, passed the Bowls along. Though children screamed for more, parents remained patient and dignified. They caressed, rather than scolded. The little ones soon calmed. Vane needlessly supervised workers securing the pairs of titanic speaker cabinets on either side of the Stage, then ran down to Dock and ordered a replenishing of the drums. Volunteers were refilling the empty Bowls as they trickled back. His confidence continued to grow, but after running around confusing everybody he noted a certain rhythm—a milling, freewheeling progress involving Runners, volunteers, and recipients—taking place outside his command. Was there no one even aware of his awesome burden? He stood baking in the sun, staring at nothing, until the radio in his hand came alive. Doctors were reporting none dead, although the vast majority of his people suffered mildly from malnutrition. A panicky Vane was informed that this was not an unnatural state for pastoralists. He sprinted halfway up the Mount, forgot where he was going and why. Vane looked around. Dozens of people were stopped dead, staring at him. He depressed the transmit button on his walkie-talkie. “Mudhead, I’ll need a foreman out of the Runners to organize this mob before there’s a riot on our hands. Pick the sharpest guy you can find and get back to me, and I mean pronto. I’m not hip to the currency in this part of the country. Just agree to whatever he demands.” “Can do. But keep wallet in pant, Ugly American. Try little respect.” “Can do,” Vane said right back. “Don’t give up on me, Africaman.” He was hyperventilating. “Mudhead, what’d I get us into? What in hell’s name am I doing here?” “You break up, Joe Washington. Mudahid not receive last transmission. Try talk sense. Then maybe Mudahid understand.” “Okay. Before I have an aneurysm, I need some perspective. What was I thinking that night we talked in that stupid bar? What did I tell you? Everything seemed so clear back then.” “Sorry, Bossman. Lose you again. You break up all over place. Relax. Smell manure. Inspiration come. But at own pace.” “Ten-four, Mudhead. Keep the faith, Muslimman.” “Faith never go. Faith follow like shadow. Example: Mudahid have new foreman right here. Say hello Bossman, foreman.” There was a sharp command from Mudhead in Saho. A high teenaged voice gushed a lengthy response that was all nonsense to Vane. “Bossman? New foreman say name Akid.” “A kid he is,” Vane pronounced. “And so shall he be named ‘Kid.’ Ask him what his demands are.” “Kid say salary open, Bossman. Kid like radio.” “Give him one, Mudhead. He’ll need it. Put his on channel 3. You and I’ll communicate on 2, and you’ll be switching back and forth. Now we’re beginning to build an organization! I feel better already. You’re my Operations Director, and I’m your Commanding Officer. Kid is Lead Officer in charge of Manpower, and his workers are hereby christened the Crew. Kid’ll be subservient only to 66

Microcosmia Mamuset you. You’re the one responsible, as of right now, for all operations departments. We’ll discuss your pay hike over pork rinds and Heinekens.” “Can be only one Bossman,” Mudhead protested. “Sorry, but you’re breaking up. Start setting up the Stage Eyes and I’ll get back to you.” Vane walked round and round the Mount; commanding here, instructing there, commenting, questioning, getting in everyone’s way. He assigned Senior Medical Officer ’Lijah and all medical personnel to channel 4. As SMO, ’Lijah was to communicate up only on 2, to Mudhead or the Commanding Officer, and run the specialists on channel 4 exclusively. Way too busy for conferences or camaraderie, Vane charged up the Mount’s southwest slope, across the Stage, and up the naked hillside to the summit, where he could look over his property. Mudhead, thirty feet below, was setting up two tripod-mounted digital binoculars. Vane was at a good vantage. Mamuset was now fully illuminated, the sun blazing up the sky. That untidy expanse of black bodies was already, in his widening eye, compartmentalizing. Two seconds later he was off like a shot. Vane scrambled down to the Stage and huddled with Mudhead. The shade was suffocating. Even under the Big Tarp he was perspiring. “Seven in the morning and it’s already cooking. Now that their little huts are all rolled up, personal shade is going to be Issue Primo, no getting around it. Call Kid and tell him to get Crew humping out the Shade Packets. After that they can bring out the Square Kits.” He stooped for a magnified gander at his infant world. The binoculars, solar-sensitive with digital reads, also functioned in the infrared when properly programmed. Solar-charged batteries powered a range of high-tech functions. Vane experimented with angles, with wide and telescopic zooms, with artificial shade, with white line contrasts, with Near and Far effects. When at last he was able to map quadrants and manipulate details he straightened his aching neck. “You could almost pick a man’s nose with these.” Mudhead grunted. “Bowl come back. Everyman eat. There Kid.” Vane squinted into the lenses again. “Where Kid? Everybody looks the same.” “Only Kid look like Kid.” “Make a note, Mudhead. We’re going to need some kind of badge or armband or something for our Crew. We won’t always have the luxury of searching faces.” Mudhead straightened slowly. “Maybe David star, Bossman?” “Point well made,” Vane said. “Point well taken. I’m going to rely on your uncanny ability, el Segundo, to distinguish the few from the many. After all, you’re the Operations Director. Whatever works best for you is what works best for me.” He wiped his palms on his thighs. “Okay. Tell everybody to segregate by family. We want isolated units, remember? That means we’ll need as much space as possible between neighbors. Every group includes its stock and property, as well as any orphans they’ll accept. But we want to discourage the old tribal mentality temporarily. The ideal arrangement is a unit of man, woman, child, and stock.” Mudhead shook his head gravely. “Like we talk . . . Africaman not happy independentman. No room ego.” “And like I explained a dozen times, Mudhead, this is still a kind of tribe. It’s just organized differently, that’s all. The name of the new tribe is Mamuset.” “And new chief Bossman.” “No. No chief. No rules. Just shining examples. Everyone has the same status in Mamuset. Each member equals One. That’s if he’s Joe Solo. If he’s a member of a family, then his family equals One. Any way that family wants to work out the relationship of its members is its own business. If the unit doesn’t work it can split up, if that’s what’s best. Then each fragment equals 67

Microcosmia Mamuset One. It becomes Mamuset’s problem then, not the disintegrated unit’s.” “One,” Mudhead muttered. “Unum. Everybody equals One. Everything equals One. Nobody’s impressed into anything. And no one’s left out in the cold. If your heart beats, you’re worthy of the basics. There are no Afar, no Bossmen, no Mudheads in Mamuset, at least so far as status goes. Only Mamusetans. Everybody gets one share of Everything, and everybody contributes equally to Everything. If somebody doesn’t want to contribute, then that one can be exempted, and even expelled, by the greater One. Ostracism. The only punishment, by overall agreement. Majority always rules in Mamuset. But not by vote. By consensus.” “So, O Bossman no better everyman. Show Mudahid where else idea work.” “Never been tried before,” Vane said pleasantly. “Nobody ever had the means, along with the lack of good sense and personal ambition, to experiment like this before. Sure it’s doomed. But I’ve got almost unlimited funds, and almost no ego. Plus, there are no sycophants, competitors, or court jesters to muddy the waters. You and I, Mudhead me hearty, are in the crow’s nest. So spend all you can while you can. This ship is going down.” “All same, Mudahid contribute paycheck Unum fund.” “Good. Money’s gonna be worthless here, anyway. When it’s all over we can settle up in the ruins. I don’t forget my friends.” Sweat was beading on his forehead, rolling freely down his neck and chest. “It’s absolutely frying in this crater. Step One is shade, then we’ll get started on the Grid. I can’t have my people isolated in the hot sun.” He wiped his eyes. Some of the Afar were so distant as to be lost in the hazy rise of East Rim. “Let ’em all know I’m about to demonstrate a personal Shade Canopy’s basic assembly. Explain that we’ll be piecing together permanent structures after we’ve situated everybody and laid foundations, but that they should stay under their Canopies, out of the heat, whenever they’re not busy. Tell them they can put up their Canopies anywhere on their land they want, and take them down and put them back up just as they please. It’s easy, man. “Now—and this is crucial, Mudhead—you’ve got to make it perfectly plain: they’re all responsible for passing instructions along! I don’t expect everything to be just what the doctor ordered, not right off the bat, but I also don’t want anybody getting hurt. Those poles have pretty sharp points.” Mudhead peered glumly over his glasses. “Okay,” Vane said. “I’m gone,” and skidded down the slope. He pitched in, helping Crew create a sigmoid pile of Shade Packets in front of the Mount. Each Packet contained four hollow ten-foot aluminum poles and corresponding threaded stands, two 10 x 10 canvas sheets, four tether stakes, and four tightly wound nylon ropes. The Honey Foundation, dealing directly with the Egyptian Army, bought up warehouses stocked with surplus canvas tents, knapsacks, and the like. Those warehouses were then converted to factories for the manufacture of canopies and mats. Vane personally hired the most wretched souls he could find for the sewing and packing. The retained Egyptian foremen proved to be, in more than a few cases, unspeakably brutal and venal. Honey replaced these monsters with humane supervisors, but Vane insisted his hand-picked sewers and packers be kept on. The Runners scurried all round with Packets under their arms, dropped the Packets off, and ran back for more. The deposited Packets were passed along man to man, smoothly, without a single visible glitch. Vane directed through his walkie-talkie with mounting confidence, impressed by the Afar’s ability to pick up on ideas and instinctively follow through as a unit. Mudhead translated from the Stage as the Runners grew tiny and the Core units listened intently. 68

Microcosmia Mamuset Mamuset was to be built upon Vane’s example. Adjacent units were to imitate his actions directly and precisely. Their neighbors were to do likewise, and so on. Each unit would be responsible for passing along instructions by both word and example. From this moment on, Vane proclaimed, the granted parcel of land for each unit was to be known as a Square. Mudhead had everyone repeat the word. The response from those within earshot came back roughly as “Squaw”. “Now,” Vane said excitedly, “follow my lead.” He maneuvered a Shade Packet between the piles and runners, walked out a further forty paces, and methodically erected his Canopy in the sun. Mudhead, watching impassively beneath the Big Tarp, described the proceedings in Saho as his employer laid one of the Canopy’s canvas squares on the dirt, stretched it out flat, and hammered a foot-high pole stand through each of the mat’s corner eyes, almost taking off a toe in the process. Vane then grabbed the second 10 x 10 canvas square and inserted a pole’s nipple-end through one eye, paused to demonstrate the tying of a simple square knot, looped the knot over the nipple, and raised the pole. He slowly screwed the pole into its stand, the hot limp canvas clinging to his back. After standing the pole upright, he repeated the process with the remaining poles, ropes, and stands. His half-done Shade Canopy teetered in the sun. Vane fought to keep his poles from caving to center while simultaneously reaching for a trailing rope, his struggles accompanied by shy laughter all around. Finally he snatched the rope, looped its knot to a stake, and hammered the stake into place. The other ropes and stakes quickly followed course, and then Canopy #1 was somehow standing taut, exactly ten feet above the crater’s flat parched floor. Vane proudly stepped onto the equally taut canvas mat. The effect of his completed Shade Canopy was immediate. He and Mudhead listened to the patter of laughter, near and distant, as families struggled with their Packets. Canopies began sprouting about them, clumsily as first, then with increasing efficiency. Rather than sit on their thumbs, the successful Afar rushed to help their neighbors; sometimes they were met with venomous stares or verbal threats. Vane thrilled at the way the Afar’s eyes lit up when confronted by an interesting challenge. He got the feeling that, even without instruction, they’d sooner or later assemble the parts correctly, like clever children around a Christmas tree. He bowed to his neighbors, and they all bowed back. Everyone contributed to erecting Mudhead’s Canopy. By noon the Bowls, this time heavy with meat and vegetables, had made a second circuit. Vane’s project was ready for a most crucial step. He chugged a Heineken and dragged his Square Kit out next to his Shade Canopy, unwrapped his Square Frame and Extensions. Square Frames consisted of four identical telescoping aluminum tubes, fifty feet in length when fully extended, kept propped above the ground by adjustable plastic feet. The tubes locked at right angles, their female-end elbows accepting the male-ends of adjoining tubes. Four perfectly locked tubes created a perfect square. At full extension, aligned perforations were exposed on these tubes, the holes positioned fifteen feet from either extremity. Bolts inserted through these holes would lock the arms of an unfolding internal steel lattice. From above, a fully assembled Square Frame would look pretty much like a bordered tic-tac-toe diagram. Properly assembled Square Frames would observe ninety-degree angles with exactitude, be absolutely rigid when locked, and be lightweight enough to be dragged intact by their builders. These Frames were temporary structures; interlocking pieces for mapping the community’s sprawling Grid of five thousand perfectly equal, interdependent personal sites. Vane constructed his Frame as he’d constructed so many before, but this time without all the smarmy overseeing engineers, and this time with his indispensable buddy Mudhead tersely 69

Microcosmia Mamuset describing his efforts in Saho. When he’d finished he found due east on compass #1 and ran out a marker, then kicked, hammered, and hauled his protesting Frame until he’d managed to align one border. His neighbors very politely dragged their own already completed Frames out of his way. He couldn’t make out the progress of distant assemblers, but the facility of their movements bugged him. Vane grudgingly watched his neighbors experimenting with their own markers, lines, and compasses, passing the tools back and forth like exuberant idiot savants. “Hey!” he hollered. “Those things aren’t toys, you know!” and almost passed out. But at least his aluminum Square Frame was facing dead east. Vane wiped his face and got on his knees to attach his Extensions; connecting rods designed to precisely bridge the gaps between Squares by locking with both crisscrossing lattice rods and Frame corner-studs. Each neighbor would contribute two-of-four per side. As Vane worked, locking down Extensions on each side of his Square, he became increasingly annoyed by peripheral glimpses of his Core neighbors; their eyes hard on him, at first copying, then anticipating his moves. He felt the vital force on the opposite ends, locking down ahead of him, and suppressed powerful urges to yank his Extensions right back. Behind him, Mudhead’s Square #2 was being ably constructed by competing Afar youngsters while the African, fanning himself under the Big Tarp, farcically described the CO’s mighty efforts in Saho—but even those little showoff brutes were making Vane hustle. Before he’d completed his extended Frame his neighbors were already locked down and pacing. They could barely contain their impatience. Vane knew he should have been proud of them . . . but were they trying to make him ashamed of himself? Dog-tired, his shirt clinging, he stamped up to the Stage, hacked the cap off a Lowenbrau, and collapsed on a folding chair. “Afarman good student,” Mudhead noted. Vane glared. He pushed himself back to his feet and hunched at his binoculars. Including Mudhead’s and his own, he counted twenty-one well-framed proto-Squares, each bordered by perfectly-straight Street outlines of four extensions apiece. Taken together, the laid-out Frames gave the impression of crisscrossed ladders lying flat. He adjusted focus. Work was scrambled farther along, and way down the line certain units were still struggling to set up their Shade Canopies. Some had given up completely. Huts remained standing only at the very foot of East Rim. “It’s a matter of gradations,” he declared. “Our first set of instructions are still filtering back. The people farthest away are getting what must seem conflicting directions.” He creaked to his full height. “I’m ordering additional walkie-talkies.” Mudhead fanned himself feebly. “Maybe tomorrow.” “Agreed. I’m plumb wore out m’self. Just tell those with completed Frames to bring their families and animals inside the Frames, and keep them there. And tell them to keep Shade Canopies away from Square centers, so they won’t have to be moved when the real work starts. Get the Runners back in. I’ll go tell Kitchen to start doling from the drums. And this time there’ll be some solid food in those Bowls!” He stumbled down to Dock, grabbed a full Bowl and sipped critically. He’d tasted better, he’d tasted worse. A young doctor handed him what seemed a ream of preliminary findings. Vane thumbed the pages. The words typhus, diphtheria and cholera leaped out at him. Suddenly he was clinging. “Mañana,” he said. “I’ve been up, like, some thirty-odd hours.” He fought his walkie-talkie free of its holster. “Mudhead?” “Bossman?” “I’m shot, man. If anything comes up while I’m out, you take care of it. Don’t wake me unless 70

Microcosmia Mamuset it’s an emergency. I’m hitting the sack.” Aching all over, he dragged his feet back to his Square, tripped over a tethered rope and landed on his face. Two poles crossed and his Shade Canopy dipped precariously. Before he could recover, the entire contraption collapsed on his backside. Vane sprawled on his belly, flinching feebly. Somewhere a pair of camels roared in stereo, while the five thousand-plus voices of Mamuset bubbled behind like a purling stream. With the last of his strength, Vane pulled the burning canopy over his face. Before the canvas had fully settled he was fast asleep.

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Chapter Eight Afar Precisely one minute and five seconds before the sun’s first ray burned across the Great Danakil Depression, a chord like thunder resounded over an endless field of perfectly-squared Shade Canopies. The day’s pre-dawn convoy had already imported, along with tons of rice and barley, truckloads of tools and building materials. Mamuset, beginning this morning, was to be built from the ground up. Flatbed after flatbed flowed into Dock, hauling bags of cement and fertilizers, loads of fodder, lengths of polyvinyl chloride pipe. Pickups and forklifts moved it all into Warehouse. Also on this run were the initial loads of 15 x 15 solar panels, conveyed in six foot-high stacks on trailer roofs. A groggy Vane received some astounding news with his grits and coffee: his entire Highway, An’erim to Onramp, was fully navigable. Much of the hangar-like tent of Warehouse was now crammed with pallets of dried food and fodder, interspersed with tools and building material. Basement was being stocked with perishables; Cellar with beer, wine, and dairy. Vane’s technical team had programmed the generators to fire automatically whenever Cellar’s temperature rose above forty degrees. The propane tank now squatted behind and to one side of Warehouse. On the other side rested the gasoline tanker, minus truck. Both were sheltered by peaked canvas. All this came together in the dark while Vane was still unconscious, Mudhead demonstrating surprising effectiveness directing on his own. And the Afar were showing a real talent for getting things down with minimal supervision. Volunteers and specialists performed not only smoothly, but with zeal. At Dock the drums were already steaming. Everybody, it seemed, was out to steal his thunder. And now here came that arrogant drum-beater Mudhead, trudging up to the Stage in a godly fanfare of strings, brass, and tympani. Vane’s welcoming smile was taut. “Tell them,” he grated as the 72

Microcosmia Afar echoes blew away, “that the sun will rise at a slightly different time each consecutive morning, and that we Western men of science, having accurately gauged the immediate heavens, know exactly when that first ray will hit. Tell them they’ll be seeing the first stab of sun every morning precisely at a particular point in the music, right on my down stroke.” Mudhead yawned. He threw his arms wide above the much-improved community, his white sleeves rising angelically. Vane’s eyes narrowed. “Bossman move too fast. Too early physic 101. For now, keep foot on ground, head out cloud.” He used those spread arms to pantomime embracing the raw, spotless sky. “Figure speech. Important thing now breakfast. How Afarman learn science on empty stomach?” “They’ll eat. And I don’t think it’ll be too great a draw on a man’s strength to learn an interesting fact between chew and swallow. I mean, come on now, how much of your day did you just forfeit by hearing one simple fact?” Mudhead yawned again. “Easy, Bossman. Take easy. Point is, how much Mudahid remember? If Mudahid have walking sick, if Mudahid have crybelly, how much attention Mudahid pay?” “Uh-uh, man. The point is, if Mudhead hears the same thing every morning, how long’s it gonna take before Mudhead remembers the thing?” Mudhead considered this. He raised a forefinger. “Point is . . . what is point? How Mudahid know what time sun show help Mudahid be not sick, not hungry?” “The point is:” Vane dug, “what if Mudhead heard other facts every morning, until these facts were stuck in his head? What if there were endless facts to learn, and plenty of them were important to Mudhead’s everyday survival? What if Mudhead learned, say, how to avoid being sick, or which steps to take for recovery? What if he learned all about nutrition, and vitamins, and exercise? What if he became, little by little, a well-rounded student of his neighbors’ problems, as well as his own, and an expert on how to solve them?” “Then,” Mudhead said, “poor Mudahid skull all full. Mudahid no time eat, no time watch sun, no time hear music.” He placed his hands on his hips. “Then, Bossman, Mudahid no time Mudahid.” He shook his head categorically. “Africaman have all time world, but no time play schoolboy.” “Ah, that’s where you’re gravely mistaken, Africaman. Life can be far richer than simple survival.” Mudhead, looking away, said levelly, “Rich life okay richman. What good music do dying desertman?” “But what if that man learned about irrigation? What if he learned about the nitrogen cycle? How about if he were to learn all about soil management, fertilization, and crop rotation?” Sudden revelation burned behind the tiny round lenses. “Mudahid see! Dyingman sing song about pretty garden when sun come up right on time.” “Now you’ve got it, Sancho. So just freaking tell them that the time of sunrise changes each day, and that the proof is in the Big Clock behind us, which will show a different reading every morning when the music peaks and the sun breaks in simultaneously. Then tell them it’s not a trick, and that it’s not magic. Say it’s an entirely predictable, completely demonstrable fact. Explain that the solar system is like an enormous timepiece, and that we’ll explore that in depth as we go along.” Mudhead approached the microphone, now positioned on a stand between the two mounted binoculars. “Mudahid,” he muttered, “make sure all Afarman set watch.” He snapped out a string of terse sentences. After staring humbly for a few seconds, the gaping Afar turned as one to face the blinding sun. “Okay. You can tell them to look away now. I hope you mentioned that the goofy white guy is done making a fool of himself.” 73

Microcosmia Afar “Professor Bossman, Mudahid make sure everyman never forget lesson one.” “I’ve just got to learn Saho. Okay, man, let’s get breakfast rolling. But this time I want my people to pass the Bowls on their own, without the Runners. Try to talk them into standing behind one another in rough lines. Explain, explain, explain: organization is gonna be very important around here! Ring up Kitchen and tell them to get the lead out. I‘ve got some PR work to do.” He patted his walkie-talkie. “Don’t be a stranger.” Mudhead watched darkly as his boss scampered down the slope. Vane marched across his dirt Square and stopped pointedly in the marked-off abutting Street, then turned to wave while gesturing proudly at his neighboring Square. Mudhead did not return the wave. After a minute he began snapping out instructions. As soon as he was done he sank into his chair and reached for a humongous pair of headphones. This was a major moment for the incongruous, freely perspiring American. Though his longanticipated approach was perfectly nonchalant, his new neighbors crept backward a step for every pace, finally huddling under their lonely scarecrow of a Canopy. Their Square also contained an affronted-looking camel, a reclining long-horned cow, and one of the scrawniest mongrels Vane had ever seen. The camel stank from ten feet away. Having crossed the Street template, he smiled politely and pointed down at the aluminum tube that was the Square’s temporary southern border. “May I?” he tried. The family, a man, woman, and two children, grinned back nervously and clung that much tighter. After pantomiming opening a door, Vane gingerly stepped over the tube and strolled up, feeling like a visitor from another planet. He crouched casually, forearm resting on extended knee. It was his first real close-up of an Afar group. Fleshless as they were, they didn’t look nearly as moribund as he’d predicted. Skins presented an unexpected glow. Eyes were clear, teeth bright and strong. Vane was absolutely stumped by the encounter’s awkwardness. His fantasies had always included a kind of mute rapport; a toasty-warm exchange of sign language accompanied by spontaneous expressions of human universality. He now saw himself as a profound anomaly: a trespasser, a white ogre. And his great big plastic grin was killing him. The family, smiling back uncertainly, compressed itself further and avoided his eyes. Terribly embarrassed, Vane straightened slowly, turned like an automaton, and found himself nose-to-nose with the family’s camel. The beast roared in his face. No funkier stench had ever, could ever . . . Vane threw his hands over his face and stumbled out of the Square. The gaunt dog ran circles round his feet, nipping furiously. He staggered across the Street into his own Square, retching and slapping dust from his face. Once he’d caught his breath he blew a string of oaths into his walkie-talkie. The dour figure of Mudhead rose behind his microphone like a white-swathed praying mantis. “Yes, Bossman?” “For Christ’s sake, wake up, Mudhead! Tell Kid we’ll need all the Runners down here, and pronto! He’s got to get the Crew hustling if we’re ever gonna get the Grid mapped out! Hop! Hop! Acknowledged?” Two embers flashed behind the mic. There was the longest pause. At last the African switched channels and began barking orders. In less than a minute Kid came swaggering up, a long ratty emu’s feather trailing from a rag tied around his forehead. He grinned conspiratorially and copied Vane’s posture. Vane slowly shook his head and raised his walkie-talkie. “What’s Kid’s problem?” “Kid big man now. Kid Bossman number Two. Feather show rank.” “Tell him it’s gorgeous. But there is no hierarchy in Mamuset. His position as Lead Officer is 74

Microcosmia Afar an honor, and nothing else. There is no higher status involved.” Mudhead switched back. Vane and Kid listened to the Operation Manager’s flurry of Saho snapping from the radio. It was all Greek to Vane, but it made Kid’s expression fall. In the next second the youngster’s disappointed look had rebounded to the typical Afar toothy grin. He bowed deeply, plucked the feather from the rag, handed it to Vane. Vane, accepting, smiled and bowed in return. “Tell him,” he said into his walkie-talkie, “that paleface will give it a place of honor on the Stage.” Kid listened closely to the translation. He bowed even deeper. “And now tell him to cut it out. I feel like the freaking Queen of England. “The important thing is to get rolling! Try to not get bogged down in details when you’re hinting at the Big Picture, relatively speaking. Okay, Mudhead? Also, make sure you explain the significance of Utility Squares. But keep it simple. Just say they’re non-proprietary intermediate nexus communally appropriated in the service of Sector Quads, and leave it at that. Don’t get into the math of it. Enlighten Kid on the Grid master plan, so he’ll know where Utility Squares belong. Stay glued to Eyes, man, and if anything gets out of sync, please ring me right up. But we’ve got to get the whole goddamned Grid down, and without getting people bent out of shape because they’re relocating Shade Canopies, or because maybe they feel they’re being eighty-sixed off what they supposed was their duly-granted turf. Stress patience, Mudhead! Let them know they’re not being shuffled indifferently. But for the love of God, don’t bully them! All right? Just tell them their grievances will be addressed as soon as the dust settles.” “No problem . . .” Mudhead heaved a sigh “. . . Bossman!” He stamped his foot and shouted, “Now!” The feedback’s scream prefaced an electronic echo that tightened every tympanic membrane within earshot. “For once Bossman clam up! For once Bossman listen! Then Bossman clam up more! “Everyman now Mamusetman! Mamusetman do what Bossman say. No riot. No lawsuit. No democratman Mamuset. Noman have whiteman right! Mamusetman dog. Feed Mamusetman, respect Mamusetman, Mamusetman stay, Mamusetman eat heart anyman threaten Bossman. Okay? Be good Bossman, make Mamuset great house, no worry thing. Kick Mamusetman, cuss Mamusetman blue. Mamusetman respect Bossman, Mamusetman love Bossman.” He coughed from the tension. “Easy math.” A full minute passed before Vane could get himself together. Every eye in the house was on him. “Bossman?” Vane cleared his throat. “10-4, Number Two,” he said calmly. “But I’m going to spare the boot. Not my style . . . now, let’s tackle this damned Grid! What’s your read up there?” Mudhead matched Vane’s heavy minute with steely poise before casually eyeballing the vicinity. “Total ninety-one basic complete Square Frame around Bossman Square. Hereman work, thereman work, everyman work, work. Someman lay Square Frame right, otherman walk wild side. All canopy up.” “Ninety-one Square Frames!” Vane exulted. “All right! Only four thousand, nine hundred and nine to go! But instead of celebrating, we’re gonna get humping. Mudhead, order Kid to follow your instructions to the letter. I’m staking my Square, and I want you right on that microphone, man; first describing my actions for nearby Squares, then switching to walkie-talkie. Translate explicitly into Saho for Kid: he’ll have to dictate to all Runners. There’ll be a pause after each step as he gives orders. During that pause you’ll have to make sure through the Eyes that all hitches are reported back and resolved before anything gets hairy.” Vane almost staggered under the load. “I can’t do everything! Make sure Kid knows he’s got to get on his horse. I want him running Square to Square 75

Microcosmia Afar supervising.” This command was pretty much unnecessary. Kid stamped around him in a tight circle, champing at the bit. Whenever Vane spoke his name the boy nearly jumped out of his skin with anticipation. “Big doctor call, Bossman.” “Tell him I’m busy. It’s not an emergency, or he’d be all over it.” “Lady Honey call.” “Denise? Jesus. Don’t tell me she’s worked out a direct through Addis Ababa . . .” He gave a negative sweep of the arm. “Pull the plug on that damned radio. No, wait, wait! Tell her I’ll get back to her.” A look of deep resentment pleated Mudhead’s brow. The expression was recognizable to Vane forty feet below and two hundred feet away. “I’m sorry, Mudhead. I realize you didn’t sign up for this. Just wing it; blow her off. Play Dumb Africaman, or say whatever’ll get rid of her. I promise this won’t become a regular thing. But right now we’ve got to get going! And remind me in the future to bring a pocketful of sugar cubes for Kid.” His eyes lit up. “On second thought, put Denise through to Doctor ’Lijah.” He rubbed his palms together. “Let’s see if we can work a little magic.” Vane dragged Kid over to Stage Street, where the youngster began dancing and snorting like a boxer, waiting only a nudge. Vane held him back while Mudhead’s basic directions came over the radio. Once schooled, Kid bounced Runner to Runner, shoving, shouting, and gesticulating madly. The Runners scattered like chickens. “No gold bricks here!” Vane called delightedly. “Let’s have us a look.” He climbed back up to the Stage, turning an ankle on the way. “Make a note, my friend. We’re gonna have to cut us some Steps.” Mudhead bent to his Eyes. After a weighty silence he said tentatively, “Mamuset great big pie. Endless . . .” he mumbled, searching for the apt phrase, “. . . endless little neighbor tribe.” “One big tribe,” Vane countered. “But in a way you’re right.” He peered through his own instrument. “Amigo, I’m guessing this whole concept must still seem pretty strange to you. But it’s really important, to a Western man’s way of thinking, to have everything organized and accounted for. Not only that; to my way of thinking it has to be both organized and fair. “And as far as great big pies go . . . well, this operation isn’t exactly on a budget, but the projected cost is staggering. In the months since my father died I’ve had to work it all out mathematically, with the Honey Foundation cutting every corner. So it’s not about having some great big money bin I can just draw on to my heart’s content. It’s a tug of war with Honey all the way. That’s what the call from Denise’ll be about. You see, Mudhead, Honey has to mollify clients while it’s funding this operation. We’re leaking the word that Cristian Vane is involved in natural gas and bauxite sites in Ghana and Sierra Leone. That way the clients will think, hopefully, that all this money I’m going through will pay off in the long run. If nothing else, we’re buying time” Mudhead grunted. “So America moneyman pretty scared.” “Nah. They’re hip to checks and balances. Banks all around the world rely on the Foundation staying healthy, so keeping me and the old Vane Empire strong and happy is just good business. Banke Internationale, with the commitment they’ve made, would fold in no time if Honey withdrew. That would be a small domino, but a domino nonetheless, and there are a gazillion enterprises that stand or fall on the Foundation. Honey is technically politically neutral, but it bends with the wind; supplying warring nations with arms, petroleum, grain, and pharmaceuticals. Karl, the man who was the vital link between Father and Honey, once told me that the Foundation could control the turns of 76

Microcosmia Afar power in Eurasia by way of coup, gas, bread, or overdose. Father himself, in his final senile years, knew nothing. All he could do was veto by power of insanity. And he expected me to get sucked into all that. Phew!” Vane grinned goofily. “Okay, so I lied! There isn’t a cloud in our financial sky. Mudhead . . . do you realize—do you have any idea—what a billion dollars can do? It’s an almost unimaginable sum. A farsighted man with only a million dollars, in this part of the world, can live a long, obscene life. He can buy businesses. He can equip a private army. He can well-nigh topple a government if he applies his time, energy, and wealth wisely. And still retire rich, without having invested a birr! “A billionaire can do that a thousand times over. He can have all he wants, and he can have it whenever he wants it. He can drive himself—he can rise early and buy everything in sight as fast as he can, and still die an old man with more money than he could ever count.” Vane decompressed a chestful of stress. “I’m worth eleven and a half billion dollars, man.” He raised a hand. “I say this not to impress you with my wealth. I only want you to understand the uniqueness of our position. “I can order whatever I desire, and not have to take its cost into account. Add to this the fact that I have an organization behind me getting the best deals possible, steered by a very savvy lady who, for some reason, has decided to bend to my every whim, and you get a pretty round idea of our situation. A hedonist’s fantasy, an accountant’s nightmare.” “And Bossman?” “And a bossman’s opportunity.” Mudhead, standing erect, asked uncomfortably, “Opportunity how? Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye never ask, Daddy Bigbuck never tell.” His arms embraced the crater. “Master Bossman?” Vane cocked his head. “No . . . more like a self-contained community, I guess.” He too stood erect. “Hey, man. Just what are you driving at?” Mudhead shrugged and bent back to his Eyes. “Bossman could be king,” he mumbled. “Maybe king all planet.” “Tell you what. The position’s yours if you want it. I can make it happen. How’d you like to be king of the planet?” Mudhead shook his head vigorously. “Mudahid still try figure Mamuset.” “Then you’re a wise man, Mudhead. Let’s keep it all close to home.” He copied the African’s stoop, and said through his teeth, “As soon as the Grid’s down we can start moving upward, instead of just outward.” Mudhead made no reply. After a long minute Vane unbent slowly. “What the hell do you mean, ‘Master’?” Mudhead didn’t budge. Vane stumbled down to his Square and assembled his Core group. He used gestures to communicate while roughing up and leveling his foundation with shovel and hoe. Extensions were removed. Lunch came and went. Vane got back to Waters who, now in command of a bridged link to Mamuset, had been guaranteed unmolested transmissions by both Ethiopia and her warring neighbor Eritrea. Vane was expecting a lecture. Instead he received muchneeded encouragement and a birthday greeting. “I didn’t . . . realize,” he stammered, his mind fogging. “Well. Thanks, Denise. Um . . . how old am I?” “You’re thirty, Cris. A good age.” “A good age.” Dead air. “See you later, sweetheart. If you don’t keep in touch, I will.” Waters kissed into the mouthpiece. “Many more.” Vane turned and found himself face to face with Mudhead. “Don’t say it,” he warned. “I don’t 77

Microcosmia Afar get it either.” Expressionless, Mudhead popped in a CD, put on his headphones, and kicked back in his favorite chair. Half a minute later his eyelids were fluttering. A fresh convoy arrived at four. Crew removed thousands of stacked aluminum slats, along with endless bundles of white-painted pine stakes. Also trucked in were spoon-stacked wheelbarrows of forty-gallon capacity, stamped with Sector, Quadrant, and Square numbers. Included in wheelbarrow kits were shovels and pickaxes, rakes and hoes, mallets, workman’s gloves, and bandanas. Each article was stamped and tagged: Sector, Quadrant, Square. That night Vane reclined on a huge mound of packing under a sky black and richly lit, watching the flicker of families in the floodlights’ haze. Chopin’s Polonaise stomped and staggered behind him, playing tag with the mantra running round and round in his head: Sector, Quadrant, Square. He popped another beer and saluted the hot raven sky. From where he sat a man could dream of changing the world. Vane had been led to believe, by every specialist he’d as much as shared a smoke with, that his crude attempts to change Mamuset would entail months of false starts, frustrating digressions, and bungled attempts at cooperation. So he was astounded to see the Grid expand like magic; sometimes the Afar seemed psychic. Lot-chosen supervisors, holding court in newly-cluttered Utility Squares, regally distributed numbered supplies to eagerly queuing Afar men. Excited boys cut a wide line of Steps up the Mount from Stage Street, then delightedly cemented the staircase over. Along with the inevitable footprints, handprints, and finger swirls, the wet cement received a long series of exotic designs created by old men furnished only with pallet splinters and hyperopic imaginations. On the morning of the third day Vane and his neighbors replaced their aluminum Square Frames with white stakes pounded at guidemarks scored every twelve inches. The CO sat marveling on Top Step while the immediate area was rapidly and collectively staked off into a series of clearly definable Streets and Squares. The remaining aluminum Grid-skeleton, tighter and truer than he had any right to expect, spread all the way to the Rim. By noon Crew numbered over seventeen hundred members. These men, young and old, were put to work digging Street ditches for the project’s underground system of fresh water-and drainage pipes. PVC sections, still arriving on flatbeds, measured eight inches in diameter for Fields, six inches for Streets. Crew worked from the Mount outward as Extensions were removed, ripping ditches down the centers of Streets. Aluminum Square Frames were inexorably replaced by a solidly visual stakes Grid. Watching an Afar with a pick and shovel was a mind-boggling experience. The men worked sunup to sundown, intoxicated by the assembly line mentality; some racing waist-deep down Street trenches, some obsessively transforming Squares from metal-frame outlines to stake-dotted sketches in the dust-dry earth. Pine swept away aluminum in a growing frenzy. Everywhere you looked, it was all flying dirt; from Top Step the crater floor appeared under assault by gophers on amphetamines. Unlike Vane, who grew exhausted just watching, the unfit and quarantined men almost went out of their minds observing their fellows at work; at Warehouse even the elderly and infirm fought over spare and broken tools. Kid was the world’s most obnoxious foreman, shouting himself hoarse, demanding and receiving the impossible from everyone in his path. He must have crisscrossed the crater floor a dozen times. By late afternoon the Awash pipeline’s great multi-armed breakdown unit, West Comb, was being bolted and sealed by Vane’s engineers at West Rim’s steel-reinforced Inner Slope. A corresponding series of descending subcombs lay in place, each successive subcomb’s conduits, or teeth, having diameters decreased by half. A grid of cemented pipe lengths was waiting in ditches, Ridge-to-Rim. In the Fields, hordes of filthy, joyous men and women, as per Mudhead’s eagerly78

Microcosmia Afar passed instructions, were busily cementing vertical PVC shoots into lines every ten feet, even as competing families, now accustomed to the copycat method, installed Laterals and Uprights in their Squares in what seemed the blink of an eye. Vane could barely keep up with his immediate neighbors. But he continued gamely shouting instructions into his walkie-talkie, dangling from his neck like a pendant with its transmit switch taped open, though fresh water lines were being laid down west-east Streets almost before he could get the words out. Engineers and volunteers quickly patched these lines to a comb on one end, capped and valved their Uprights in Square centers on the other. Parallel sewage lines were positioned directly on the heels of the fresh water lines, without a hitch or a bitch. Vane was staggered. Before the sun had set the system was all but completed. Mamuset would take advantage of the Danakil’s gentle easterly slope; all outflow would be centralized at Delta’s East Comb, a breakdown unit identical to the fixture on West Rim. Used, contaminated, and otherwise unwanted water would be channeled out into the deep desert, where the water would soon evaporate and its particulates bake into dust. On the fourth day the Afar worked back toward the middle, measuring levels and inspecting joins, packing dirt round the lines, burying the system and rebuilding Streets. Just at dusk, the Reservoir was stress-tested and engaged. That night, under a gibbous moon, the soil of Mamuset had its first drink in years. The fifth day found Vane and Mudhead eyeballing the site from Gondar’s little mail plane. Vane’s chessboard stared back up at him, fully mapped-out, each white-dotted section with its own tiny mushroom canopy. And on that chessboard thousands of black ants were hard at work, breaking up and turning their Squares’ moistened earth with shovels and hoes. Not a man snuck a break. There were no loiterers, no pockets of loafing pals. Even the smallest children were hard into it, dragging parcels and crates from Dock to Warehouse like plainsmen hauling slain antelopes. The tiny plane’s confines were almost unbearably tight. Mudhead, on the window, looked down with his trademark stoneface, squirming every time Vane brushed against him for a better look. The stubborn young American came this close to admitting he’d sold the Africans short. And on that fifth day Crew completed their prepping of the crater’s floor. By now all Sectors were cooperating via Utility Quads; the site’s abundant water supply made cement-mixing possible at the thousands of individual Squares. It was a big day for Vane, the day he’d dreamt of since that bleak moment he’d come to his senses on his father’s hard crypt floor, weeping from nightmares of dead black babies in the dirt. In the wholesome muscularity of subsequent fantasies, he became the quintessential bronzed demigod, perfecting his model Square foundation with the patience of a saint and the intensity of a blacksmith. But no matter how willing the spirit, nothing in his dreams or training prepared him for this brutal task. Still he toughed it out, hour after agonizing hour, unable to bear the prospect of failing in public. He badly strained his back digging his foundation’s foot-deep, 20 x 20 space, came up with a major groin pull, and twice almost collapsed from heat exhaustion. Gasping horribly, a nearly delirious Vane forced in his excavation’s four locking aluminum retaining walls, weaving on his blistered hands and knees, every joint on fire. And, though his gloved hands were raw and bleeding, though his thighs and underarms were badly chafed, he nevertheless summoned the cojones to align and lock the walls’ corner post guides. His neighbors bent over backwards to drag along in time, but they were frustrated, champing at the bit . . . unintentionally mimicking him as he clung like a drunk to a propped-up, barely-vertical steel corner post . . . anticipating his moves, far too quickly, as he demonstrated assessing verticality with a plumb line. But once he’d found his second wind he showed all those impatient sons of bitches just how cleverly a steady-as-they-came Westerner could make critical adjustments on upright posts using only simple shims . . . showed them how they, too, could bolt down perforated steel corner posts if the damned 79

Microcosmia Afar cement ever set . . . showed them how a proud white man, out of his element and wheezing like a middle-aged marathoner, could still focus—how he could, no matter how tough the going, still manage the breath to explain, even with that pitiless black bastard’s pushy translation searing out of U.Q. speakers, the correct placement of these bruising roof posts . . . cross posts . . . how the freaking corner posts’ holes would accept a completed domicile’s foot-wide, twenty-foot-long aluminum “gills,” and how those gills could be opened manually and locked in place, allowing the domicile, which was basically a one-room, four hundred square-foot aluminum cabin, to, finally, “breathe.” Domiciles, explained a haggard Vane, or Domos, would face south, allowing their roofs’ sloping solar panels to take maximum advantage of the sun. These panels would generate enough energy to power a Domo’s ceiling fan, and charge house batteries with sufficient juice to burn four twelve-volt lights over a twelve-hour period. Vane now tottered to his Canopy and came down hard on the mat, every muscle seizing, his back and neck in serious pain. It was all he could do to recline regally, and to fan himself without looking effete. But his performance was already old news. In Core Squares Afar men were digging and locking with delight, shoveling dirt in and out excitedly, begging neighbors for a chance to contribute. Flung dirt arced through the air like streamers. Under a straight, tight Canopy next door, Mudhead sat in a bored slump, duly facing Mecca while thrilled youngsters dug out his foundation’s space. Vane groaned to his feet and grabbed his Upright’s hose. Held it over his head. Turned on the spigot. He howled with pain and shot out of his Square—the water was scalding. Vane kept running, all the way up to Top Step, where he fell back in his favorite chair under the Big Tarp. He cracked open a well-deserved, lukewarm beer. The odd mix of Afar work ethics—cooperative and competitive—made the scene below a fastforwarded 3D movie. He slowly shook his head as finished workers, pacing their Squares in anguish, broke to assist their neighbors’ neighbors. Others, beaten to the punch, returned to desperately rake and re-rake their own Squares. For half a minute Vane hated the Afar almost as much as he hated himself. He forced himself up and peered through his Eyes. Nothing but unbridled excitement. Folks were running like spiders, in and out of nearly completed foundation excavations. Experimenting men and boys, having fitted stray gills into adjacent propped-up corner posts, were tweaking and spinning those gills intently. Again Vane was struck by their innate cleverness. He panned Sectors. The entire field was well-mapped and ready to go. Pickups, moving up nicely-aligned Streets, were dropping off stacks of gills to impetuous Afar. Other trucks transported eagerly-unloaded bags of cement. Vane leaned on his tripod; one useless Stage prop on another. Mudhead was the crater’s only other inactive party. Exhausted by all these clamoring children, he could only glare and mumble orders, stuffed in a Square resembling more a playground than a work site. His worn-out old eyes caught the gleam of Vane’s mounted binoculars, trained dead on him. Staring back glumly, he made the old throat-slitting gesture with a forefinger. Vane cursed the vile day they’d met before hobbling down the Steps, his Core neighbors watching like dogs waiting for a ball to be tossed. He dragged Mudhead up to translate, then painfully galloped back down. He began blending cement and water in his wheelbarrow, pausing to carefully describe each step over his walkie-talkie. Mudhead’s kids went wild with excitement. Once he’d plugged his guides with dummy posts, Vane stirred, poured, and spread his cement. It was grueling work, almost as tough as the digging, but a kind of giddiness produced by the heat pushed him on—leveling, dousing, and smoothing—to the imaginary cheers of an engrossed and grateful crowd. Vane’s cement foundation, under the fierce East African sun, was fully set in an hour, 80

Microcosmia Afar and that hour’s rest, along with sufficient shade and irrigation, was enough to get him back in the saddle. Instructing with great care, he righted a corner post in its guide, checked and rechecked it with his plumb line, knocked in a pair of shims, and bolted the post in tight. His final check passed with flying colors. Vane wobbled around proudly. Corner posts were popping up all over the place, a dozen in the wink of an eye. The bastards were racing him! In one Square a knight’s move away, an elderly man already had three set up and was reaching for his fourth. Vane immediately scooped up his remaining three and ran puffing around his Square, plunging the posts in their guides, pounding in shims and bolts. After cursory checks for verticality, he ran dragging a twenty-foot steel roof post while barking out instructions for installation. He kicked his folding footstool to a foundation corner, but by the time he had the little aluminum monster in place a neighbor had already installed his first roof post and was excitedly eyeballing the next. Vane bashed his knuckles raw and almost pinched off a finger tightening down his first roof post. He hung from the post for a few seconds before dropping to his foundation like a dead man, only to find that his surrounding Squares already had all four posts bolted in place. All his neighbors were squatting in a hard circle, watching; hyperactive children forced to sit still. And it hit him: taking his sweet time was his best defense. No one could copy the undemonstrated. Likewise, Mudhead couldn’t translate without instructions. Vane dawdled with his roof frame, then took a good long smoke break before bolting in his cross posts with exaggerated care. He droned on and on over his walkie-talkie, pissing off Mudhead and confusing the hell out of his neighbors. Vane watched yawning while volunteers drove Square to Square; dropping off photoelectric panels, deep-cycle batteries, fan motors and blades, picking up crusty wheelbarrows for Utility Square washings. He lit another cigar, casually toured his perimeter. From three sides of his foundation, he could peer down strange tunnels of Domo frames, seeing which posts were absolutely vertical and which required alignment. Most were dead-on. A fair measure of conceit helped fuel his stately, cigarchomping march halfway up the Mount’s eastern slope, but it wasn’t enough to take him to the top. On one footfall like any other his entire body cramped up on him. Vane went down hard on his face. He writhed in the dirt like an epileptic until a small herd of doctors got their mitts on him. They irrigated and fanned him, kneaded his muscles and joints, crammed tongue depressors in his mouth. After a buzzing confab, he was ported to his foundation like a battlefield casualty. There Mudhead, having ordered everyone within earshot to hang mats from the Square’s roof posts for shade, spread Vane out face-down in the dirt. He placed all his weight on the man’s arched back, deaf to his howls. “Boss . . . man . . . hold . . . still!” He hauled back on the shoulders until Vane thought his arms would be torn from their sockets. Vane screamed like a woman while Mudhead balanced one foot on the back of his neck and the other on the small of his spine. The African placed an unopened bottle of beer in front of Vane’s twisted face. “Bossman bite this.” He pushed his way outside. In a few minutes Vane heard the famous Tick . . . Tock . . . Tick . . . Tock . . . of the Chambers Brothers’ psychedelic masterpiece Time Has Come Today, coming full-blast from the Stage speakers. Just as the interlude’s scream fest began, Mudhead stepped back inside and grabbed an arm and leg. “Now Bossman holler.” That night the Afar slept on cement floors for the first time, using their former homes’ hides as mats. While they were still up, conversing, Mudhead borrowed swarms of children to build Vane a sprawling bed of packing, hides, and blankets. When they were gone he stuffed Vane’s face in those blankets and got back to work on him. The humbled master of Mamuset spent half the night on his back, absolutely motionless, staring at a shrinking candle. When he woke it was way light. The computer had automatically opened the day with Strauss, 81

Microcosmia Afar over an hour ago, and Kitchen had already served breakfast; his own full Bowl and a mug of coffee were perched on his foundation’s tilted lip. He’d never felt so limber, never so refreshed. Crossing his foundation was like walking on air. Vane pulled aside a pair of mats to greet the new day. He was astonished; in that single hour the unsupervised Afar had assembled their Domos from the ground up. Stretching across the crater’s floor was a vast community of topless aluminum boxes. They were not, however, identical boxes. Domos’ gills are continuous only on two sides. Post extensions on the southern face produce a doorway requiring shorter gills, the northern face uses gills with louver-window inserts, along with a bottom gill designed to accept fresh water-and sewage pipes. The Afar could not have known this. Parts had been shuffled and traded experimentally; results were all over the place. But Vane, by ordering reassembly, bought plenty of time to properly set up his own gills. He was elated to have the first Mamuset Domo with walls correctly faced. Vane strutted in and out of his doorway while his neighbors cheered maniacally. Those cheers spread like wildfire. After a while even the most distant Afar, without the least idea why, were kicking up their heels. Vane thereupon, while balancing on his folding ladder, bolted up his triangular north and south roof braces and face plates, horizontal spire post, eave ribs, and solar panels. Eventually guards, rather like inverted gutters, would be fitted across the roofs’ spires, and protective strips snapped over channels between joined solar panels. Vane knew that someday rain would again find the Danakil. His brainchild would be ready. At high noon he was hard at work inside a strange aluminum cabin, describing his actions over his walkie-talkie while he ran wires from solar panels to the fan motor bolted at the cross posts’ junction. Vane screwed in the blades, wired the battery into the loop, and flicked the motor’s switch. The blades began their gentle revolution. It wasn’t much, but it was circulation. And once he’d locked open his Domo’s gills the effect was heavenly. The Afar whispered and tiptoed late into the night, though Vane slept with the dead. In a haze of moonlight they silently tore down and rebuilt their new homes, opened and closed doors, repeatedly walked inside and out. Thousands of gills whispered up and down in an odd communal Morse. Then, one by one, Domos threw out long slats of twelve-volt light, until the burgeoning desert oasis glowed like a little pool of stars.

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Chapter Nine Franco For both Mudhead and Vane, the next day was an exasperating challenge in cooperation and translation. The dynamic functions of foot pumps and valves, the very Western concepts of aluminum sinks and stainless steel toilets—these were profoundly mysterious to the nomadic Afar. Measurements and tolerances required clarification in depth. For Vane it was frustrating, claustrophobic work; assembling parts by memory, repeatedly yelling instructions through his gills. Though he fiercely cursed Mudhead’s penchant for garbling the CO’s critical commands, and inwardly blessed the Afar’s inherent call to mimicry, he still found room for hope and selfcongratulation: the circulation created by his fan was nothing short of life-saving. Folding partitions created compact toilet stalls, defined by Vane with considerable embarrassment. Arriving on that same run were loads of heavy foam padding, along with mountains of carpet pieces. Vane took his pick first, favoring solids in earth tones. He demonstrated from the Stage; unrolling and rerolling a pad, layering carpet pieces like throw rugs to produce a civilized softness underfoot. The Afar, nodding and murmuring appreciatively, quietly stepped back inside their Domos, respectfully laid their pads and pieces, carefully covered them over with dirt. Next came Yards: oblong Square divisions still marked off by stakes. Using smaller lattice guides, a Square’s Yard could be subdivided into 10 x 10 corner squares for a coop, a hutch, a pen, and a camel pad. Other folding guides measured off rectangular side patches for the Square’s gardens, both vegetable and flower. A south-side lattice produced a walkway and front yard, the north-side lattice a backyard and cooking/dining area. Any given Square’s fence might be picket, chain link, simple hedge, or whatever the resident’s imagination could produce. Or no fence at all. It was an aesthetic, not a security, concern. There would be no crime in Mamuset. Once he had Squares up and running, Vane delivered a grueling series of lectures on micronutrients, tilling, and irrigation, commencing every morning directly after Strauss. Fields were sectioned for corn, tubers, beans, alfalfa, millet, and teff, a native grain. The chessboard effect was 83

Microcosmia Franco retained. And though Vane at times could be brutal in his grudging test of the communal will, the Afar just ate up his demands and begged for more. So he gave them more. To decrease the crater’s salt content, backbreaking applications of lime were instituted, coupled with diligent soil-turning and near-continuous flushings of Fields west of the Ridge. Vane kept waking expecting an uprising. But each morning he found the Afar scrambling for the crippling privilege of hoeing hundreds of rows east to west. The dog was walking its master. The project’s first real hitch came on a morning like any other, after only a few short weeks of work. Calisthenics were completed. Breakfast, come and gone. Vane had finally concluded his lectures on the multiplication tables, proper civil comportment in a free society, and the great vitamin E controversy, with Mudhead’s usual sarcastic mistranslations snapping from every Utility Square speaker. The relieved Afar, tools in hands, were scurrying off to Fields. But on that otherwise typical, searing morning, the primary convoy arrived late, light, and manned by an evasive company of belligerent drivers. There was no excuse for it; by now the route from Massawa to Mamuset was entirely serviceable. And no matter how many times Mudhead tried to solve the mystery of the missing cargo, all he got was a raucous demand for cash up front and the promise of a broken jaw if he didn’t quit snooping. The CO kept him at it until the drivers threatened to split with their loads intact. Vane had to take them seriously—light or not, almost a day’s worth of food was at stake. A call to Addis Ababa got him nowhere. And Honey, through ‘local’ contact Tibor, would only report unspecified difficulties in Port Massawa. Warehouses were non-responsive. When he stormed back to Dock, Vane found the drivers ganged around a stock-still Mudhead, chorusing their demand with mounting hostility. He pressed to his friend’s side, and the ring closed round behind him. Through Mudhead and a series of universal hand gestures, Vane explained that he carried only petty cash, and that payroll operated out of a Massawa warehouse. The drivers turned away, preparing to make good their threat. Vane’s very unmanly squeal of protest bought a minute. The men turned back. Vane studied the dozens of tractor trailers. Tons and tons of dried and frozen foods were in the balance. He thereupon offered, on his signature, double pay in Massawa if the men would only leave their loads behind. Their response was clear enough: they weren’t planning a return to Massawa any time soon. Not only that, they didn’t believe Vane for a second. Again with the ultimatum: cash in dollars American, in the fist and on the spot. The noose continued to tighten. A low growling sound, which Vane first supposed came from a refrigerator trailer, swirled out of a looming line of spiky shadows surrounding the drivers. The Afar appeared to glide as they multiplied. Their common growl rose slowly, in pitch and in intensity, like a ring of cellos ascending in legato half steps. At last Vane cried out “Stop!” and threw his arms high. The sound cut off immediately, but the crowd’s hundred eyes continued to glare. Vane hollered, “Kid!” The youngster shot through the ring like a projectile, dancing in circles, head down and fists clenched. “Mudhead! Tell Kid he’s in charge until we get back! We’re gonna go find out what the hangup is. You tell him to get Crew busy unloading these trucks . . . now!” He spat at the nearest driver’s feet. “Then tell these reptiles they can pick up their walking papers in Massawa!” Vane cockily strutted up to Isis while Mudhead translated. He fired her up, tore round in a tight circle, and braked emphatically. The African climbed in with decorum and braced himself. The Land Rover took off like a comet with a burning-rubber tail. The fifty-mile stretch to Massawa did nothing for Vane; all his bluster and bravado were quickly replaced by funk and defeatism. The problem slammed his back against an imaginary wall. 84

Microcosmia Franco Before a single fact was in he knew he’d failed. Knew it. It was a good thing he’d carried his inheritance to the desert, far from cameras and gold diggers. He’d never have handled the pressures of power and responsibility; his head would have exploded. And he’d have taken a whole lot of people down with him. Arguably a bad thing. And, after he’d blown, the rags would have reassembled the pieces to produce that insatiable egomaniac the public demanded—an ill-mannered, lecherous, walking time bomb triggered by a final play of soured greed. Tinsel starlets and cast-iron henchmen would have materialized, singing lurid tales of the pampered heir’s physical and psychological abuses. Better to live apart from all that. Better to forget. Better to be forgotten. Mudhead watched his racing boss nodding with naked misery. He clung to the bucking Rover and smiled grimly, knowing that, all else notwithstanding, Vane was going to die an African. Massawa, an ancient commercial port with a light military flow, was nothing like the place they’d worked out of only three weeks ago. Now the hills were crawling with earth-moving equipment, preparing what looked to be a series of battlements. A new airstrip flickered in the rising morning heat, her twin radar dishes mooning the sky. The rest of the place stank of decaying municipal control; in the trash piled along the major road’s sides, in the abandoned cars and trucks looted of batteries and radios, in the new potholes and drooping power lines. Where once the harbor possessed an easy, almost sanguine ambience, there now existed a very ominous military presence. Jeeps full of hot-dogging black Muslims roared past, trying to goose a reaction out of Vane. Each soldier wore fatigues and combat boots, a camouflage Muslim headpiece, and very dark glasses. In addition, some wore streaming multicolored robes, flak jackets, and miscellaneous military paraphernalia of unfamiliar vintage and origin. All sported Uzis or shotguns, and looked far more like street thugs than soldiers. By contrast Vane looked sporty and naïve, Mudhead almost officious. They were the good boys on the wrong side of the tracks. Nearer the water, Eritrean army vehicles monitored traffic by holding flow to a crawl in both directions. Civilians were halted with a randomness that appeared deliberately contemptuous; the roving sentries took particular delight in detaining the Land Rover, and in thoroughly checking and rechecking Vane’s papers. Eritrea’s retaking of the Red Sea coast had deprived Ethiopia of her navy; at present, these seized Ethiopian ships were commanded by officers of Eritrea’s army. Except for a narrow sea corridor, Massawa’s commercial port was completely obstructed. Several small aid-ships were locked in solid with the old Ethiopian naval vessels—they’d been immobilized for over two weeks (help for the sick and starving was dead in the water: the ethical distribution of humanitarian aid in East Africa, of little interest during peace, is of no interest whatever during war). But a deep front existed. In fact, ships bearing the aid of major democracies were escorted up and down that narrow corridor with great ceremony. Their cargoes were unloaded, signed for, and warehoused. These stored wares were then divided and subdivided by Army officers and competing lords of crime. What did get through to relief organizations (mainly harried mobile distribution groups virtually cut off from facts and figures) was a miserable fraction of that reaching the fatted lips of Eritrean officers, and the fatting coffers of organized crime. While there was a perpetual outcry of disappointment and suspicion at the chain’s far end, those groups doing the actual feeding and medicating believed aid was at an abysmal low due to losses caused by conflict, rather than hush and piracy. Port Massawa’s ugly amalgam of crime and police had produced a dank bully culture; in this world corruption was not merely commonplace, it was the cornerstone and standard. Islam was a 85

Microcosmia Franco shadow; prostitution and murder were open means of barter and resolution. No one questioned a thing, no one imagined questioning a thing. The government supported the port by allowing it to remain open under military authority, and the military supported the economy by regulating the flow of seized tobacco, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals. Used syringes floated in raw sewage amid cigarette butts and broken liquor bottles. Massawa, once the jewel of Red Sea ports, had almost overnight become a Third world ghetto, infested with every modern disease the area could support. Yet in the hills there remained oases, sheltered from the filth and misery, where the more successful bosses kept up retinues of Chinese gardeners and Turkish chefs. On these estates Eritrean officers and kingpins competitively expanded their stables of whores, sycophants, and spies. Vane and Mudhead stuck out like sore thumbs in all this squalor. The black Muslim sentries, standing loosely at intersections, were frankly contemptuous of the young driver’s fairness, and of his elder partner’s bleached robes and anal-retentive appearance. They watched in eyeless appraisal; wearing their ammo belts slung to the right in deference to Allah, doing their sinning with the left hand alone. Military vehicles seemed to come popping off assembly lines as Isis approached the water. These vehicles’ occupants initially passed alongside with affected indifference. Then with looks of hard inquisitiveness. Finally, with postures and expressions of outright hostility. Those black sunglasses were everywhere. Vane and Mudhead faced straight ahead. Harbor Massawa was a festering wound; a garbage-covered pustule peppered with the rotting corpses of rats, cats, and the occasional mongrel. Those ubiquitous gangster-soldiers in fatigues and dark glasses fit right in. Jeeps full of them loitered in subterranean drives and in the entrances to overgrown alleys. Heads turned as one as the Land Rover rolled by. A mile off the water was a barricade of worn military vehicles parked crosswise. Only one car at a time could be admitted. Vane put Isis in neutral. “Not too late turn back,” Mudhead said quietly, “Mister Vane.” It was the first time he’d formally addressed his employer. They listened to the hot engine. Finally Vane said, “It’s always too late.” Neither man moved. A minute later Mudhead muttered, “Maybe Bossman right.” Vane, a tourist seeking landmarks, looked around casually. Two alleys back, a jeep crawled out of the shadows, hesitated. “On right too.” A jeep crunched up on either side. Vane slowly turned his head to the left and stared pokerfaced at the cold black masks with the impenetrable black glasses. An officer in the passenger seat said, in a thickly accented voice, “You will proceed to the checkpoint.” “We have clearance. We’re civilian.” The man immediately stepped out and got in Vane’s face. “You are wrong, sir. You have zero clearance here. You have entered a military zone in wartime. You are therefore under the jurisdiction of the Port’s commanding officer. He alone determines affairs in Massawa.” Vane thrust out his chin. “I would speak with this commanding officer.” “This is already arranged. You are expected.” Still staring Vane down, he said, “Proceed with this vehicle,” and climbed back in. Isis was escorted to the gap, where a gold Mercedes waited with engine humming. The Rover’s doors were yanked open. “No, not him. The American alone.” Mudhead was hauled out and smothered in a human knot. Before Vane could open his mouth he was flanked by four soldiers. 86

Microcosmia Franco “I’ll just be a minute,” he said bravely. “No napping.” He walked close behind the officer, caught up in a tight crescent. The man halted at the driver’s door. After half a minute he stamped a boot. The car’s rear door popped open, as though triggered by the concussion. The back was empty. Vane slid across the seat. The officer shut the door firmly and leaned in his head. “There are alcohol and tobacco in that compartment. Indicate to the driver that you desire these things and he will flip a switch up front, releasing the compartment’s door.” “Thank you.” “This automobile utilizes a very powerful air conditioning system, made necessary by our country’s extreme temperature. The car’s metal can become quite hot; at times even the glass will burn flesh. The deep coolness is for your protection, not for comfort. For this reason we require that all windows remain up. The doors will be locked for your safety.” A pause. “Enjoy the drive. It is a short trip.” Vane stared straight ahead. The black face studied him curiously, withdrawing as the dark window hummed up. The door locked with a whisper. In half a minute the car’s interior was a deep freeze. The driver’s head and shoulders did not invite conversation. The man wore no religious or military apparel, and stank of old sweat and cheap cologne. Half his left ear was missing. Vane sat back and stared out the window as the Mercedes quietly rolled toward Massawa’s Old Harbor section. His memories were of an idyllic montage, almost Mediterranean in feel. But now the harbor was a cesspool, dominated by what had to be the planet’s largest, filthiest, and most decrepit threeisland general-cargo ship, all set to burst at the seams. Scheherazade was a World War II eyesore, a fat mother hen wallowing in disrepair. Her name, acid-etched on the prow, incompletely obscured the ghost of her previous incarnation—DEUT was all Vane could decipher. Dozens of flagging derricks hung from her deck, leaning crazily over the holds and water, while seagulls swarmed about her like flies round a dog’s mess, dropping their dull white thanks on her cargo and hull. The ship had not been cleaned in many, many years; below her mangled rail the white streaks of dung resembled icicles hanging from eaves. Scheherazade’s bridge had caved in from some past abuse of cargo, and was now a sad sagging shack with a soot-and-crap smokestack. Vane mulled over his smashed bags and crates. Holds were overflowing with flour, rice, and fertilizer, parts and parcels poking up like flotsam. On deck, boxes and sacks were stacked willynilly, so that the tops of stacks formed a bumpy foundation for the next level. Everything was battened ingeniously; with ropes, with cables, with hoses and rags. Wide banks of flowing grain were intermixed with glacier-like drifts of bird dung and narrow dunes of fertilizer, the whole mess spilling across the deck into black holds and doorways. So grossly overladen was the ship that Vane could see only a narrow, zigzagging walkway between the heaving cliffs of cargo. All around Scheherazade, Old Harbor lay festering; oily, stagnant, reeking with floating garbage. Gone were the typical rusting container ships, the native fishers, the tugs and transports. In their place were a dozen antique Eritrean naval vessels, slowly rocking with the tide. Docks were silent, overrun by strays and wharf rats. Contempt hung over everything; contempt for sanitation, contempt for life, contempt for the military, contempt for Eritrea. The camouflaged sentries were less conspicuous here; the ones Vane observed peering from cover were done balancing military protocol against energy expenditure. The heat always won. No man not an officer was willing to readily forsake shade unless addressing Mecca. So the black-eyed bogeymen, leaning half-out of shadows, watched insolently as the gold Mercedes passed, counting the days until the shiny prize would, by 87

Microcosmia Franco coup or subterfuge, be theirs. Having spent most of the last five months in this section of Massawa, Vane was well aware they were headed for one of his principal warehouses. His blood rose when he finally made out the wide aluminum building, squatting deserted in the hanging sun. In a few minutes the driver pulled up to an open side door. The car’s locks released. Vane sat still. “Thanks again,” he said quietly. The head did not turn. When he stepped out the heat hit him like a haymaker. He kicked the door shut and the Mercedes pulled away. Out of the frying pan and into the pressure cooker—Vane strolled through the warehouse’s hot shadows, barely able to breathe, casting cursory glances left and right. He’d been robbed. The huge end fans were gone; torn from their stands. Split and reeking sacks of manure lay intermingled with torn bags of borax and manganese sulfate. A strange mustiness emanated from the mysteries behind looted shelves, where water or some other fluid had reacted with sulfates of zinc and copper. Vane casually probed an unfamiliar burlap bag with a forefinger. He leaned forward for a sniff. The texture was grainy, the smell neutral. The warehouse’s only innocuous features were two identical red leather barstools set on either side of a polished driftwood coffee table in an isolated pool of sallow light. A very stagy setting. Vane walked over and looked down. The table sported a sincere but lame spread of Americana: a six-pack of Coors long necks, a zinc-plated Zippo lighter perched on a fresh pack of Marlboros, a five-ounce bag of Fritos corn chips, and a small jar of Skippy extra chunky peanut butter. Carefully centered amid these articles was a wide glass ashtray with the legend Ramada Inn cut into its base. Vane perched on a barstool and stared at nothing. Finally he plucked out a Coors, screwed off the cap, and raised the bottle to his lips. Foam blew out the mouth and ran down his arm; the brew was room temperature. He flicked the liquid from his hand and cursed quietly. After a few breaths he took a tentative swallow and studied the shadows. If this warehouse was any indication, seventy-to eighty per cent of his stores had been pirated. He drank deeper. It wasn’t just a matter of replacing these stores. If Eritrea was being raped from within, anything coming through was as good as lost. He had to find a new corridor. But before that, if Mamuset was to survive, he had to get his property back. Slats of light and shadow bisected boxes and shelves, giving the warehouse a lifeless, mechanical feel. Vane gently set down the bottle, squinted and perked up his ears. Not a sound, not a movement. Then, very slowly, a black contour melted out of the lesser darkness; deep sunglasses and epaulet-crowned shoulders preceding a broad chest crisscrossed by wide, camel-hide ammo belts. Vane watched two pale lips, obscene in a horizontal oval of cropped facial hair, convulse nervously until the coffee-stained teeth split for a genial smile. A heavy voice oozed, “I won’t waste precious time with shallow salutations, homeyboy. Your arrival has forced me to cut short a local celebration. The party’s life involved the exquisite disemboweling of three former employees who were, to their great misfortune, completely unaware of who butters the sides of their bread.” The mouth’s corners turned up a notch. “How do you appreciate my mastery of the idiom, Mr. Vane? I find that my toads are delighted and confounded by Americanisms.” “I guess it’ll have to do. So who the Devil, as we Americans say, are you?” A tall figure stepped into the dirty pool of light. The man very gently clicked his heels, and gave a bow so conservative it was more a reclining of the brow than a nodding of the head. “Colonel Franco a’ Muhammed en Abbi . . . Franco to you, Cristian Honey Vane, son of the celebrated John Beregard.” 88

Microcosmia Franco Vane smiled sourly. “Franco? El Caudillo?” The colonel bowed again. “You flatter me.” “And you’re . . . what? Moroccan? Algerian?” The square jaw cocked. “You were expecting . . . what? A man as dark as the African night?” He shook his head and clucked. “Outside the field, Mr. Vane, you will find no black officers here; not in Eritrea. Command is . . . ah . . . imported. An . . . international puzzle is being assembled—a fascinating structure, but,” and he held a forefinger to his lips while mimicking paranoia, “these are matters for which your ears are far too green. Suffice it to say that I am Massawa’s head official, the top of the dog. I alone coordinate the comings and goings of all before me, all around me, all beneath me. No man possessing a stake in Massawa is not indebted to me for life. I am chief of police; I am liaison between soldier and state. Knower of things, giver of favors, receiver of pleasures so abundant I grow weary of their getting. I am God here, Mr. Vane, appointed, indirectly, by a . . . Great Apportioner. And I know all there is to know, and I see all that is worthy of seeing. Nothing escapes me!” He sighed painfully. “And yet . . . I have come to suffer from—ennui. Bored with my petty anthill, I ask myself idle questions, such as: Why would Allah embrace pigs simply because they squat five times a day in swinish obeisance? And how is it that seemingly dignified men will snap at doubloons like dogs after treats? And, of course, what could possibly motivate one of the richest men in the world to come slinking through this serpentarium into my warehouse? Could it be that you too suffer from this great and noble disease, this ennui?” “One of my warehouses,” Vane corrected him. “And I didn’t come slinking. I only came to see what’s hanging up my supplies. My experiences here, along with your quaintly struggling explanation, have answered the immediate questions. The lifeline to Mamuset, the land I bought, the enterprise I pissed bullets for, has been sabotaged by the lead goofball in a troupe of opportunists straight out of the nineteenth century.” He shrugged. “No, Mr. Abba Zaba, I don’t suffer from ennui.” Franco cocked his head. Exhibiting no military bearing whatsoever, he drew back the other barstool and swung over a leg. He extracted a small writing pad and retractable pen from a breast pocket, thumbed the pen wide and, his expression intense, entered a quick note followed by a series of jabbed exclamation points. He looked back up, the intensity replaced by the warmest of smiles. “And you, sir, may address me as simply Franco.” “Well, Mr. Simply Franco, ennui is cured, simply enough, by directing one’s energies into the constructive realm. Stop being so selfish and worldly. It’s your little fiefdom that’s killing you, not the Big Picture.” “I believe I have intimated as much.” “Then why persist in these bullying tactics? It’s the way of small men. Imagine what you could accomplish if you were employed in the betterment of your surroundings.” Vane rose. He stepped up to a pallet stacked with fertilizer, used his key chain’s retractable exacto-knife to slit a bag, and caught a handful of pungent nitrates. Franco looked on curiously. “You were expecting—what? Tons of camouflaged contraband, perhaps?” He shook his head sadly. “Mr. Vane, in Massawa we label our cocaine shipments plainly and with pride.” “Just a businessman’s interest in his wares, Mr. Franco. You understand.” “The title is ‘Colonel.’ And they are my wares, Mr. Vane.” Franco squinted at the rafters, measuring his words. “Ah, my belligerent civilian friend . . . you are aware that there is a mighty vessel anchored in Old Harbor, even now taking on supplies from these warehouses?” “I saw it.” “This great ship holds the contents of all those warehouses and yards you keep insisting 89

Microcosmia Franco belong to you. Those warehouses and yards are now almost completely emptied, the ship almost completely filled. Depending on the outcome of our little chat here, that cargo will either be returned or go on the market. You may call this market black if it suits you ideologically. Whatever.” An apt comparison eluded him. “I can see this is a pointed sore between us. The fundamentals of law you observe in your great nation are as applicable here as they would be on, say, the planet Neptune. For example, you presently feel distanced from certain articles which were once in your legal possession. What is your natural reaction? You will of course summon a policeman, who will quickly arrive to take a statement, receive a description of the articles named as stolen, and hopefully obtain a basic description of the guilty party. That is Step One; as understandable as the bleating of sheep at slaughter. I believe that, at all costs, this first step should be expedited with a clear head. And so, my friend, we shall now call us a cop. But which cop shall it be? I have several to choose from, and will personally guarantee that my selection’s work ethic leaves you with nothing but admiration for our humble ‘police state.’ For you see, Mr. Vane, tardy and otherwise unsatisfactory officers in Massawa spend the remainder of their lives flitting from shadow to shadow, afraid of their friends and neighbors, paling at the least whisper of wind. “But so much for Step One. We have now obtained a staunch officer of the peace. He has arrived, Allah be praised, expeditiously and with great sobriety, for he quite rightly considers his professional performance a matter of life and death. He takes a statement: the wares of a rich foreigner are reported pinched by a dastardly criminal for purposes unspeakable. We even have a fairly accurate description of what you easily-violated democrats label a ‘perp,’ or perpetrator.” Franco nodded cozily. “One of the ‘perks,’ Mr. Vane, of being a god cursed with ennui, is a limitless supply of pirated satellite broadcasts from the land of Laverne and Shirley. Hence my acumen in the rare hobby of Americanisms.” He tapped a temple. “I am a legend. “And our description of this audacious perp accurately embraces our whodunit: a tall, dreamy, vaguely handsome man with the medals of a hero and the nimbus of a god. Has he truly fouled the fair American? Our intrepid cop interviews relentlessly. None will say, none will say. But, almost inaudibly, a reverential whisper goes round. ‘Franco,’ it shudders, passing man to man. ‘Oh, Franco!’ “This is more than enough for the outraged American. As none of these seedy, double-dealing African gendarme seem willing to bring down this dashing burglar-of-cats, our umbrageous visitor immediately seeks an attorney who will reduce the offender to quivering confession in a solid Eritrean court of criminal law. “Again, no problem. There are several lawyers and judges to choose from in Massawa, Mr. Vane, and each will perform with the efficiency and expediency of our impressive policemen.” Vane raised his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, I get the picture. I’m being held for ransom by the chief thug in a weaseling gang of Third world terrorists. There’s no law, no decency, no justice in this dog-eat-dog jungle. But wait! That can’t be right. Surely you’ve watched enough TV to know Captain America’s on his way. I’ll be saved, and you’ll go down like all villains. The forces of Goodness always triumph. Top men in the cabinets of Eritrea and Ethiopia—you know their names—as well as in America, are deeply interested in the welfare of one captive corn-fed rich boy, and are perfectly aware of my whereabouts. Ironically, one of the drawbacks to being highly successful in a free country is an almost complete lack of privacy, especially when it comes to matters of state. Which is to say that the poor American rich boy, stuck in a pus-filled port on the Red Sea, is being watched, whether he likes it or not, by an invisible web of official nannies who, just like your sweating efficient policemen, do their job out of fear of a higher power. In short, Colonel Spaghetti-O, I can’t pee on a pansy without some little man in a trench coat taking a sample. Why? 90

Microcosmia Franco Because my holdings are so extensive, and so commanding, that the least tremor in their foundation causes waves of panic in Wall Street and in the Pentagon. Cristian . . . Honey, son of John Beregard, must remain healthy, happy, and sane. And, most of all, free. Believe it or not, it’s not just Hollywood and Burger King clinging to my shadow. NASA and JPL, and a few other groups of initials that would stagger even Y-O-U, are frightfully obsessed with my well-being. I would not be in the least surprised to find United States agents, even now, waiting without, while American satellites monitor our every move.” “If so,” Franco retorted gleefully, “they will surely surrender royalties to my regime.” The colonel posed for an imaginary camera. “I do hope your directors are as efficient as your spies. But I agree. There are curtains for me. Secret agents, as we speak, are preparing to burst in on jet skis that were once briefcases.” Franco grinned and wagged a forefinger. “I will be shaken, Mr. Vane, but I will not be stirred.” He snapped up the notepad and pen, and the instant his eyes met the page all aspects of chumminess and nonchalance were swept from his face. Vane didn’t like the new look at all. Franco gave the impression of a civil monster; an official who could write off lives with a squiggle and jab, then return to business as usual. The colonel made a final slash and looked back up, a cheetah done feeding. He appeared to have trouble remembering the nature of their conversation. The glazed look slowly left his eyes. This was a different Franco. This was the garrulous interrogator bored with plain old torture. This was the man of ennui. “Mr. Vane,” he said flatly, “you will find in Africa elements that obviate each and every clever Western countermeasure you may attempt to invoke. In this country terrible things take place in the night, things that go forever unresolved. And not only unresolved; they may go unreported. You feel your operation is of great moment, and that you, yourself, are under continuous scrutiny due to your imperial station. But here in Africa you and your entire project can disappear leaving only a black hole surrounded by chicken bones and stacked pebbles.” Franco tapped his dark glasses with a gloved forefinger. “You’ve heard, perhaps, of the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s? Monstrous acts were performed on decent people, atrocities that shook the civilized world . . . they were merely peccadilloes.” He gestured continentally. “Within my reach are pockets of very uncivilized humanity, pockets crammed with primitives capable of doing unspeakable things to the most innocent of men. There are, additionally, demons and blood overlords to summon, maggots for hire, and ‘political prisoners’ who will do my darkest bidding for even a shot at release.” Vane shook his head wearily. “So how did I know this was all gonna come down to threats.” Franco copied the action, but with gravity. “These are not simple threats, my naïve American friend. Blood Africa is a place you cannot imagine. An ambitious man does not ‘die’ in Blood Africa. He reaches his apex and is then brought down. He is not let down. He is torn down, tissue by tissue, scream by scream. It is important to his successors that he be reduced not merely to death, but to dust; dust that has been sucked dry of every drop of blood, every scrap of dignity, every vestige of memory. Only then, when he has been ground into particles far too bleached for even the most anemic of vultures—only then can he truly be described as deposed.” “Colonel,” Vane grinned, “I envy your position more with every syllable.” Franco inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Thank you, Mr. Vane. But I will do the jokemaking here. I am attempting to describe the world you have pricked, like a tick on a Titan, so that you may better understand the futility of your aplomb, and the absurdity of this notion—this scenario wherein a pasty, hollow-eyed American is saved in the nick of time.” He raised a hand. “No superhero rushes to your rescue. No sane man outside of Africa follows up on the unfortunate ingestion of a foreigner—no matter how well-heeled—by this cruelest of continents. If he does, he 91

Microcosmia Franco too will be swallowed. Africa is insatiable.” Franco leaned deeper into shadow, then suddenly loomed with bogeyman fingers wriggling playfully. “In Af-ri-ca,” the bogeyman intoned, and was immediately replaced by the grave, sarcastic interrogator, “there is a universal belief that anger can take on a life of its own. It remains an aspect of the injured party, while at the same time extending beyond him. It reaches out to the offender in ways that are unbelievably brutal—ways that are wholly unimaginable to a soft white Westerner with his feeble barricade of black servants and Semitic boot-lickers.” He dropped his hands in mock resignation. “All your beads and crucifixes, sir, will do you no good here. Shades walk among us, unaffected by walls or pleas for mercy. My shade, Mr. Vane, protects my wares, and will travel throughout the world to avenge my losses.” “I don’t hide behind angels and jabberwocky, Franco. White religion is as removed from my thoughts as your black demons. So go ahead and call out your phantom legions; I’m getting my property back one way or another. You just don’t seem to understand the extent of my influence. Listen, man: People of means, in high places, do not sit around in their offices arranging cinders and chicken bones. Nowadays practical concerns far outweigh superstitions. So get hip to the 21st century. Step out of the dark and work with me, instead of against me.” He nodded civilly. “We’ll forget this unpleasantness ever occurred.” Franco showed his entire dingy mouthful before bowing warmly. “Thank you so very much, Mr. Vane. You are wrong to believe these men in high places are above thousands of years of dark culture. They simply disguise it better. “As to your proposition: I wish you to know I am wholly amenable. It was my sole desire that we reach this point of confluence. With your assets and my command it is fait accompli that our strengths should combine. Think of it! We are Napoleon and Alexander on the Elbe. We can take this forsaken land and bend it to our common will. We can be kings here, sir. King en Abbi and King Vane, masters of all they survey.” “A sure cure for ennui.” “A sure cure for mediocrity.” There was a pause. Franco said apologetically, “I can see you have doubts . . . Cristian. You view your good friend Franco as entirely self-assured, and this makes you wonder—is this visionary perhaps blind to his flanks and rear? Am I throwing away my hat to a man already at war?” Franco, clasping his hands beatifically, sighed at the baking roof. “You are proper to ask, my best and most trusted ally.” He nodded. “There are more than meet the eyes in Massawa. As omnipotent as I must appear to a man such as yourself—a man accustomed to having worms at his beck and call—it would be wrong, at this present, momentous junction, to not inform my dear friend and future partner that I am not sole bearer of the whip in this place. There is a foil— a pig of a dog of a bastard of a man . . . he resides in Massawa . . . who knows where? My men report him in various places at various times, ever scheming to undermine me. He heads a family—actually more a gang—of thieves and black profiteers, seducing the population with opiates and promises. His men are distinguished by a distinctive marking on turbans and kaftans. You will see it wherever there is carrion; a heavy black vertical line with a red dot on either side. It is the symbol of the vulture. “This man wears a snow-white fez bearing this symbol, and claims to be a man of Mecca. He is no holier than I; only slipperier. He competes in the black market, waylaying cargo with his harbor rats, underselling my agents, frustrating our very government. But, were he to learn on the Massawa grapevine of our grand partnership—then would he quiver in his ugly boots! You need not fear him. Not ever! Not while you are on the side of Franco!” Vane delicately cracked open another beer. “If I see him, I’ll surely let him know.” 92

Microcosmia Franco Franco grinned and bowed. “Ah, Cristian! You are an apple in my eye!” He began to pace, his face twisting with excitement. Abruptly he stopped, and his jaw dropped to his chest. Nearly exultant, he cried, “It is done! Done!” The colonel wheeled and paced with greater energy, his hands escaping him in chopping gestures. “You, my friend, and all your underlings may relocate in Massawa. This will be a move of great ceremony. Our dual coronation will be televised over the entire Horn of Africa.” The gestures became sweeping. “Yemen! Saudi Arabia! India, even! Maggot empires will see, will understand, and will grovel! Magnificence humbling Mesopotamia will roll before cameras trained upon our glorious union!” A thought struck him and he halted. Franco perched guiltily on his stool. “But do not brood on expenses, my loyal friend and confederate! The display will be financed by my beholden worms, by their relatives’ businesses, and by their brats’ futures. Do not fear, mon ami. I will bring you the sun. This party will be on Franco.” Vane deliberated. After a minute he said, “Y’know, man, I really have to hand it to you. I admire your cunning. Not only that, you’ve got genuine balls. Televised coronations, groveling subjects, mind-boggling splendor. What an imagination!” He could tell the colonel’s eyes were burning behind the shades. “But I have an alternate plan.” Franco’s upper body tilted forward on the stool. “In this plan, my partner and sole confidant, you call forth your silly storm troopers, your puppets and your bogeys, and everybody lines up, with you at the very front. You’ve offered me the sun, I’ll give you the moon. You and your stupid army can get on your Third-world knees and kiss my hairy white ass.” Franco’s head jerked back as though he’d been slapped. “An Americanism,” Vane said. Franco leaned forward again. His voice was cool. “Then, my American friend, it would seem we are at an impasse. Your old ideas are out of place here. You are a foreigner of no property in a state at war. It is not solely my good nature that permits you to exit in one piece, free to return to an enemy nation. It is because I wish to give you time to reconsider.” He shook his head softly. “Anywhere you proceed in this part of the world, with your present point of view, you will be entirely frustrated. You cannot change people with money, Cristian Honey, you can only temporarily alter their behavior. Sooner or later they will turn on you, snakes that they are. This I know.” Again he tapped his temple. “It takes a man of the world to know men of the world. But you, sir,” he sniffed, “are far too innocent and spoiled.” Franco blew out his cheeks, rolled his eyes to the rafters. “All right, all right, all right! You have won me over, my wily compatriot. You have broken me down. I will now speak of things that are in your ears only. “Eritrea, this pathetic little strip of land against the Sea has . . . how shall I say it—Secret Friends. To cut through the chase, I will tell you that these friends are not friends of your country, presently or historically. And of them I will speak no more. I will only say that they are supplying Eritrea with intelligent weapons, and with men trained to instruct our soldiers in their use, and also in sophisticated tactics of ground warfare. At the same time we are collaborating with certain . . . dark partners, who are busily working Addis Ababa to soften her sweet belly. “The state of Ethiopia will be taken, let there be no making of mistakes about it. She will fall before the crocodile moon, and her carcass will be jealously apportioned. But my friends are not interested in Ethiopia per se. They are not even interested in Eritrea. These states are merely stepping stones toward . . . Fairer Pastures.” A note of softness, of awe, came into Franco’s voice. “And I have been promised my own pastures, Mister . . . Vane . . . Cristian . . . it is only due to our deep and abiding friendship that I now reveal what I do— 93

Microcosmia Franco “Franco’s future stands far beyond this miserable port. And when I speak it you will know it is also your future, and that we were destined to become partners fast and final. “The entire country of Eritrea will soon be merely an outlying territory of this new creation of my very powerful friends. Ethiopia will be little more. My friends will need a strong man to run this territory, and are impressed with my job here.” He tipped his head. “Do not let her dreary face dismay you. Massawa,” he said impressively, “is a military and administrative site, not a tourist trap. Beneath her surface she is running quite smoothly, thank you, but only because of my ruthless attention to detail. Example: when I first took control of this port a scant three weeks ago, the underground economy was a complete embarrassment. Some workers were spending as much as fifty per cent of their income on the procurement of qat leaves. Qat, if you have yet to experience it, produces a mild sense of euphoria when chewed. The user becomes addicted, loses interest in politics, fritters away whatever he may have saved. Think of it! Fifty per cent of one’s earnings devoted to a mind-numbing drug! I was outraged. But, after scrupulous investigations into the drug’s trafficking and its users’ psychology, I can tell you without too much humility that I was able to increase that percentage in some areas to as high as eighty per cent. My friends and I, just as do we two now, see eyes to eyes on these matters.” He nodded conspiratorially. “We know that no man of wealth and power achieves such a station without manipulating a few addicts and breaking a leg or two here and there. Great power breeds great cunning, and . . . great friends. “I am warning you now, my great and special friend, that your sorry little farm in the desert will be crushed by this huge coming wave, and all your charges splattered like cockroaches under a steamroller. But not with Franco on your side. I will guarantee you complete protection. More than that! With my connections you will be able to expand indefinitely. So do not scowl, my dear, dear friend. This—” he waved a hand, “all this is not merely the dream of a pipe; it is a future certainty. The world can be ours! “But right now,” the colonel concluded in a cautious voice, “Massawa is in turmoil. The great wave is building. For our sake, the goods of these warehouses and yards are being held for safekeeping aboard that monster cargo ship. And aboard that ship they will remain, until you and I have signed our pact. Only then will my friends be certain you are one of ours, and not an agent of the American government.” His expression became hurt. “So you see, Cristian, your partner is in a touched situation. He has to put up a strong face with his still-suspicious friends by holding our wares in this miserable harbor, which must seem a hostile act to his future co-ruler. But know that, when we make our bid, your wealth and my influence will be a combination unbeatable. We will reign as we were meant to reign. And we will be invincible.” He spread his hands. “These things, good and bad, were made to be. They were made so the moment your hungry blue eyes fell upon this plump, waiting land.” Franco tore off the top page and tossed the memo pad with its remaining blank leaves onto the coffee table. It was a closing gesture. He folded the page delicately and, observing Vane man-to-man, placed its secrets securely in his breast pocket, saying, “For my eyes only.” He patted the pocket, thumbed home its snap. Franco bowed and stepped away from the stool, his smile retreating as he melted back into the shadows. “Take your time,” said the smile. “Study this offer in private. When you are ready, send a courier to Massawa. He will be royally received. Be prepared to be impressed.” The smile dangled in the darkness like a dirty yellow bulb. A gloved hand showed dimly, forefinger extended and thumb cocked in the universal gesture of a pointed handgun. “Allah and Visa,” said the smile, “baby.” The smile went out. Vane sat quietly for a spell, listening. Though the warehouse was echoing still, he could tell the 94

Microcosmia Franco colonel had exited the premises. It was as if a cold front had moved on. He grabbed a Coors, twisted off the cap, and shoved the bottle in his mouth before the beer could foam over. Warm or not, it was liquid ecstasy in that frying pool of light. Vane chugged it down. He then slit open the pack of Marlboros and lit one, placed it on the ashtray and let it burn. After a minute he picked up the memo pad and cigarette, tapped ashes onto the top blank page, and very gently rubbed the ashes into the paper. He blew the remaining ashes away, tore off the top page and held it against the light. The pen’s indentations, revealed by traces of ash, read: Pissing bullets (gun then is?) (!!!!) Putting peas on pansies (accomplishes what?!?) Dogs eat in jungles (which jungles where?) Rich American boys are fed corn (why? How much?) Vane crumpled and tossed the page as he strolled back through the warehouse. He could see the cooking Land Rover framed in the access doorway, with Mudhead hunched to one side in the passenger seat. He heralded his approach with a heaved sigh, but the slouched white bundle remained motionless. Not until he reached Isis did Mudhead attempt to sit upright. Failing, he shook his head sharply, once each way. “Bossman still driver.” Vane climbed behind the wheel and watched the African staring into space, his throat arched and his face expressionless. In a minute Mudhead held up his right hand, purple and massively swollen behind the knuckles. “Mudahid Bossman right hand man,” he explained sourly, sweat rolling down his face. “So soldier break Mudahid right hand. Warning to Bossman.” “Ah, Christ. Man, I . . . just hang in there, buddy. I’ll get you to a doctor.” Mudhead shrugged his left shoulder. “Mudahid already see doctor. Military doctor. Doctor watch close when soldier break hand, so doctor know how re-break hand just right.” He sighed hugely. “Lucky Mudhead.” Vane looked away. “How bad?” “Plenty bad.” Vane hit the ignition. “All things considered, right hand man, I think we’re getting out of here cheaply enough.” He took the same route back and tore through the blockade. With nowhere to turn, Vane found himself hurtling up the road like some young punk in a hot rod. Eventually he noticed a bug in his rear-view mirror. The bug became a motor scooter. Vane pulled over and killed the engine as the little Vespa hurtled past. The scooter made a hard U-turn and gently motored back. The rider, grinning under his goggles, handed him a stuffed lunch bag, revved his scooter twice, and shot back to the harbor. Vane opened the bag curiously. Inside were a dozen prescription bottles, a handful of disposable syringes, and several vials that were certainly morphine. The ’scrips were Percodan, codeine, and Tylenol 4. “Happy Ramadan,” he said, and handed the bag over. “Looks like you’re gonna be facing Mecca for quite a while.” Mudhead groaned as he peered into the bag, but half a minute later his good hand was digging. Vane checked out the back seat, on the off chance he’d been left a beer; Mudhead would need something to wash down the pills. To his surprise he discovered two cases of Lowenbrau, cartons and cartons of cigarettes, and a variety of snacks: nuts, jerky, trail mix, chips. A Coleman ice chest was stocked with cubes. There were even packages of local sweetmeats with unreadable labels. The gas gauge showed a full tank. 95

Microcosmia Franco “Funny guy,” Vane muttered, grabbing two bottles. He warned Mudhead to go easy on the Percodan, fired up Isis, and respectfully kept his eyes on the road while his friend worked morphine into a syringe. After a deep breath he guzzled his own beer and handed Mudhead a follow-up. A mild overdose might be just the thing.

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Chapter Ten Xhantu Old Road was rough on Isis’s suspension, torture for her injured passenger, and murder on her driver’s nerves. Vane had driven hard for ten minutes with an expression cut in stone. Now his knuckles were white on the wheel, his head scrunched squarely between his shoulders. His feet danced on the pedals at the baritone yelp accompanying each spine-jarring crash. Half his attention clung desperately to the rough distractions of the road. The other half gradually accepted the unthinkable: he was heading home empty-handed. When he finally acknowledged it, in his heart as well as in his head, the realization was like running into a wall. Vane’s entire body went rigid. His ramrod arms slammed his back against the seat. His feet hit the brake and gas simultaneously. The resulting sidewinder stalled the Land Rover facing south. A low cloud of hot dust rolled over them. Mudhead, tripping but still in pain, leaned into the swirling haze and heaved. Vane hollered something unprintable, punched the dash, kicked the firewall. He threw out a shoulder trying to tear off the side-view mirror. Finally he fired Isis back up and spun her through a radical arc. When she stalled again he sat glaring at Massawa, adrenaline clouding his vision. He’d lost it. Everything. He howled out his anguish and restarted the engine. Vane grittily steered the Rover homeward. He halted and childishly revved the engine in neutral, facing Mamuset and failure. Loser. Just like always. He jammed into first and whirled round and round in a broadening circle; cursing Franco, cursing Massawa, cursing himself. Isis died again, this time facing a wide empty desert in the eye of a fading dust tornado. Mudhead kept right on spinning. “No . . . more . . . Boss . . . ma . . .” Vane repeatedly pounded his forehead on the wheel, spewing a different four-letter word with each impact. The poundings tapered to palliative contacts. Vane massaged his temple on the wheel until his nose caught on the horn plate. “Now what?” he muttered. Mudhead leaned out the side again. When it was over Vane hauled him back in and grabbed a 97

Microcosmia Xhantu couple of beers. The African shook his head and shoved a handful of ice in his mouth. “How’s the paw?” Mudhead raised the mangled hand, now swollen to the girth of a football. His eyes were streaming. “Better.” He eased it into the ice chest and poured out a mouthful of Tylenol, then decided to go for the beer after all. He nodded a few times at the endless waste. “Mecca’s behind you.” Mudhead half-turned. “Whatever. Bossman remind Mudahid nod right way tomorrow.” He knocked back the caps and sucked the bottle dry. Speaking as much to himself as to his partner, Vane mumbled, “I can’t go home without supplies. I just can’t! There wasn’t enough on those trucks to get everybody through the day.” He slowly motored along, still mumbling, letting the machine drive itself. “It’s mine . . . mine . . . that fu . . . that . . . damn that rip-off! I’ve got to get it back . . . got to . . . maybe if I called . . . maybe if I just . . . no, no, no, they’d never break through in time.” He wasn’t the only one rambling. Mudhead’s rap was all about masks and caves, pools and dwarves. That would be the morphine talking. Vane shook his head hard as he drove, trying to toss out the grim image of a crater filled with dead. The stupid Afar trusted him way too much; they’d probably die waiting on him. The doctors and volunteers would be hip enough to beat a retreat in the buses and trucks. They might even try to organize some kind of rescue work through the government. But it would be too little too late; Mamuset would end up like Preston’s death hole. Vane briefly pondered a cash ransom for his goods, knowing Honey would bend the Banke as far as he demanded. In the same breath he acknowledged the stakes. Franco wasn’t after money. He was after Cristian Vane. “What,” he wailed, “what do I effing do? Mudhead did his best to answer, using babbled narrative about some nonsensical desert shaman better able to address the pangs of Vane’s conscience. After listening a while he decided Mudhead wasn’t out of his skull after all, but was in fact describing in some detail a sightless wise man, or spirit-healer, who lived in the Danakil in a big underground stone house. Once he had a few beers in his bloodstream, Vane was able to embrace the idea of meeting Xhantu, Mudhead’s fabulous wise man. It was that or go out of his mind. Mudhead described the wizard’s lair as situated some thirty miles southeast of Mamuset. There was plenty of gas in the tank. It wasn’t yet ten o‘clock. He followed Mudhead’s basic directions automatically, his mind half on the desert and half on his friend’s respectful tale. This is the history Mudhead related, in broken English so drug-laden Vane got a contact high just trying to follow: Xhantu was born in Cairo in 1905, the illegitimate son of a wealthy industrialist widower. As a child, the future blind seer survived a mild flirtation with the polio virus, along with the first taste of what would become chronic bronchitis. These diseases produced a stunted, hobbling boy who broke out in fevers at the least change in weather. He was far too sickly for adventure, and far too subdued for friends. On his tenth birthday he was kidnapped by elements of Al-Shalek, then held for ransom through six long terrible days. Over that period the father was rigorously pressured by the Egyptian government to stall; the State Department was convinced the group harbored a member of the terrorist organization Allâh Râm Allâh. Each day the kidnappers produced evidence of greater tortures inflicted upon the son, rapidly driving the father to depression, to drink, and to madness; their final ploy being a threat to pluck out the boy’s eyes if payment was not made on that sixth night. The hysterical father, fortune in hand, was apprehended halfway to the dropoff site by a chilly 98

Microcosmia Xhantu contingent of military police. Flanked by Army jeeps, he was escorted home clutching a stamped and endorsed State Department certificate assuring him the kidnappers were all but captured, and his son a heartbeat from release. When a courier arrived the next day bearing a package containing the boy’s eyeballs, the father took his own life with a single pistol shot through the roof of the mouth. The following evening triumphant Egyptian police stormed and torched the kidnappers’ hideout. Burned over sixty-five percent of his body, the boy survived a year of intensive care in a Port Said hospital and, upon his release, was adopted by an American husband-and-wife team assigned to a dig at Menat Khufu. He was a hideously deformed child. The mouth was a lax aperture, the nose and ears burned to shapeless nubs, the facial skin like red rubber slag. Refusing to speak a word, he was considered mute by his adoptive parents and their friends, though specialists could find no evidence of long-term damage to organs of speech. Through thrashing fits, he made plain his refusal to accept prosthetic eyes, eye patches, or half-mask. Once the shock and horror had abated, the new mother and father came to love him just as he was, gaping eye sockets and all. Xhantu’s parents belonged to a brilliant circle. Their awarded home in Cairo University was the focus of long and regular get-togethers featuring physicists, historians, linguists, and philosophers. The boy was spoon-fed the English language. He was tended like a precious alien weed. He became the passion and darling of all: these good people attained their highest pleasure tutoring him in their various fields, by way of lectures bursting with affection, erudition, and wit. The young student would sit quietly in their midst, his cocked head ratcheting voice-to-voice. Rather than regale him with bedtime stories, his parents took turns reading aloud the Great Books of the Western World, followed by volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica in alphabetical order. A coddled prisoner throughout his teens, the young man was halfway through the W’s when he simply walked off campus and out into the real world, never to return. He felt his way as he went. As a teen he’d compensated with a passion for the tactile; tenderly fingering and toeing clothes and household objects, attaining greater sensitivity through experience. His supreme interest was in fabrics of complex weave, and in intricate curios brought in as presents by friends of the family. There was much to explore in the streets and storefronts of Cairo. This strange eyeless beggar eventually made his way into the desert, surviving Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia by drifting tribe-to-tribe, dispensing Western wisdom in exchange for supplies and small handmade articles of great intricacy. Over the decades he attained a mythical status and the common appellation Xhantu, a polyglot description meaning, roughly, “Sees Blind.” When he reached extreme old age he was given, by grateful Amharic pastoralists, a female albino dwarf camel and a prized two-wheeled laminated wooden cart. The old man was then ushered, with great honors, into the Danakil to die, his little red cart brimming with victuals, treasured personal artifacts, and scores of many-faced items ceremoniously donated by emissaries from tribes as distant as Tanzania and the Congo. The thirsting camel, named Pegasus by Xhantu, pulled cart and master up a rocky table and down a spiral chimney into a labyrinth formed by underground rivers last active during the late Tertiary. Pegasus drew Xhantu through a great cavern to a small artesian pool, and thereafter the two lived peacefully in an abutting cave, the camel growing old while Xhantu ordered his learning into extended meditations. When supplies were low, the quirky little spectacle of camel, cart, and blind man would be seen meandering tribally, dispensing and collecting. Xhantu’s home became a kind of shrine, where carefully-screened tribesmen and the occasional city-dweller were directed for counsel and tutoring. Mudhead himself came upon the sage this way, referred by a frustrated mullah during his stormy Ramadan withdrawal. Having learnt of the old man’s penchant for the tactilely complex, 99

Microcosmia Xhantu Mudhead arrived with an elaborately engraved bamboo-and-ivory abacus. The gift was an instant hit with the sage. Xhantu advised Mudhead to flow: if he was moved by something, he was to move with it. If an ideology ran against his grain, he would be a fool to spend his life attempting to conform. The sage wanted Mudhead—indeed he wanted all healthy individuals—to focus on Virtue, believing there would be much less Vice in the world if Vice was much less trumpeted. “Vice” meant all qualities attractive to the sensual, or reactive mind, as opposed to those ideals appealing to the analytical, or objective mind. Aware of the flaws inherent in even well-meaning pursuits, Xhantu directed seekers to not embrace religions and philosophies whole, but to embrace their Ascendant Virtues. He worshipped the abstraction “Virtue” as the masses worship the abstraction “God.” He simply felt no need to anthropomorphize it. Mudhead, winding down his story in the bouncing Land Rover, rolled sluggishly with the terrain, his broken right hand still submerged in ice. He appeared free of pain, but the bumpy ride and overmedication made him certain one minute and lost the next. Eventually he began to recognize landmarks; outcroppings and depressions that, to Vane, appeared identical to their background. Then, in the absolute middle of Nowhere, he suddenly rose half out of his seat to indicate a strange little snowflake balanced on a rounded, flat-capped rocky rise. Through his binoculars Vane made out a scrawny white camel, perhaps three feet high at the shoulder, perched leaning on a stepped shelf. In the lenses it was no larger than a hamster. Mudhead waved his good hand at a pass in the rocks, and Vane hammered on through to a barely navigable foot trail. The trail continued up the rise, rolling and twisting to the summit. It was one of those natural courses that seem ingeniously designed to test a young man’s courage and equipment, and Vane was no exception to this call. He revved the engine hard, his palm itching on the gearshift’s crown. In response, the camel’s tiny white head popped out above the shelf. Vane clearly discerned the pink of its eyes. It began making little barking sounds, like an asthmatic Pekingese. He hit the path full-bore, stomping accelerator and clutch like double bass drums, ever on the lip of disaster. After a complete circuit, the path ended twenty feet above where they’d started. Mudhead opened his eyes and caught his breath. In a minute he swung back his good arm and grabbed a bag of sweetened dates. He opened the bag with his teeth. “Bossman,” he gasped, “carry goodie box.” Vane hefted the remaining beer under one arm, the box full of cigarettes, snacks, and sweetmeats in the other. The African approached the little camel crooning, honey-dipped dates overflowing his outstretched left palm. “Hello again, Peggy. Peggy remember Mudahid?” The camel dropped her head. Her nostrils quivered while one eye metronomically followed the gently rocking hand. “Peggy good girl.” The muzzle stretched forward, the lips writhed, the dates vanished. Mudhead patted her nappy white head. “Party time now, sweetheart. Bossman bring Oreo.” Vane had to mind his fingers while shoveling Pegasus Ho-Hos and Ruffles; the animal was in a state of gustatory ecstasy. When at last he turned away he was just in time to see his friend being screwed into the ground. He walked over curiously and peered down. Mudhead was gingerly descending a rough spiral staircase in the rock. The interior appeared inky black, but as Vane followed him down the darkness gradually dissolved, becoming a restful twilight at the swept stone floor. The caverns they were nearing were immense; the cave he and Mudhead now occupied was more of an antechamber, leading into the black depths of a much broader hall to their right. Numerous small ceiling fissures illuminated the cave, emitting slender beams that struck the walls and floor at various angles. The men waited patiently, letting their eyes adjust. Someone, Mudhead’s sage apparently, had draped the rock walls with colorfully dyed tapestries, and arranged native artifacts and objets d’art upon a series of homemade tables and shelves scattered amid furniture 100

Microcosmia Xhantu created out of old crates, straw, and blankets. Vane found himself closely admiring a Karamojong ceremonial headdress of human hair and ostrich feathers, a few oddly-stitched cloths from Madagascar, and an ornate divination staff from Mozambique. There were funerary figures, necklaces, an Angolan thumb piano, a Maori talisman, even an intact Maasai shield. All works had been showcased for their intricate nature, and were very carefully kept. A far corner contained a small thatched hut modeled on Amharic homes, but with an outsize door cut in its facing wall. Vane, reminded of a doghouse, remembered the little albino camel and smiled. There was an oddness about the texture of the thatch. On closer inspection he perceived that fibers had been closely braided, and the braids interwoven. The amount of painstaking work involved struck him as mind-numbing. “A nasty fracture,” piped a voice behind him. “Or perhaps merely a bad sprain?” It was the voice of a wizened child. “Whole hand broke,” Mudhead grunted. “But scooterman bring magic bag. No more pain.” Vane half-turned to see a figure so tiny it might have been a bit of washing tossed on a chair, almost smothered in an undersized version of the Afar sanafil. The little man’s deformed fingers were exploring Mudhead’s swollen hand, seeming to hover rather than contact. Despite his friend’s straightforward description, Vane was absolutely unprepared for the monstrosity he was facing. Xhantu’s gaunt hairless skull and mooning eye sockets were exactly reminiscent, minus the toothy grin, of the skeletal remains popularly portrayed on pirate flags and poison labels. As the old man rose delicately the intrepid American, much to his dishonor, instinctively retreated a step. A hand like an anorexic spider found his forearm. Vane forced himself to look down, directly into that taut, ruined face. In the dimness the dark orbits seemed as prominent as a fly’s eyes. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see a pair of wispy antennae waving inquisitively. “Bad news and good,” came the tiny voice. “You bring a friend.” Turning back to Mudhead, the sage swiveled his whole frame rather than just his head. He couldn’t have weighed more than sixty pounds. Vane self-consciously rummaged through his pockets and came up with his beloved Swiss Army knife. He nudged it forward until it brushed the back of Xhantu’s hovering hand. “Um, this is a gift. From me.” The warped hand revolved until Vane’s knife was cradled in the creased old palm. Xhantu’s head ratcheted in a heavenward arc, his chin thrust toward the tool, while his other hand inspected the knife’s every curve. His fingertips studied the emblem dreamily. Long yellow nails found, extracted, examined, and repositioned the implements one by one. “A most intricate and considerate token.” The man from the States relaxed. “Vane. Cristian Vane. I’m from the States.” “Ah.” “Bossman big problem Eritrea.” “Ah?” “No.” Vane shook his head. “Uh-uh. Not with the country directly. My problem’s one of her renegades. I really don’t think the Eritrean government knows what he’s up to.” Grimacing deeply, Mudhead carefully wagged his broken hand. “This matter war!” “Ah! And, Mr. Vane, what is the nature of this rapscallion’s offense?” “Stole all my goods. Everything. Warehouses stocked with food and supplies, soil regenerators, parts in plastic, steel, aluminum. You name it, he glommed it.” The sage silently clapped his hands. “So it is you! Mr. Vane, I have received much news of your endeavors. Intriguing news, inspiring news. It has become one of my favorite treats to humbly envision your great work in its completion.” 101

Microcosmia Xhantu Vane sighed histrionically and muttered, “Then get comfortable.” He checked himself. “Sorry, Mr. Zantoo. I don’t mean to be rude.” Xhantu inclined his head toward a central arrangement of overstuffed homemade furniture. “Please.” Vane buried his butt in blankets and straw. Mudhead passed round the beer and snacks. Their tiny host gushed politely over the goodies and gratefully sipped his Lowenbrau. Pegasus came clattering down the spiral chute at the sound of Mudhead ripping open a two-pound bag of Chips Ahoy. She stopped just short of bowling him over, nipped the bag from his good hand, and vanished inside her little thatched house. The visitors laughed. Xhantu smiled uncertainly. The ice was broken; Vane explained his situation between swallows. Xhantu had no need to ruminate. “It is imperative you retrieve your supplies at once. Were this a matter of pride, or of property for property’s sake, I would doubtless counsel otherwise. But this is not about you or your goods, nor is it about your vile colonel. It is about your many dependents, and about placing responsibility above ego.” Xhantu’s head rolled back and his gummy mouth fell open. Suddenly he was smiling like a child digging into ice cream. “What a marvelous operation! How audacious! To in fact construct a Utopia from scratch—and with mathematics for a foundation! You are a rare man, my friend, a rare man indeed.” Vane shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, sir, not everybody gets my opportunity. If I’m a rare man it’s because I’m a lucky one.” The sage shook his head, still marveling. “And even rarer for possessing the gift of humility. Such a gift is not shared by small men. A truly small man, in your most enviable position, would be interested in others only for their capacity to be dazzled.” Vane shrugged again. He shifted about in his seat while carefully sweeping straw back under the chair’s fleece blanket. A schoolboy called on to speak, he froze dead in place and studied his clasped hands. The sage appeared to be deciphering each awkward realignment of human tissue. When he spoke again it was with the exaggerated clarity of a guarded therapist. “That small man would strut and preen. The universe would pale by his ego. He would shower his mother with jewels, impress his friends with gifts of expensive automobiles, and make certain he was never seen without a curvaceous young starlet on his arm.” He cocked his head in the manner of a man listening intently. “You like automobiles, Mr. Vane, and lovely young women? Have you no mother to impress?” Vane looked back up. “Some. Yes. And definitely no. This is all incidental to my problem, Mr. Zantoo.” “I would venture a guess—and please do not take offense—that you also have no deity to impress.” “All . . .” Mudhead mumbled, slumped in a loveseat-sized heap to Vane’s right, “everything . . . dust in wind.” Vane ignored him. “I’m not stupid, sir.” Xhantu nodded respectfully. “May I then assume your philanthropic project serves as a surrogate for some or all of the above? And that, in your magnanimity, you are relieving yourself of the guilt often accompanying tremendous wealth?” “Not a bit of it,” Vane said flatly. “It’s the right thing to do under the circumstances. Stick me in the unemployment line, and I seriously doubt I’ll be dreaming so big.” “And these people in Mamuset? Do you not feel great compassion for their plight? Do you not take their hurts to heart? Could it be that they represent family to you, and that their happiness redounds to your self-esteem?” Vane got to his feet. The prying little monster was beginning to bug him. He said brusquely, “I 102

Microcosmia Xhantu just really don’t know,” and grabbed a bottle from the case cradled in his unconscious friend’s lap. He aggressively popped the cap with an opener on his key chain. “I guess.” After two minutes of furious contemplation he said equably, “If so, then no more so than any other population in any other part of the planet. These people are no more important to me, intimately, than I to them.” He nodded and took a long drink, nodded again. “The principle’s the thing.” “Then sir,” the sage said gravely, “it would appear you are afflicted with the dread disease microcosmia.” “How’s that?” “It is a sickness,” Xhantu said, “or perhaps a mood. A life-mood. It means abhorrence of the microcosmic mentality, or, more accurately, abhorrence of taking worldliness seriously. Do not bother looking it up, as it is not a plaint of the herd. It is what eats away at sensitive, intelligent men repulsed by the meaninglessness of the real world. Such unfortunates are born with wounded souls. Rather than lock horns over possessions real and imagined like normal, healthy men, they pass their lives brooding and dreaming, allergic to the crowd. Microcosmiacs are, by definition, compelled to extrapolate.” Xhantu paused for emphasis. “It is one of the great tragedies of life, Mr. Vane, perhaps the supreme tragedy, that a man cannot know all that men have learned. The human mind is a nearinfinite reservoir, capable of almost continuous analysis and retention. There simply is not enough time. One might learn a simple fact concerning a minor culture during an undistinguished epoch, and his mind, always active and venturous, will dissect that item, and erupt with unlimited related questions and possible answers—enough new self-generated input to send his poor brain forever reeling into shifting realms of light and shadow. But with what delight! No greater gift could nature provide her poor student than the ability to ruminate, to dwell, to envision. “There is a kind of projector, Mr. Vane, far more wonderful than any in your famous Hollywood, that exists within the crania of all creative and ruminative men. A man successfully freed from the bondage of worldly concerns is a man sitting before a glorious and ever-changing screen, with speculation nestled in his lap like the most domesticated of Siamese. Greater, far greater, than knowing is the ongoing tremor of wondering. Once one has learned to wonder, one can do no else.” Vane suppressed a yawn. “The wealthy, Mr. Zantoo, ponder no less attentively than the poor.” “Touche,” Xhantu said. “Relax, Mr. Vane. Your wealth notwithstanding, no one is accusing you of being rich. Rich men are never afflicted with microcosmia. They are far too preoccupied with profits and losses. No matter how high they may ascend on the ladder, they are always looking up to see whose rear end they must bite in order to claim the next rung, then looking back down to see whose teeth are testing their own precious behinds. No, my friend. You are poorer than they.” His head drooped sadly. “That top rung could be yours.” Vane had to pinch himself to remain standing. It was so dark and cool in the cave—for a moment he had the disturbing feeling Xhantu was trying to mesmerize him with all this underground psychobabble. He struggled to remain on-topic. “I’ve seen what people will do for money, sir. I may be a fool, but I’m not a masochist.” “Microcosmia,” Xhantu hummed, swinging an erect forefinger to the left, “is an illness as real as masochism.” He swung that same forefinger to the right, then brought it to his lips, his voice dropping accordingly. “Perhaps the sufferer,” he whispered, “has witnessed an act of coldheartedness too intense to appreciate maturely. Or perhaps this individual, of a sudden insight, has realized the full measure of his insignificance in the universe. He has been . . . jolted!” Vane’s eyes popped back open. “The damage,” Xhantu declared, “has been done!” Again his voice fell, and again Vane’s eyelids drooped. “Now the microcosmiac becomes progressively moody, and his basic urges go by the wayside. His ego withers. He grows very . . . soulful.” For a while there was nothing to be 103

Microcosmia Xhantu heard but Mudhead’s snores. Xhantu resumed speaking in a conversational tone, as though no pause in his monologue had occurred. “Those broken by microcosmia, Mr. Vane, are our genuine artists, our genuine philosophers, and our genuine philanthropists.” He shrugged. “If they are in my corner of the world, they eventually come to me.” Vane shook himself. “Sir, the only thing genuine about me is my stupidity. I’m a big-time loser, even with every card going my way.” He sighed deeply. “But I didn’t come looking for anybody. This trip was totally spontaneous.” Once more the sage cocked his head, this time until it was nearly parallel with his shoulder. “Spontaneous . . .” he muttered. Then, speaking as much to himself as to Vane: “You really believe this.” For a moment he was lost for words. “Sir . . . you are no loser! Your actions speak for themselves. You possess a priceless quality, a quality the crowd can ape but never carry. Mr. Vane, you are a man of vision.” Vane barked with laughter. “Vision? Catch me on a bad day, Mr. Zantoo. Better yet, watch what happens when I get my hands on a certain bombastic Eritrean pirate.” “You sell yourself short.” Xhantu folded his hands behind his back. As though encouraging the shyest of prodigies, he explained, “You are no ordinary man. An ordinary man would not reach. “The ordinary man, sir, exists as the voluntary prisoner of a bubble defined by his senses, in a universe stretching precisely as far as his eyes can see. It is a flat universe, covered by a dome alternately painted black and painted blue. If he moves a mile, if he moves a thousand miles, the dome rolls right along with him. Time is an event that began upon his birth, and will continue, notwithstanding a minor speed bump called Death, into a groundlessly assumed, yet blindly and wholly accepted, hereafter. Humankind is an odd assortment of ingrates. A very few, the Good Ones, are familiar. They are to be prized, trusted, and protected. Very many more are misguided strangers, ignorant of our ordinary man’s intrinsic superiority. They must all be reminded, ad infinitum, that they are either guests or trespassers in his bubble.” Vane folded his arms across his chest. “Mr. Zantoo, each man is a prisoner, one way or another. Maybe of his circumstances, maybe only of his imagination. And a man’s bubble can be anywhere. It can be a crater in the desert.” He briefly released one arm for a casual cave-wide gesture. The sage’s face followed the movement like a cat’s. “It can even be made of stone. We’re all ordinary men. The entire planet’s a bubble; the same old program year to year and culture to culture. There truly is ‘nothing new under the sun’.” “Ah! But there are flowers rare and sublime! There are individuals, Mr. Vane, who do not run in place; men dissatisfied with the status quo. Men who realize that an existence devoted to appetites and egos is an insult to the gift of life. And, on excruciatingly rare occasion, fate produces an individual positioned to exalt that gift.” Vane unfolded his arms to make a damping motion with his hands. “You’re embarrassing me, sir. I’m very sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not that aspiring man. Nor am I a particularly inspired one.” “I am not disappointed. Your openness and modesty fully embrace my expectation.” He turned and, proceeding with extreme confidence, drifted across the cave’s floor toward the arch leading into the main cavern. “Come with me.” The cavern was vast as an indoor stadium, but with a ceiling averaging only a dozen feet above floor level. It was wonderfully ventilated, the rock actually cool to the touch. Scores of narrow ceiling flues created a crazy cathedral laced with thin columns of sunlight standing at various angles. The floor dropped off at the east wall, producing a deep stone hollow containing ten feet of clear water. The pool’s surface was lit by a pair of these flues, the beams poised like crossed swords. 104

Microcosmia Xhantu Vane found himself nodding with an envy strange for a billionaire. “Mister Zantoo, I tip my hat to you. A water hole in the middle of the desert in a dark cool cave. You’ve got it made.” His nod went on with increasing vigor. “Yes sir! Yep. That’s how I want to go out, man.” “Pardon?” “When I die. Just submerge me in the dark surrounded by endless stone, a zillion miles away from everybody.” Xhantu inclined his head. “Consider your place saved. But do not be in such a hurry, my friend. There is something I would like you to experience first.” Turning his back abruptly, he led Vane through the cavern into a gulf that grew deeper with each step, proceeding fearlessly while his guest inched along behind. They crossed the great chamber to an arch like the gateway to Hell. The blackness beyond was so profound Vane instinctively hit the floor. Slowly swiveling his body, Xhantu addressed the dead space above his eager young disciple. “There are times, Mr. Vane, when the wind comes howling and moaning through these chambers from somewhere deep in the caverns. Clearly it originates without, on the lip of the Highlands where hot and cool air collide. “At such times the chambers respire, and the air funneling up the fissures behind us produces tones like those of a gargantuan organ. They are for the most part capricious and fleeting, but occasionally idiosyncrasies of current and bore will produce a startling vox humana. It is a lonesome voice, Mr. Vane, patient and grieving, as old as its Cambrian womb.” Vane, feeling the rock floor beginning to tilt, nauseously rose to his feet. The little sage’s body language seemed to be questioning the motion. He was now a ghostly outline, visible only due to the fuzzy haze created by the nearest flues. Vane shivered in the bottomless darkness, fighting for balance and listening to the silence. Finally he mumbled, “It’s . . . it’s beautiful.” “Yes.” The ghost folded its hands neatly at the waist. “Think about all this colonel expressed. He is obviously a megalomaniac, and megalomania is the exact opposite of microcosmia. Therein lies his weakness. He is a molecule, a little self-adorned balloon ready to be pierced by the plainest of pins. He sleeps fitfully, for the world is crawling with traitors and sham flatterers, all scheming to usurp his unique wonderfulness. They are jackals. Their eyes gleam in the withering savannah of his dreams.” “That’s my guy,” Vane whispered. “Do what you have to do. Go about your business knowing that, as a man of vision, the decision you make will be correct.” “But how will I know—” “You will know.”

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Chapter Eleven Massawa The café was spotless. Old Harbor’s rhythm was in all things; in the practiced ease of tarbooshed waiters, in the exotic laughter of a dozen melding tongues. But now and again activity would cease abruptly, and an icy silence envelop the scene. In the inner ring of tables, walnut-faced Algerians would lean to poker-faced Moroccans, who in turn leaned to hatchet-faced Egyptians. Their whispers would radiate to the outer ring. The signal would be passed by Nigerian traders, Somali tunny fishers, and Eritrean soldiers, who responded by tapping their respective timepieces, fish hooks, and military knives. The whole circle would close in, until the obscenely fair stranger was sure to break. But the American would continue sipping his mint Darjeeling, at the same time shrugging deeper into his lame disguise. Vane was outfitted in that full-sleeved, deeply hooded, body-length garment known as djellaba. His clean pink feet were shod in cheap rubber sandals. The hood’s dingy gray confines only accented his race; those peeping blond locks and that perpetually peeling nose belonged to Capricorn, not to the equator. A leper would have looked less out of place. Vane could only shrink so far. When the tension became too great he’d tear his gaze from the tiny cup to manfully meet his grizzled tormentors’ eyes—only to find them apparently lost in the day’s small comforts; nuzzling bowls of thick black coffee, playing dominoes, watching ships ply the harbor. Again he’d lower his eyes and peek between the lids, looking like a monk in a whorehouse. Vane was waiting, desperately, for a certain blind beggar to come tapping through the crisscrossing camels and jeeps; a granite-faced, single-winged beggar who’d be right at home with the flies, the Third world desperadoes, and the half-naked ragamuffins. The sun was just grazing the skyline when the prayed-for tapping sat him up. Vane watched his beggar shuffling up the crumbling street, a pine cane chopping a path through the dancing hooves and darting shins. The old man’s head was bent as though from a lifetime of mindless prostration, a 106

Microcosmia Massawa bleached tarboosh riding high on his woolly gray crown. Vane threw a handful of birrs on the table’s dainty lace and stomped through the patio’s mihrāb-shaped entranceway. In the street he was swallowed up by a black wave of beseeching humanity. He swatted his way through the scrabbling hands. The blind beggar must have caught a promising nuance in the passing American’s gait, for he immediately turned and began tapping in pursuit. Vane cursed him and his family, and all his forebears and all their stock. But the beggar persisted, matching Vane’s towering insults with increasingly booming praises of Allah and Muhammad. The pair argued down a stinking harbor alley until they’d reached a well-shaded alcove between two leaning outbuildings. There Mudhead removed his tarboosh and extracted a fat white envelope. Vane thumbed the stacks of crisp new Franklins quickly: a hundred bills in each banded stack, five stacks in all. The topmost bills bore the distinguished stamp of Banke Internationale. Also in the envelope was a cable from Denise Waters, informing Vane that, per his broadcast request, one Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye had indeed been flown directly from Kahreb to Addis Ababa, had been photographed extensively, and had his fingerprints, dental work, and body scars scanned. With these vital statistics and Vane’s signature, the glum African was eligible to embrace unlimited funds directly from Banke Internationale, or small sums through a Honey agent dealing solely with the air courier. Mudhead, now sporting a small wrist-andmetacarpals cast and sling, had been jetted from the Ethiopian capitol and dropped off at the border. Left to his own devices with a sack full of local coins and bills, he had managed to get himself transported from the border, first by bus and then by crop duster, to the desert outside of Massawa. The plane owner’s sister’s eleventh cousin on her father’s side thereupon provided Mudhead with a sturdy little donkey and half a dozen runners. These scouts, all children, had scurried ahead on camel, bicycle, and foot, locating Vane with uncanny perspicacity and passing back directions for a harbor rendezvous. The entire operation, half-assed as it must have appeared to Honey’s link Tibor, took only slightly over seven hours and went off without a hitch. Pleased and eternally surprised by his saturnine second’s efficiency, Vane stuffed the stacks under his djellaba and followed him back out the alley. Mudhead banged his cane metronomically, hammering out a path to a particularly decrepit section of Massawa. Here ancient brick buildings grew together like weeds, broken-down streets deteriorated to dank alleyways sloping into pitch. In the deepening twilight only a few lamps flickered fitfully. But he knew where he was going; he’d been here only half an hour ago, before rejoining Vane. With whispers and Hamiltons he’d sought out the harbor’s ugliest brigands, all the while smacking away hands like flies. Those tens gave way to twenties and fifties as he bought his way to Massawa’s squalid heart, the one part of Old Harbor feared even by Franco’s well-equipped soldiers. Here lurked the guerilla-like, barefoot adults and children who, with daggers and Molotov cocktails, worked to undermine the military authority holding sway over every family-run business on the Red Sea’s African coast. At the filthy funnel’s bottom, the dark street terminated in a depressed cul-de-sac containing a hatbox-shaped structure with a dirty glass face lit by three golf ball-sized bulbs. The place appeared to sag with the street, as if all north-facing matter were being drawn into its caving belly. Movement to either side accompanied their approach: shapes on the right that rolled quickly downhill, shapes on the left that hiked back slowly, closing the gap behind. “Nice going, Mudhead. You just got us mugged. Big time.” “Bossman not worry. In shadow only watchman. Big fish bottom sea. Shark circle, not bite.” The collapsing building turned out to be an old movie house with a deserted lobby. A single 107

Microcosmia Massawa yellow bulb partially exposed a mess of mildewed carpet and peeling film posters. There was a title in Arabic sprawled across the theater’s cracked plastic marquee. Vane nodded upward. Mudhead replaced the dark glasses with his wireless spectacles. “One Who,” he translated awkwardly, “Terminate Two.” “Terminator 2? In Arabic?” The lobby doors cracked apart. Sounds of shouting and gunfire blew out. A small brown man slithered into the paneless booth. He scowled up at them. The cheeks under his bitter black eyes were covered with smallpox scars. One wing of his nose had been eaten away by syphilis. The mouth was a lopsided wound, whitely scarred at the corners as though by a pair of yanked fish hooks. “Two,” said Vane pleasantly, flicking his thumb along a stack of bills. The little man watched the bills whir up and down before slithering back out. A momentary squeal of burning rubber, more gunshots. Vane grew aware of a heavy presence at his back. He smiled at Mudhead and nodded. “After you.” A hard command in Arabic stopped them dead. They remained perfectly still while two pairs of hands thoroughly patted them down. Vane’s hood was pulled back. The stack of bills was plucked from his hand, the envelope lifted from beneath his cloak. He and Mudhead were propelled by fists on their spines. Rather than feature a glass snack stand, as in American theaters, the lobby contained a grouping of small tables bearing urns, cups, and various boxes of African and Arabian teas. Vane got the impression that intermission was a gathering, a social function. The only recognizable word, stamped on an ancient steel dispenser, was Pepsi. The two goons, large for Eritreans, wore cheap suits and white kaftans with a red dot on either side of a solid black vertical line. One stepped ahead to hold open the right-hand door while the other walked them through. Despite this man’s forceful guidance, Vane and Mudhead repeatedly barked their shins as they stumbled down the aisle. It was nighttime on screen. A poker-faced Arnold Schwarzenegger was explaining to Linda Hamilton the complexities of computer-versus-human warfare while driving a trashed police car. Their voices had been dubbed over in Arabic, and were completely out of sync with the lips. Hamilton’s voice sounded like Minnie Mouse, Schwarzenegger’s like a cab driver about to go postal. The audience consisted of only one member, sitting raptly in the center seat precisely midway between screen and lobby. Projected light caught the intricate gold brocade girding his snow-white fez. Upon reaching the row directly behind this man, a goon took Mudhead’s elbow and walked him to the far aisle, then turned him about and walked him down the seated man’s row. Vane’s guard propelled him from the opposite side, until he and Mudhead were seated beside the man in the fez like competing girlfriends. The goons took seats directly beside their captives, arms draped around the backs of their chairs. It was all very close, and all very uncomfortable. The tight knot of five stared silently as bullets were plucked from Schwarzenegger’s synthetic back. Vane felt a tickling at his left shoulder. He carefully rolled his head until he saw a stack of bills dangling six inches away. The man in the white fez pinched the stack gently and held it under his nose, his eyes remaining on the screen. He thumbed the new bills delicately while inhaling their fragrance. His eyes closed, and he appeared to shiver. He thumbed the bills again, muttered something to Mudhead’s guard. The guard looked back at the projection room and made a chopping motion with his left arm. The screen went dark immediately, but the house lights did not come up. The theater was now lit only by the thin strip of light separating lobby doors, and by a pair of tiny exit signs, one on either side of the screen. The man in the fez returned the stack to the dangling hand. The hand disappeared. The man in 108

Microcosmia Massawa the fez rose primly. He was of less than average height, mustached, wearing light slacks and a dinner jacket. That was all Vane could make out in the dark. The man cleared his throat. The guards rose as one. After a moment he cleared his throat again, this time with emphasis. Mudhead and Vane rose tentatively. The five men filed out to their right in a tight chain, turned left down the aisle, and marched quietly to the exit corridor. The group halted in the corridor. Mudhead’s guard reached into the pleats where the curtain and wall met and pushed hard. There was a muffled rumbling. When the rumbling ceased the guard pulled aside the curtain to reveal a narrow passage. The five men edged into a large room behind the theater’s screen. Seconds later the place was lit dazzlingly. Vane’s envelope was returned. Both guards exited into the corridor. The section of wall rumbled back. Lounging in the room were perhaps two dozen men, from scrappy teenagers to grizzled seniors, dressed in robes, in rags, and in street clothes. Many were barefoot. They wore turbans, skullcaps, or knotted towels. Their eyes were hungry black pools. The room’s interior was a mishmash of tables and mats piled high with a wide variety of weapons and combat paraphernalia. There were Sten guns and M16s, bazookas and flame-throwers, German 9mm submachine guns and hand grenades, boxes of dynamite, flak jackets, flare guns. Lining the rear wall were bucket after bucket piled to overflowing with bullets of all calibers. The man in the fez snapped his fingers. More than a simple signal, this was a quick but intricate display, almost a riff. The men and boys obediently moved back against the rear wall. Vane fingered novelties as he browsed, his eyes gleaming under the floodlights like a kid’s in a candy store. Out of a box of odds and ends he plucked a bossed green minaret-shaped spyglass, pressed it closed, pulled it open, peered through the eyepiece at the shifting faces. “Far out.” He focused on Mudhead’s glaring mug, then swung the glass by its leather cord and placed it upright on the table. “Tell him we’ll take it.” Again he dug through the box, producing a ship’s compass, a broken old pocket-timepiece, and a small, elaborately engraved throwing knife. On a floor mat he discovered a pair of authentic knee-high goatskin moccasins in good condition. “Tell him we’ll take it all.” His eyes fell on a heavy spiral-bound mass, its deep red cover broken only by a broad black diagonal line and thick Russian characters. “Come here, Mudhead.” Inside were exploded diagrams of what were certainly spy planes and attack helicopters. Text was in Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. The man in the fez snapped his fingers like castanets. “Glass-e-fyed,” he lisped. Vane nodded, whispering, “Can you decipher this?” “Sloppy Arabic. But easy read.” “Then tell him we’ll take it!” He stomped to a central table covered with stabbing weapons, brushing aside rusty bayonets and a chipped cutlass to expose a jile, the fifteen-inch dagger worn by ancestral Afar warriors. The blade was curved and extremely sharp; a sweet tool. He raised it to his eyes and smiled. The man in the fez snapped his fingers in a wavy, mesmerizing pattern that concluded with the forefinger tensed horizontally like a bowed arrow. Out of the bunched beggarly figures came an old man with a false eye of solid gold. Deeply etched into that orb’s polished face was the legend alWakil, ensuring its security against theft by a follower of Islam. This man reached below the table and came up with a sensitively-worked, brass-ribbed calfskin sheath sewn into a heavily-brocaded sash. Gold Eye demonstrated how the jile was sheathed, and how the sash was worn about the waist and right shoulder. Vane smiled again. From then on this man was ever at his heel, wordlessly assisting his shopping while the man in the fancy fez watched politely, hands folded at the waist. At last Vane moseyed over to Mudhead. “Ask him if this is the best he can do.” The man in the 109

Microcosmia Massawa fez slowly rocked his head side to side, listening closely to Mudhead’s translation. His reply took forever. Mudhead turned back. “Massawaman get whatever Bossman want. Anything. If price right any quantity. If price right rush order. Massawaman guarantee this. Police issue. Military issue. No order too big.” He gestured at the tables. “Small stuff here. Massawaman get remote bomb, police van, tar heroin, sloe gin, fast woman.” “Tell him thanks but no thanks. Just ask him about boats. Anything seaworthy.” Mudhead translated again. This time the man laughed, and appeared to speak glowingly. Mudhead nodded. “No Massawaman not have boat, or not know someman have boat. Father, brother, uncle, son.” His hand swept the room. “Seaman.” Following Mudhead’s gesture, Vane’s eyes fell on a few wooden steps melting out of an unlit corner. He raised an eyebrow. “This place has an upstairs. Ask Mister Congeniality what he’s hiding.” The man in the fez didn’t wait for a translation. He snapped his fingers all over the place while jauntily leading his guests and men up the gently winding steps. The loft was crammed with larger objects: winches, intact and partly dismantled jet skis, gutted outboard motors in waist-high racks. The room smelled heavily of grease and fried motors. Ropes and cables hung from the walls, along with spear guns, crossbows, gas masks, and grappling hooks. The men stepped around the equipment carefully. Against the far wall stood a series of rolling clothes-racks. These racks, tightly pressed together and draped with protective sheets of clear plastic, bore military uniforms of every rank, interspersed with camouflage field wear and various articles of Middle Eastern dress. Under Fez Man’s rock-hard gaze, Gold Eye delicately peeled the plastic sheets aside. Vane casually thumbed through the articles until he reached the black silk robes of a Turkish sheik. He was flabbergasted. With the utmost delicacy he slipped it from its rack, cradled it in his arms. The material flowed over his forearms like water. When he looked back up his eyes were wet with awe. The man in the fez was one big smile. He snapped his fingers urgently. Gold Eye hopped behind the racks and reappeared a moment later wheeling a full-length mirror. Vane removed his jile and slipped the robes on carefully, tied the fringed sash at his waist. The robes fit as though tailor-made. Gold Eye’s hands appeared in the mirror, holding a matching black silk turban with the girth of a medium-sized pumpkin. A vacant silver inset, its six prongs like seizing talons, was centered in the turban’s stiff bulbous face. There came a single snap of fingers, dramatic as a whiplash. Gold Eye looked down grudgingly. One hand vanished under his kaftan and reappeared holding a serrated three-inch throwing knife. In a breathtaking motion that made Vane’s knees cross, Gold Eye slipped the knife beneath his robe, slit a leather testicle pouch, slid the knife back out and returned it to the kaftan. His free hand now supported a beautifully-faced, deeply luminous sapphire. Gold Eye brought the turban to his mouth. The man had precisely two teeth left in his head, a lower molar and an upper canine, and he used these to bend opposing prongs over the inserted stone. He then crowned Vane like the homecoming queen. The American put on his jile and stared raptly at his reflection. He tried on his shades, modeled himself at different angles, propped his head so that the overhead floods shone dramatically on the magnificent sapphire. Finally he spun around, his mouth hanging, to see the whole room grinning. The man in the fez gave him two thumbs up. Vane, fighting back tears, turned to Mudhead. “Tell him,” he choked, “tell him it’s time to talk business. Ask him if he knows Franco’s routine.” At mention of the name their host clenched his fists. His mouth worked soundlessly, his eyes 110

Microcosmia Massawa fixed on Vane while Mudhead explained their plan. Slowly his features softened. His response was muted, but with sharp inflections. Mudhead nodded over and over. “Bossman make friend. Bossman need, Bossman get.” “Excellent.” Vane stepped up crisply, handed over the envelope. “Tell him this is just for starters.” The man did not look at the envelope. He merely handed it back and bowed deeply. After a passionate speech he threw his arms around the American and hugged him like a long lost son. Vane squirmed out. “What in Christ’s name did he just say?” Mudhead was nodding vigorously. “Praise Allah, Bossman! Money no good here. This matter war!” “Tell him I’m honored he’s on my side.” After the translation the man bowed again, but this time the room froze. He and Vane stared hard at one another, for the longest time. Finally the man in the fez snapped his fingers in a complicated series of clusters, his eyes still locked with Vane’s. Gold Eye slid over. The two spoke back and forth with the urgency of jackhammers. They ceased abruptly, stared crazily at Vane. An instant later they were at it again. Once more they stopped to stare. “Why,” Vane whispered, “is my stomach fluttering? What the hell are they jabbering about now?” “Massawaman discuss Bossman.” “I can see that, Sherlock. And if they stare any harder, I’m gonna start blushing like a schoolgirl.” Mudhead clucked and shook his head. “Bad move. Mudahid advise Bossman try more John Wayne, less Shirley Temple.” The men ceased their bickering. A gentle smile lifted the corners of Fez Man’s moustache. He faced Gold Eye and the two bowed formally. Fez Man glided up to Vane and Mudhead as Gold Eye drifted back to the scruffy group of lounging men and boys. The man in the fez addressed Mudhead and Vane alternately. The silver in his smile caught the light of floods as he sadly nodded and shook his head. “Don’t tell me,” Vane muttered. “There’s been a change in plan.”

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Chapter Twelve Old Harbor The first sign of a weak enemy is a relaxed guard. The tug should never have slipped past Old Harbor’s cruising sentries. She shouldn’t have reached Scheherazade at all, but she’d almost rammed the ship when a deck spotlight lit her up like a deer in headlamps. Within seconds, a hundred flashlight beams were crisscrossing madly on the water. There was an urgent clatter of firearms. Suddenly dozens of men were barking down in Arabic. The brightly-lit little man with one eye barked right back up. The ensuing verbal dogfight stopped on a dime. Gold Eye stalked into the cabin and returned with a bound Cristian Vane. The stumbling American rolled his head against the light, cursing his captor up and down, using both English and in an ingenious, spontaneously created pidgin Arabic. Gold Eye, jabbering viciously in return, manhandled him across the deck. Vane bellowed up, “Not without my man! I can’t understand a word you freaks are spewing. I’ll sit right here all night if I have to.” To make his point, he deliberately dropped on his rear. Gold Eye howled in frustration. He kicked Vane repeatedly while shaking his fist at the clipped voices pounding down like rain. Two diseased-looking characters ran out of the cabin and tried wrestling Vane to his feet, but he tangled his legs in theirs, butted their faces with his head and knees, rocked side to side and back and forth until a single rifle shot pierced the night. Everybody froze. Gold Eye’s assistants scrambled to their feet and dived below. From behind the light came a cool command. Gold Eye hopped into the cabin, reappearing a minute later with an unbound Mudhead, his crippled hand hugged to his chest. Gold Eye really tore into him, screaming up and down. The African glumly dropped his eyes. “Bossman get up now.” Vane could only glare. They hauled him upright and walked him to the tug’s stern. Gold Eye released him and plunged a hand under his kaftan. The cloth binding Vane’s wrists was severed. 112

Microcosmia Old Harbor A dropped line was secured to the tug’s rail, followed in half a minute by a dirty rope ladder. Gold Eye prodded Vane up, with Mudhead dragging the rear. Once on board they were surrounded. Two ranks of facing soldiers simultaneously formed a rifle-spired tunnel five feet wide. Down this bore moseyed a slender, darkly handsome man wearing an open coat bearing the stacked chevrons of an Eritrean army major. He’d been interrupted: a delicately embroidered bib was snagged on a brass button of his shirt, brown flecks of Moroccan tajine clung to one corner of his mouth. He studied Vane up and down in a shower of flashlight beams, slipped off the bib and tenderly dabbed his lips, then watched like a hawk as an orderly very carefully folded the bib and placed it in a satin-lined cedar box. His eyes slid back. “The American, Va’en. Interesting attire.” He turned on his heel. His men followed automatically. “You will not need your interpreter here. Or do I flatter myself? The occasional literate informs me I speak the American well.” “Mudhead’s coming along anyway,” Vane mumbled, wondering if that ‘attire’ comment was a crack. “He’s way more than a mere translator.” “This is kosher,” said the major, watching Vane closely. “Whatever.” The major sighed. “Such a vexing contrast this must be for you. One moment you walk in the fire of neon and jewels, the next you tread one of the smelliest, dirtiest vessels any man was ever forced to haunt.” His eyes swept the ship systematically as he spoke. His face twisted with distaste. “Among the foulest, least-cultivated specimens . . .” He appeared about to spit, but his vanity caused him to grimace and swallow. The men were forced to step side to side as they navigated the sprawling mounds of foodstuffs and soil nutrients. Several times Vane saw shadows scurrying between piles. A healthy disgust, and a jealous regard for his doomed property, made him halt with his fists clenched, ignoring the rifle barrels sticking him like pins. “Don’t you know there are rats on this ship?” “This,” the major replied distantly, “is no fault of mine. I do not do the recruiting.” He gestured his men along with a bored forefinger-flick. His nose crinkled as he ambled, for Scheherazade stank, as bad as Port Massawa and worse. Yet she was no simple overblown garbage scow; German engineers had fitted her with four tremendous frigate screws for fast unprotected Mediterranean runs. “Mind your robes around these pipes,” the major warned. “There are occasional projections.” The “pipes” were enormous sections of rusted flanged steel tubing, eight feet in diameter by twenty feet long. The lengths were secured with frayed cables, and stacked in tier-formation upon rolling jumbles of straw. In settling they had taken out cabin walls, caved in sections of deck, and crushed yard upon yard of piled canned goods. The major waved his hand airily as they proceeded alongside, randomly drawing additional soldiers. “Your escort intimated that you might find some of the goods aboard this swamp bucket familiar.” “Not some. Most.” “And you have come to reclaim these goods? And found it convenient to be bound and dragged aboard in the process?” “As you say, I was escorted.” The major popped a long Turkish cigarette into a silver-tipped, hyena bone holder. “An indulgence of mine,” he explained while lighting. “I am not one of these men who blindly baa to their Ka‘bah, refusing every sophisticated pleasure in life. Ordinary rodents,” he sniffed, “have more sense than ordinary men.” He offered Vane a smoke. “Not one of my indulgences, I’m afraid. But thanks anyway.” “So? A pity. But certainly you are no stranger to the many delights of the palate, and to the 113

Microcosmia Old Harbor manifold pleasures of . . . the flesh?” Vane stopped dead. The whole group halted with him. Again with the pricking rifles. The major went on hurriedly, “I am certain that the sweets of this world, for a man such as yourself, must be virtually limitless. And such is the market that, even in this forsaken toilet Eritrea, a discerning shopper might daily squeeze—ah . . . the fruit more tender.” Vane said nothing. The major waved his cigarette nervously, creating a crazy shooting star with a serpentine tail. “Although the produce here,” he managed, “is certainly of an inferior quality.” “I,” Vane said icily, “wouldn’t know.” “Of course not. Of course not.” The major worked himself back together, regaining his haughty mien through the practiced act of leading his men, barking, “Your captor—this soiled old ignoramus with a bauble for an eye, apparently feels your name, in America at least, would command a handsome ransom. However . . . you are not so well-known here.” He spat out a lungful of pugnacious Arabic as he strolled. The man with one eye spat right back. “He wishes,” the major snarled, “to see General Franco a’ Muhammed en Abbi—as though Massawa’s frightfully busy commander exists merely to do the bidding of water spiders.” Vane turned his head sharply. “General?” “Yes. Apparently General Haile Mdawe Mustafu suffered a fatal accident on a visit to Massawa this very afternoon. His personal plane seems to have set down on a fuel spill before crews were able to close the runway. Sparks ignited the undercarriage and the plane was instantly consumed by flames.” “You should watch those fuel spills.” “The problem is already remedied. All personnel involved have been disciplined and removed to remote posts. Muhammed en Abbi was immediately awarded the vacated rank.” The major was struck by a funny thought. He nodded at Gold Eye while jocularly nudging Vane. “He thinks he is in Washington.” The major pronounced the capitol Woe-sheen-town. “He thinks he is soliciting his congressman, who will introduce legislation into the . . . into the . . .” The major was cracking himself up. “The House,” Vane said absently, wondering if his below-deck perishables were rotting as they strolled. The whole ship smelled vilely. “We Americans just never seem to get it.” Even in the act of recovering from his laughter, the major whipped round and strafed Gold Eye with godawful abuse. Gold Eye’s responding barrage made Vane’s head spin. Mudhead translated impassively. “Everyman agree.” “Good,” said Vane. “I’d hate to see these guys argue.” “We agree,” the major said witheringly, “only that this dog is truly a dog. Although he brays like a beast of lesser repute.” He rolled the tension from his neck. “But he is not entirely stupid. He has learned that Muhammed en Abbi has designs on a . . . partnership with you, sir. This is no great secret. The general speaks long and often of his plans.” His nose turned up. “But this . . . this monkey wrench seems to think the general is easy prey for a blustering half-witted showman, believing he would pay any sum rather than see his future partner eliminated.” The major shrugged. “It is of no moment to me.” There was a sudden commotion at their backs. Gold Eye shoved a handgun up Vane’s spine so that the barrel rested at the bottom of his skull, buried deep beneath his turban’s billowy nape. Nine rifle barrels immediately surrounded the principals. “It is,” Vane gasped, “of considerable moment to me.” 114

Microcosmia Old Harbor The major addressed his men with a passion incomprehensible to his silk-clad prisoner. Rifles were lowered grudgingly. Using Vane as a human wedge, Gold Eye now plowed through the knot of useless soldiers. After ten yards’ progress he stopped to deliver a half-shouting, half-wailing diatribe. The major turned to Vane. “He demands access to the helm. I have explained to him that the pilot of this vessel is a civilian: in charge of nothing! This fat steamer is a commercial vessel impressed during wartime; the hoariest of tramps. I have also made clear that General en Abbi is utterly inaccessible at this point, and that I am the man he must address.” The major’s mouth turned south. “He is uninterested in these data.” Vane nodded with care. “I had trouble with him too.” The major stared coldly. “There is a gun at your brain stem, sir. Your future can perhaps be measured in minutes, rather than in witty comebacks.” He reprised his nonchalant stroll. The group followed closely. “Do I,” Vane grunted, “detect a note of anxiety? Could it be that this scurvy little bastard’s got your number? Could it be that a certain light-footed major’s head will roll if Goldie here makes good on his threat?” “He never should have boarded with a firearm. I blame myself. And, though speaking with the helm will do him no good, he simply will not be persuaded otherwise. So he will have his way. He will meet with the wheel, and discover that the man is indeed as mindless as he. I do not know what he will think of his situation then. He will surely see himself a cornered brute, and I deem it likely he will, out of frustration alone, blow your clever fair head off its mounting. I do not know. My sole concern will be to soar free of the pulverizing volley certain to follow.” “Out of the frying pan,” Vane gasped, “and into the fire. Because once you’ve successfully flitted free, you’re gonna have some real explaining to do. Believe me, I know where your general’s head’s at, okay? My corpse will guarantee yours. I’m a lot more important to Franco than you might think, sir—far more important, believe it or not, than you. So, as a very partial commentator in all this, I very seriously recommend that you take very serious pains to keep me alive.” “Recommendation noted.” They reached the wheelhouse. Except for a few patches of bluish light, the interior was dark. The major glared. Without another word he stormed inside. Hard yellow light burst out the wheelhouse doorway, followed by the sound of heated Arabic, a smacking sound, more shouting, and several more sharp reports. A disheveled man wearing a slapped-on ensign’s cap staggered out, the major right behind him. This man’s shirt was open, his feet bare, his black hair a sweaty tangled mess. A three-day growth covered his cheeks and chin. But the story was best told by his bloodshot, unfocused eyes. “As I said,” the major spat, shoving the drunken man from behind, “a civilian!” He pushed him right up to Gold Eye, cried, “Here!” and flew into a wild verbal Arabic ride. Mudhead translated. “Moron, meet moron.” Vane’s captor threw back his head. The gold eye appeared about to pop from its socket as he pointed the gun straight up, screamed “Allah Akbar!” and pulled the trigger. It was a flare gun. For an interminable few seconds everyone involved instinctively watched the tracer rise and level off, their jaws hanging. Vane and Mudhead hit the deck. A moment later night had become hellish day, and the Red Sea was seething. Small outboards and a fan of jet skis converged on the massive ship like ants on an upturned beetle, emitting bursts of machine gun fire that quickly scattered the standing soldiers. Kneeling behind the rail, the Eritreans fired back in systematic spurts while the spotlight sought small craft popping in and out of its hard 115

Microcosmia Old Harbor white pool. Vane stared mesmerized at Old Harbor aboil, reminded of savages circling a wagon train. To either side, soldiers rose to shoot, ducked to reload, rose again. The major rolled across the deck and came up running. He sprinted straight into the wheelhouse and ran back out waving a megaphone. After a short squeal his voice boomed a flurry of commands in Arabic, sending crouching figures dashing shadow-to-shadow. Scheherazade’s lights were killed one by one. From somewhere on the roof, the ship’s searchlight pierced the heavens. The light was righted and began sweeping the harbor. A moment later a mounted machine gun erupted. The jet ski riders approached from all sides, crisscrossing recklessly, firing from shotguns, from Uzis, from hunting rifles and handguns. In one spontaneous rush the searchlight was shot to pieces, even as two jet skis and a motorboat were blown right out of the water. From the docks rose a complex wailing of sirens. The second sign of a weak enemy is tunnel vision. Even as opponents were duking it out to port, half a dozen small fishing craft were clinging quietly to starboard. In all the racket no one heard the grappling hooks striking true on the guardrail, no one saw the spiders slinking up the ropes and rolling aboard. No one saw them making their way along the deck, sliding like grubs over the broken sacks and heaped crates. And, embarrassing to say, not a single defender was prepared for the attacker’s knife pressed to his throat. Each captive timidly obeyed the whispered command to lay down arms. Truth be told, even the dashing major was taken aback when he gallantly rolled, megaphone in hand, directly into a pocket of highly paid pirates just itching to cut his tender official throat. The battle, perhaps fifteen minutes in execution, was over in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Mudhead translated as Vane ordered the humiliated soldiers lined along the guardrail. The major shook off his grungy captors and coolly marched up the deck, his head held high. A couple of horn blasts came off the water, and a moment later deck lights leaped into play. The port gangplank was lowered. A derrick swayed in the dark as the battered lifeboat holding Vane’s little armory was hauled up the side. Way down the deck an approaching form phased in and out of the swaying light, at last becoming a swaggering septuagenarian barely four feet tall. The little man’s dirty white beard was so long it trailed over a shoulder, his dirty white robes so long they swept the deck left and right as he strode. “This . . .” Vane muttered, “this is the ‘great and mighty mariner’ I paid top dollar for?” Mudhead quite naturally used Vane’s sarcastic tone as part of his verbatim translation, and the baldness of this effrontery made Gold Eye almost chew the African’s head off. He glared singly at Vane, then turned back with an expression of intense adoration. The stranger came right up to Vane, looked him up and down, cocked his head and walked on, his bare feet making tiny sucking noises. With an undisguised scowl for the helmsman, the dirty little robed figure stepped inside the wheelhouse as if he owned it. The major stood smartly at Vane’s elbow, unable to conceal his embarrassment as he glared at his men’s squared backs. “It must come as an exceptional thrill to best such a worthy adversary.” He produced a cigarette, paused and raised an eyebrow. “You would not begrudge a final request?” “Go ahead. It won’t be your last.” The major lit up casually and took an urgently needed lungful. “Then I pray you are not one for shackles. My men, lightning-quick brutes that they are, might erupt with unbridled indignation at the sight of their beloved leader in such a debased state.” “Don’t worry. Even though I think chains would become you.” Vane had three of his crew walk the major and previous helmsman to the gangplank. He and 116

Microcosmia Old Harbor Mudhead watched as they were kicked aboard an oarless rowboat containing two dead and three wounded soldiers. Scheherazade shuddered stern to stem when her two great anchors, embedded for nearly a month, were torn free by winches. A moment later there came another, deeper shudder, as her immense screws bit into the sea with German precision. Aft waters appeared subjected to a feeding frenzy. With a subterranean explosion, Scheherazade lurched forward. “Here comes the part I don’t like,” Vane breathed, watching lights stream away from the docks. “I sure hope this guy at the wheel doesn’t have an axe to grind.” “No suicide run, Bossman. Strict cash procedure.” Vane nodded. “And away we go.”

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Chapter Thirteen Aseb The night was uncomfortably warm; even the slight breeze created by the ship’s motion was a blessed relief. The little wedge of rowboat became a chip, became a spot, became a speck surrounded by converging outboards. While Mudhead barked Vane’s instructions over the major’s megaphone, lights on board were extinguished one by one, leaving only a wry yellow slat from the wheelhouse. All forty-eight captured soldiers were spaced against the rail on their rears, hands clasping ankles. Each of Vane’s men sat facing three prisoners apiece, a confiscated rifle across his knees. The lights on the water dispersed, then slowly reformed as an arrowhead. The white tip of this arrowhead ate into Scheherazade’s wake, creating the impression of a lace-embroidered black fan with a dozen silvery ribs. The sirens grew fainter and fainter still, until there was only the rumble of the screws and the silence of immensity. Mudhead drifted out of the wheelhouse, his face passing from deepest black to imperceptible as he moved beyond that one slice of light. The white teeth showed dully. “Twelve knot.” Vane shook his head. “Tell him faster. It’s going on two hundred miles to Djibouti. My math isn’t so hot, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see we won’t be outrunning anybody. And pretty soon the big guns’ll be showing up.” Almost before the words were out of his mouth a pair of lights appeared in the blackness above Port Massawa. “Those’ll be choppers!” Vane called. He drew the minaret-spyglass to his eye and pulled it open. “Despite what Franco said about ‘intelligent weapons,’ there can’t be anything modern around here on short order.” Squinting into the eyepiece, he noted the positioning of body lights and placement of rotors, then checked and double-checked his sightings against the Russian manual under Mudhead’s flashlight. “Apaches! Good old American Apaches! Viet Nam vintage. Black market purchases. Got to be; America wouldn’t be selling to Eritrea. We’ve still got strong ties with Ethiopia and Djibouti.” He browsed the diagram with a forefinger, muttering along while Mudhead deciphered the Arabic, “They’ll be armed: four rockets apiece, thirty-millimeter turrets.” Vane raised his spyglass again. 118

Microcosmia Aseb “There’s only those two showing. Tell What’s-his-Face to kill the engines. I want him sending a distress call.” He paced neurotically, braked mid-stride, threw his arms in the air. “I’ve got it! Damn, I’m good! Here’s his message: the captured soldiers, in an attempt to take back the ship, have disabled all engines. Their guys and ours are engaged in close combat below. The ship’s on fire and in danger of going down. At last report our guys were all cornered amidships—how on Earth do I do it? Now listen, Mudhead, you’ve got to rehearse with him. Go over the message, go over and over and over it—until he gets it straight! But whatever you do, don’t let him make the call until I give you the word.” Mudhead’s eyes rolled in the dark. Vane saw him raise and flick his hand—more a tossing of forehead-sweat than a proper salute—before wearily making his way into the wheelhouse. A minute later the screws locked. He returned to find Vane perilously giving directions by sign language; he’d reduced the guard by half, and the dismissed men were staring back fiercely, not certain which way to point their rifles. “Order them,” he said, smiling unpleasantly, “to pick their four fastest.” Mudhead did so. There was much arguing, much shoving, much slapping of faces. Finally four were pushed out of the group; three youngsters and a lean old man. Vane placed his hands on his hips. “I want these four to go through this ship, grabbing anything expendable that’ll burn. That means packaging, pallets, and crates—tell them to stuff it all in these pipes and to send it to blazes with flares.” He paced impatiently while Mudhead translated. The selected four exchanged looks. Without a word, they sprinted noiselessly through the piles and drifts. Vane halted imperiously and rocked on his toes. “Ask the rest of these idiots if they can handle stingers.” At Mudhead’s translation their heads snapped up. The eyes burned with eagerness. Vane led his crew to the stocked lifeboat, a battered old forty-footer now suspended against the rail by winch cables. The men rooted through the piles like naughty children, each emerging with a stinger and an assortment of handguns. Vane’s smile was strained. He swung his flashlight across the shining faces, saw the eyes glinting redly in the passing beam. “Tell them to put the extra weapons down. I don’t want any nonsense. No cowboys.” Mudhead translated with exaggerated deference. A gnarly old man cut him off. The entire group rose. Mudhead muttered from the corner of his mouth, “Massawaman want rest pay now. Not like outlook.” Vane’s whole face contorted. “I knew it! A pirate is a pirate to the quick. Say no and mean it. The deal was half up front and half when this is over. It’s a long way from over.” A handgun was cocked. Vane smiled broadly, and spoke through his teeth. “Okey-dokey. Pay the scurvy Third-world bastards. But first tell them we’ll need to divvy it up in private.” In an alley created by a splintered cabin wall and leaning crates, Vane flicked on his flashlight, doffed Mudhead’s cap for him, and removed a flattened stack of bills. Once he’d switched off the light they grew aware of a low red glow; the runners were lighting scrap doused with diesel fuel. He thumbed off a wad. “Go hit our touchy little skipper and the runners.” Vane settled with his men, grabbed a rifle with infrared scope, and found a box of shells on the lifeboat’s floor. He led them around the deck, seeking access to the ship’s highest level. Stairways and ladders were backed to the roof with miscellaneous cargo, all tied down with cables, ropes, rags, and bungee cords. The men leaped heap to heap in the jerking beam of Vane’s flashlight. The islands’ roofs were vast badlands of split and leaning cargo. Vane stood looking over the dark dreamy sea. The wide fan of following lights appeared motionless. The helicopters were still a long way off. The night was brilliant with stars, the sea air running cool and lean beneath the night’s 119

Microcosmia Aseb heaving heat. Just to port, a dirty dark cloud was leaving a low puffy tail. Vane turned to his men with his heart in his throat, his magnificent silk robes billowing. He pounded his flare gun against his chest and shook his head dramatically, indicating that no one was to fire unless he gave the signal. This order was not well-received. Several figures pointed their weapons straight at his fat turbaned head. One squatting shape hawked and spat right between the rich boy’s authentic knee-high goatskin moccasins. They turned and filtered into places of concealment like cockroaches. Vane trembled all the way down to the deck, but by the time he’d reached the wheelhouse he was back in command. “Mr. Mudahid, we’re dealing with a bunch of damned Barbary dickheads! Order their little poster boy to make that call.” Now smoke was pouring to port, in long black plumes. Cherry sparks flashed in lazy arcs, occasional prominences lit up heaving piles of trash. Mudhead rejoined Vane at the rail. They stood side by side, watching the Apaches slowly close the gap. In the darkness the men were reverse images; the African a headless ghost of white robes, cap, and sardonic suspended eyes, the American a floating pasty white face propped and cropped by black silk. Mudhead gave Vane the scoop: The helm’s distress call, through argument, displays of incompetence, and panicky outbursts, was gradually taking effect. Scheherazade’s pursuers were now half-convinced the pilot was entirely incapable of handling the crisis, and interested solely in rescue. This was excellent news. Vane leaned against a wheelhouse doorjamb and peered in, nodding gratefully while rubbing together his thumb and adjacent fingers in the universal gesture for money. The bearded steersman returned the nod and continued transmitting, but his patter seemed directed more toward invective than entreaty. At length a calm, familiar voice could be heard, carefully iterating “Va’en” at the middle and end of the transmission. Vane, leaning inside, pointed at his own head with one hand and made the throatslitting gesture with the other, indicating he wished to be reported dead. The pilot nodded and smiled, his eyes gleaming with sweet anticipation. He went on muttering into the transmitter. Vane walked Mudhead to the rail. “So what do you think?” “Wait time.” Mudhead looked Vane dead-on. After a minute he appended in a whisper, “Mudahid counsel patience,” and stared out to sea. “Walk soft.” Vane winked cannily. “But with a big stick.” The ivory eyes rolled back, annoyed. “No stick! Walk soft.” Vane lasted all of thirty seconds. “Wait, hell! This is taking forever. I’m gonna go check on my property. If you see any movement up there, just sing out and I’ll come running.” He stared into the darkness for a space, then gently pried off his turban and handed it over. “Watch Sophie for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s not like I don’t trust these guys or anything.” He picked his way around the deck cautiously, expecting the worst—knowing the worst. But he wasn’t about to surrender to the obvious that easily; he had to sift through vibes and vestiges, had to see for himself. A pile of molding flour, peppered with rotten apples, onions, and pears, removed all but the most stubborn remnants of his denial. Little or no care had gone into basic preservation. Perishables were scattered about in heaps and clumps, piled in crevices amid strange hulking machinery, or stuffed unprotected between perilously stacked boxes. Individual items had been left to roll around the deck, eventually catching on greasy parts and broken parcels. And in one cul-de-sac, at the end of a haphazard passageway created by opposing cliffs of teetering crates, Vane noticed a particularly nauseating odor. His anger escalated as he approached, his curiosity overtaken, step by step, by a single black realization: Franco had simply stored; he’d just dumped—the son of a bitch hadn’t even used refrigeration! In a blind rage Vane began smashing at a greasy wooden panel with his jile. The stench intensified. With tears in his eyes he went berserk on the panel, at last hacking out a football-sized hole that spewed forth a stinking swarm of flies. He dropped his jile and threw his 120

Microcosmia Aseb hands over his face, retching, even as the whole section of floor gave way and sent him plunging into pitch. It was a short fall, only two or three feet. All he knew was that he was on his back, half-buried in putrefied meat, flies buzzing around his waving arms, flying into his mouth, crawling over his face. Frantic, he struggled to sit upright, pushing with his elbows and heels, yelling and coughing while he slipped and slid. Vane squirmed onto his hands and knees, alternately plopping his hands in and out of the slime as he fought to keep his balance while reflexively backing away. His skin was crawling, and not only with horror—every inch of exposed flesh was covered with maggots! Vane screamed hysterically, swatting his face and body. But he only buried himself deeper. His little panting screams became one continuous shriek that didn’t end until a pair of black hands, popping down through the jagged aperture like God Almighty, slipped under his arms and hauled him out into the sweet night air. Mudhead couldn’t contain him; Vane was freaking out of his mind, rolling side to side like a man on fire, slapping himself silly. At last he jumped to his feet and ran. If he hadn’t been suddenly tackled from the side and rear, he would certainly have leaped the rail into the cleansing sea fifty feet below. The little helmsman, snapping in Arabic, tossed a bucket’s worth of gasoline on him, immediately followed by a bucket of fresh water from Mudhead. Then water was hitting him from all sides. Vane lurched to his feet. Coughing and sputtering, he staggered to the rail, dropped to his knees, and puked his guts out. He hung there for the longest while, his hair and robes drying in the breeze. Finally a snootful of acrid smoke snapped back his head. He raised himself by the elbows. “Wait time over, Bossman.” Vane felt his turban set squarely on his head. When he reached his feet Mudhead handed him the jile and bowed. “Big stick.” He looked himself up and down. There wasn’t a trace of fumes or vermin. “Gas?” he coughed. “On silk?” Mudhead fingered the material. “No problem, Bossman. Plenty water, plenty fast.” Vane sagged against the rail until he was roused by his twitching nose. Black smoke had all but obscured the port horizon. He ordered Mudhead to have the captain kill the radio. “I just want those damned helicopters off our tail, man! This has to be a rescue job, not a military operation!” Inspiration hit him. “What are the odds of getting one of these soldiers to transmit that the situation’s under control? Maybe some of our boys would temporarily donate a few bills to persuade him.” He licked his lips. “I’m plumb out of cash.” “Odd zero both way.” “So you’re saying Eritrean commanders aren’t particularly fond of renegade soldiers?” Mudhead’s expression was fixed. “Wrong, Bossman.” He carefully placed his hurt hand’s thumb on the rail and used his other hand to mimic the turning of a thumbscrew. “Officer like bad soldier very much.” He looked up meaningfully. “Officer crazy about Americaman.” The sky lights shifted. “Okay,” said Vane. “Show time. Tell those boys to stoke the flames with whatever they can get their hands on. I want way more smoke in the air.” Mudhead loped off. Vane scraped about until he found a piece of plywood large enough to lean against the wheelhouse doorway, cutting the escape of light to a sliver. He knelt at the rail and peered through his rifle’s night scope. The thing was beautiful: when focused away from the helicopter’s running lights, he could make out details of the lead Apache’s undercarriage while it was still over half a mile distant. The helicopters initiated their searchlights, and the abrupt blast of white light almost knocked him over. The dead wedge of outboards shot to life. Just like that, the copters were right on top of Scheherazade, splitting wide, passing to either side—one a hundred feet overhead, the other low on the water, trying to penetrate the heaving black smoke with their beacons. 121

Microcosmia Aseb Vane kept the high bird in his glass as it hovered overhead and slightly to starboard, while trying to keep his other eye on the low copter’s back. It was impossible to hold a bead long enough for a clean hit, but there was one crazy moment when the pilot’s goggles and helmet were right in the palm of his hand. The low copter’s second circuit drew a concussion and tracer from the roof. Immediately the overhead chopper laid its turret into the spot, ripping a trail across the heaped cargo and taking out one whole side of a cabin. There were screams amidst the billowing debris, followed by a shot from a second stinger that took out the low Apache’s tail rotor and sent the copter spinning into the water. The other chopper, veering hard, was promptly blown out of the sky by a furious volley. A chorus of cheers was quickly drowned by a hail of machine gun fire off the water. The ship’s screws bit into the sea. Vane, crouching behind a mound of salt water-hardened Portland cement, took careful aim at a hunched soldier wrestling a hurtling outboard’s wheel. He’d never fired a weapon in his life, and for thirty seconds was stone-paralyzed as he watched that intense black face bumping in and out of his sight. Vane caught his breath and squeezed the trigger. He needn’t have worried; he was a lousy shot. The soldier didn’t even blink. A snap-and-squeal was repeated twice. In horrifying slow motion, one of the heated pipes swung out over the side and began rocking with the ship, the rhythmic scream of metal on metal growing more pronounced as the arc widened. A zipper-like roll of snapping cables, and the pipe went straight down, followed by seven others. They hit the sea like bombs. As the ship lurched sideto-side, the loose pipes on deck smashed into cabins, rolled back, and took out the guardrail. Four more went over, sending up great resounding founts that capsized three outboards. The rest of the boats came on with a vengeance, veering wide, racing and weaving, their occupants shooting all they had. But Scheherazade was impervious to small fire, and her pursuers fell back into the old pattern one by one. Eventually an amplified voice commenced hailing the ship in Arabic. Vane carefully studied a flag-bearing inboard at the arrowhead’s tip. The speaker’s face was hidden behind a bullhorn. Ignoring the monotonous calls, he urged Mudhead to get more knots out of the helm. Sooner or later reinforcements would arrive. And this time they’d be coming to take the ship out. Yet the passing hours brought no sign of Vane’s predicted lion. The boats maintained their flotilla-like aspect while that patient voice droned on and on, gradually driving everybody crazy. Now and then a bored pirate took a potshot with a stinger, but the man with the horn never missed a beat. By three a.m. Scheherazade had passed over a hundred miles of coastline without a sign of retaliation by air or sea. Other than the occasional wink of a lighthouse, the world was black; other than that damnable droning voice, the night breathtakingly still. The outboards stuck behind the big ship with their lights killed, never once breaking formation. But when the false dawn made a ghost of the Saudi peninsula, with Djibouti less than sixty miles away, the little flotilla came alive. The outboards circled furiously, taking shots at anything moving. Vane ordered his men to remain in the shadows, so as to frustrate the pestiferous pursuers with a formidable show of indifference. And in time the boats fell back. Mudhead translated as the lifeless monologue resumed: the pirates’ situation was hopeless. Eritrean law was merciful. “Wrong both count,” he concluded. Yemen’s coast grew more distinct in the east. Not far ahead to starboard, the port of Aseb was winking in a red stream of sun. They were nearly out of hostile waters; Aseb’s military base was now the sole hurdle between Vane’s wares and Djibouti. He searched the coast for the inevitable jets until his scope eye was burning and bleary. But all Aseb produced was a battered gray PT boat, popping 122

Microcosmia Aseb into sight long after they’d passed the base. When it finally drew near, the smaller boats ignored the cargo ship and gathered round like whelps. Vane stared and stared through his spyglass. “Damn it! They’re priming the mounted machine guns. There’s crates of ammunition up the yin-yang. My guess is they plan on just shooting the deck to pieces.” He saw an officer on the patrol boat accept the bullhorn from the previous handler. The message that came across the water was all Greek to Vane, but it raised a chant of defiance from Scheherazade’s mangled roof. The next thing he knew, the patrol boat had kicked and was tearing their way. Bullets shredded the deck and cabin walls, zinged into space, ricocheted off the steel pipes. The lifeboat, bursting into flames as its onboard ammunition detonated, hung burning for a few seconds before shrieking down the side. The ceaseless barrage minced every pirate on the roof’s edge and fifteen feet beyond. Vane and Mudhead were completely buried by an avalanche of debris. Above the lustily revving patrol boat, the Arabic voice calmly repeated its commands. Vane dug himself free. “Get ’em up!” He threw his arms wildly. “Get ’em up!” The closest defenders looked his way and nodded. Each man banged his rifle’s butt on the deck to get attention down the line. The pirates one by one prodded their prisoners, whispering nastily. The Eritreans got to their feet nervously and stood facing the water, hands clasped behind their necks. Thus shielded, Vane’s men rose at their backs, kicking their captives’ legs wide apart. It was nearly full daylight now; bright enough to catch the expressions of the pursuers as they stared up in wonder. For the longest time no one made a move. Then the little torpedo boat, no more than a hundred yards to port, rocked back and forth, champing at the bit. The rush was on. With complete disregard for their countrymen, the gunners opened up on the deck. The captured soldiers went straight down. But when the storm of bullets had passed they lurched to their feet, wailed to Allah in unison, and leaped into space. Vane could hear their breaking ankles smack the water far below. A single outboard pulled forward cautiously while the PT moved back. The receding amplified message seemed directed at the ship in general, and from the tone Vane had to assume it was a truce call for the sake of rescuing the dozens of soldiers flailing below. He dug about until he found a dirty towel to wave overhead as a white flag. The remaining men on the roof, watching curiously, scooted back out of sight. Vane turned to face the approaching enemy and waved both arms generously, his black silk robes billowing and retracting like the animated cartoon wings of a crime-fighting crusader. The outboard motored right up to Schererazade’s hull. Vane, leaning clean over the rail, did his awkward best to direct the rescuers to bobbing and drowning bodies. When the outboard was stuffed he clutched the mangled rail with relief, blessed the Fates, and waved the little boat away to safety. A moment later it had been pulverized by a quartet of stingers. Vane staggered from the rail in horror, sickened by the spray of blood and debris. He turned to the roof, waving his arms side to side, shaking his head frantically. The next thing he knew bullets were zipping all around him. He scrambled between heaps and listened to the laughter on the roof. Now the amplified voice was in butchered English. It was obvious the speaker was repeating, word for word, what came over his radio’s receiver. “Krees-chun Vah-een! Krees-chun Vah-een! Puhleez turneenk auf engeenz now. No moer warneenkz. No moer . . . no moer—” There was one fragment of a clipped exchange. “No moer . . . gam-eez! Teez American Pee Tee bot eez ar-med weet tree torPeedoz weet woerhedz kapapa . . . kapaboo . . . kapa . . . bull! auv seenkeenk yoer vessehull. Yoo well hav gain-eed nahteenk. Yoo well hav loss-ed evrateenk!” A short snarl of Arabic, and the voice came back, “An puhleez lit me upAllahjiz foer teez eegnuh-runt harf-weetuhd babbaboohun hoo eez speekeenk foer me now. Heez 123

Microcosmia Aseb stoopeeduhtee eez troolee minah boggleenk.” Not needing a translation, Gold Eye got right up in Mudhead’s face. At last Mudhead nodded dispassionately and turned. “Massawaman say torpedo plenty serious business. Say Bossman best make deal fast.” Vane, wracked by all the death and indifference, cried, “Or what? We’ll have us a good oldfashioned mutiny?” Caught in the middle, the African slowly raised his hands above his head. “Mudahid only messageman.” “Then give him a frigging message! Tell him he can change sides any time he wants. The idiot’s useless now anyway.” He stormed into the wheelhouse and began wrestling with the radio, still refusing to believe he’d lost all control. The little pilot glared, slammed the ON lever into play, and smacked the ignorant American’s hand back and forth while indicating switches. Vane hardly noticed him. “Um . . .” he said into the phone. “Um, Mayday, man. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Or . . . is that only aeronautical?” He pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and forced himself to speak slowly and coherently. “This ship is under attack and I need to know what to do. I am an American. I am not supposed to be at war with anybody. A whole lot of people just died who didn’t really have to. If someone else in this part of the world speaks solid English, please let me know. I am maybe half an hour out of Djibouti, in Eritrean waters. A number of motorboats have been dogging us all the way from Massawa, plus there’s this PT out of Aseb.” Vane shook the phone in frustration. Nothing but dead air. “They . . . are . . . threatening this ship!” He hammered the phone on the console. “Is anybody picking up on this? Talk to me, man. We’re a cargo vessel, with no real means of defense. Now look, I’m gonna need some kind of super-relevant advice here. Okay? The guy at the wheel is a total cartoon. Hello, Djibouti! Hello, Djibouti! I need an English-speaking operator.” He punched knobs and switches until the little captain jumped all over him in Arabic. Vane shoved him back with a forearm. “Is this on?” he screamed. “Do you have the slightest freaking idea what I’m trying to do here, creep? We’re going down. Distress call. Djibouti. Not far little country no bad soldier.” He tried broad hand gestures. “You free in Djibouti. Free! No more be nasty little pirate. Big bonus from shouting American. Oh . . . please. Would you just help me with the goddamned distress call!” The helmsman reached up and slapped Vane flat across the face. He then repeatedly stabbed his finger at a blinking red light on the console. For a moment Vane was stupefied. When the crimson veil lifted, he found himself staring down insanely at that filthy little gnome. Unaware of his actions, he grabbed his spyglass and raised his arm to strike. The captain didn’t flinch. With his eyes welded to Vane’s, he slipped a hand under his robes, extracted a Walther P-38, and placed the tip of the pistol’s barrel squarely on the tip of the American’s pink peeling nose. “I paid for that,” Vane gasped. “It’s mine. Now you just put it down or give it back.” The man literally steered Vane by the nose, marched him backward through the doorway and out onto deck. His black eyes blazing in the morning sun, he used the gun’s barrel to forcefully thrust Vane onto his rear. Staring down venomously, he propped the plywood sheet against the jambs and hopped back inside. “Vah-een!” came the exasperated voice. Vane, scrambling to his feet, was knocked right back down as the captain threw all engines into the red. “Vah . . . een!” Vane raised his spyglass, saw a rail-thin Algerian officer staring back through binoculars. The man was having a tough time keeping his balance. At last he set down the bullhorn and pointed his 124

Microcosmia Aseb left arm toward Yemen. Vane followed the arm with his glass until he came upon a blurry white blister. He adjusted focus. The object was a bound cluster of disabled boats. He swung back, saw the PT kick, and clearly made out the turmoil of launch. Vane followed the torpedo’s telltale wake of air bubbles for a ways, then returned to the drifting white blister. Suddenly his spyglass became a kaleidoscope. He had to back off on the focus to make out the descending plume of water and debris. The blister had been excised. He swung the glass back to the officer, who was watching him with two fingers held high, indicating two torpedoes remaining. “Totally unnecessary,” Vane called across the water. “I think we’ve got the picture.” He ran a hand back and forth under his turban as he paced. “I wish we had something to intercept torpedoes. Then those guys would wimp out and we’d be home free.” He drew his jile and stabbed a few crates. “Any one of those steel pipes, dumped over the side at the right time, could absorb a warhead . . . but Jesus, man, that would just turn the pipe into a battering ram!” “Vah-een!” He waved an arm for silence. “Or would the torpedo home on the greater mass of the ship? Are they triggered magnetically or on impact?” “Vah-een!” Vane glared in the direction of the voice. He didn’t need his spyglass to get the picture. The PT kicked, flashing her sleek belly as the long gray tube leaped from its rack. It was amazing how time actually seemed to halt. Every man on deck froze in every particular but one, mesmerized by the arrow on its silent underwater flight. Son of a gun, Vane’s mind chattered, it’s radio-controlled. No! It’s attracted by the motion of the screws! The gray streak disappeared. And all aboard were flat on their backs, listening to the concussion singing through the hull while the ship pitched like a rocking horse. A geyser showed to stern and vanished. Vane shook Mudhead off. “See if we’re taking on water!” He ran into the wheelhouse, where he found himself looking straight down the Walther’s barrel. “Peace,” he tried. “Allah be Akbar.” Vane turned nonchalantly. The console showed three propellers out of operation, leaving a single screw to limp Scheherazade along. The little pilot, after expectorating a particularly jangling mouthful of Arabic, aimed the Walther at the ceiling and fired twice. The pair of concussions was much louder than Vane had expected. Cannon fire. He pushed out his palms instinctively and very slowly raised his hands. The captain raved and reiterated, jabbed the gun at Vane’s belly and face, threw back his head and howled. He shook the radio’s phone menacingly, then thrust it and the pistol in Vane’s face. “I already called!” Vane shouted, tears in his eyes. He gradually lowered his arms until he could indicate the captain with one hand and the phone with the other. “You call. Me no speak Arab. You talk Djibouti. Say S.O.S. You comprende S.O.S.?” He drew the letters in the air with his nose. “Ess. Oh! Ess!” The captain veered the pistol a hair and fired, nearly taking off Vane’s head. Vane went down, rolled, and kept right on rolling; across the cabin’s floor, through the doorway, and out onto deck. He came up running for his life, quickly disappearing behind a dung-capped mountain of bleached flour. His right ear was ringing wildly, but the other picked up a scuttling to his left. In that ear he heard Mudhead yell, “Hull okay, Bossman! Propeller history.” “Vah-een!” Spitting out every four-letter word he could think of, Vane fumbled his spyglass from his robes and stared long and hard. The grinning officer was standing rock-steady, watching right back. “Enough!” Vane cried, and motioned Mudhead into a huddle. The African, after listening 125

Microcosmia Aseb incredulously for a few seconds, stalked off and returned with the night-scoped rifle. Without taking his eye off the officer, Vane laid the barrel on the rail and pointed it straight at the final torpedo’s head. The skinny officer’s grin collapsed. He spoke rapidly and, still watching, handed the bullhorn to one of his men in exchange for what looked like a Mauser. Squaring himself, he aimed right at the hot blue sapphire in the fat black turban. “Jesus!” Vane swore. He very carefully waved the barrel to the side a few times, motioning the officer away from the torpedo. Keeping his weapon trained, the man just as carefully shook his head. Now the sweat was trickling out from under Vane’s turban. In a dream, he dropped the spyglass and transferred his vision to the scope. There was some unseen puppeteer in charge of his actions, causing him to very slowly, very gently arc his rifle upward until his sights were fixed precisely between the binoculars’ absolutely motionless lenses. Not until the actual sound arrived did Vane realize a bullet had just ripped into his upper left chest. He was amazed to find himself lolling on his back in Mudhead’s arms, in shock, watching his black robes run red. In no time he was growing cold. His consciousness began to drift. He rolled his head until he was looking back into Mudhead’s eyes. “Glass,” he dribbled. Mudhead, in an otherwise unthinkable act of compassion, tore off his snow-white tarboosh and pressed it against his master’s wound. His other hand found the spyglass and held it to Vane’s right eye. The officer was still grinning. Without pulling away his binoculars, he took a step to his left to tenderly pat the final torpedo, itching in its rack. When he raised the hand he was showing only the forefinger, indicating this was the one. With the last of his strength, Vane raised his right hand in response, exhibiting an erect middle finger. The officer threw down his binoculars. Vane’s arm dropped like a stone, but he never felt it hit the deck. He was already so far gone he’d become detached, and had begun watching the world as a cinematic event. Colors were sharply defined. All action was taking place in slow motion. And nothing, but nothing, made a lick of rational sense. For instance, the Red Sea shouldn’t be parting: that hallucination was straight out of DeMille. Also, the little PT boat, in complete control of the situation, shouldn’t be rearing and turning about, and the fan of outboards shouldn’t be breaking formation to hightail it back to Aseb. That dramatic and gratifying image would be the final tease of a dying man’s ego. And, sure as shooting, a huge gray whale shouldn’t be surfacing midway between Scheherazade and her fading pursuers. That was pure Disney. The whole scene seemed flaky, and kind of funny to Vane, but it also struck him as totally nick-of-time cool. In his gathering delirium he actually hallucinated the surfacing gray whale magically morphing into a surfacing gray submarine. His jaw fell while he watched a billion diamonds cascade off the illusion’s broad smooth hull. None of these events produced sound: it was a silent movie. But there was a synced soundtrack issuing from a speaker just behind him, featuring what sounded like a for-once very human Mudhead, mumbling gratefully in Somali over a broad background of jabbering pirates. The submarine was the most beautiful thing Vane had ever seen; both deadly and protective, her impenetrable armor and subtle contours suggestive of an elegant, wonderfully composed sea serpent. While he watched, hypnotized, wavy crimson tracers began arcing around her, spiking and sinking rhythmically with his pulse, narrowing at the middle, showering at the peak. The outline of this strange disturbance became humanlike, and then quite feminine; its flanks now extending, now bending to fold about him in a cosmic embrace. A pair of bright level eyes grew amid the electric tresses, and beneath these a wide pouting mouth. It was the saddest mouth Vane had ever imagined. The eyes were only for him. He was paralyzed by all that beauty; couldn’t lift a finger or wiggle a toe, couldn’t feel Mudhead holding him up or hear him speaking in his ear. Vane knew it was fundamentally wrong to 126

Microcosmia Aseb meet his mother like this, at the close of his life; it was cruel and unfair—as cruel and unfair as the icy numbness weighing his limbs, as wrong and as alien as the very un-California sea. And then, as the horizon was swept up in a great fireball of pomegranate-colored light, he realized the world was anything but cruel. Only a benign nature would produce something so lovely.

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Chapter Fourteen Kid Vane’s emergency surgery aboard a U.S. submarine on maneuvers off Madinat ash-Sha’b, his surprise entry into the Gulf of Aden on a pirated ship under Eritrean registry, and his subsequent ignominious removal from said ship via winch on a jerry-rigged stretcher of broken pallets and dungcovered rags, were, taken together, Honey’s worst nightmare come true, but the Foundation jumped on it so quickly, and with so much attitude, that its prime interest left the hospital three weeks later facing little worse than a tough lecture and chilly interview. After sitting for two grueling hours in the American ambassador’s office like a schoolboy in detention, Vane, his shoulder in a plaster cast and his left arm in a sling, was interrogated by three nameless men in suits, who permitted him to return to the Danakil on the condition he permanently keep his nose out of Eritrea. They were surprisingly cool on the whole Scheherazade issue, and frankly skeptical of his account of Franco’s plans, but boy, were they ever pissed about his black market purchases. And they took his neat warships manual, and refused to give it back. Vane slunk from the office, sulking, unable to shake the feeling he wasn’t considered mature enough to run around the Horn of Africa unsupervised. Denise Waters, his guardian angel, got right to work on new warehouses and a friendly corridor, using Mudhead as Vane’s personal financial go-between. She fought for peace, fought for time, fought for Vane; directing trifles to Washington, routing important calls to beleaguered bureaucrats in Addis Ababa. Vane’s former employees, like the rats they were, threatened Mudhead into wringing the rest of their pay out of Honey’s Djibouti courier by way of Banke Internationale, grabbed the cash, smuggled out the stingers, and disappeared into the frying shadows of Duomoa, one of the hottest and most desolate cities on Earth. Mudhead, his loyalty to Vane grown profound out of the tragedy, clung steadfastly to the night-scope rifle, the minaret-shaped spyglass, and his master’s crusty-trusty jile. Long hours were spent delicately repairing the beautiful robes of flowing black silk. The 128

Microcosmia Kid salvageable foods, supplemented by a massive, highway-robbery buyout in Tedjoura, came the long way; south by rail on the Djibouti City-Addis Ababa line. Some fifty miles down the track, where Honey began earnest construction on the Vane Depot, the goods were loaded onto surplus troop transports for carriage over the desert to Mamuset. With his newfound responsibilities and awesome capital power, Mudhead really came into his own. He hired hundreds of pastoralists to pave a single-lane road through the desert, and hundreds more to work the Danakil end, while the daily parade of supplies made its way by ATV and camel train. Although this ninety mile road was completed, amazingly, in less than a month, it was all too slow for Mudhead. He demanded more out of Tibor, more out of Honey, more out of his rocketing employees. The Depot was erected with dizzying speed, using both lumber imported by rail and whatever material the drought had spared. In time the Vane Depot would become a major landmark and oasis; a bazaar-like stopover in the middle of nowhere for weary travelers on the DC-AA line. Waters supported the development with a Mamuset Ready Fund, stocking the Depot’s strongbox with birrs, francs, and dollars. Mudhead, during Vane’s absence a man of near-superhuman stature, made regular flights to the Depot with Kid and his favorites, who fought savagely for a chance to ride in the plane until the problem was solved by selecting only the best-mannered. The youngsters were sent from the Depot with survival packs containing coin samples to entice Afar, Amhara, and Tigriya pastoralists. Others left Mamuset by camel, while still others were dropped off at strategic spots near sites yet occupied by skeleton tribes. The incentive—paid labor and adoption into Mamuset—was a strong one, but tribal recruits were few, for to many such a life-saving course was tantamount to defection. Scouts had better luck with nomad groups, who obediently and listlessly trudged to the Depot as if it were one more watering hole. They then trekked, toting stamped picks and shovels, to temporary crew sites, or to permanent marked-off sections in the desert. Once employed, they put their backs into it sunup to sundown, camping on their half-mile sections jealously, chasing off supervisors driving section-to-section with food and fresh drinking water. Sides of the developing road were marked by flagged stakes, each section including a turn-out space for opposing traffic. At the outset these stakes were in many places arbitrary, clambering along slopes and into gullies. Mudhead intended the new road to be a model of construction, and a vast improvement over Vane’s original Mamuset Highway. The African had learned a great deal during his months as Vane’s second in command, but had always frowned on the easygoing, aesthetic approach. Mudhead’s workers, driven to exhaustion and proud to a fault, took seriously every aspect of their jobs. Even in the dark they could be found single-mindedly chipping away at hillsides, filling and tamping depressions, tidying perfectly straight borders. And, once they’d begun to personalize their sites, those roving supervisors, climbing out of jeeps with parcels and flashlights, approached the pickaxewielding workers at great peril. In this manner—with limitless energy and immeasurable pride—a clearly definable pass was created with astounding rapidity. Crews spanned gorges not with suspended or vaulted bridges, but with dynamite and biceps. Great boulders were rolled into these gaps or blasted from their walls, to be cemented with any stone that could be ported. Amhara and Afar vied to outwork each other, sometimes with a viciousness that would have certainly panicked Vane into declaring an immediate holiday. But Mudhead, knowing better, encouraged segregation by grouping these ages-old competitors on opposing gorge-sides and putting them to work racing toward the center, realizing that, upon each impending violent clash at points of convergence, the competing teams would simply rush back to begin the next level. Those completed spans were then packed with dirt. Terrified steamroller drivers were taunted across every inch. And the moment Mudhead’s crew laborers had 129

Microcosmia Kid cash in hand, they began stoically walking the new road back to the Depot, where they patiently applied for more work. Both Depot and road were regularly monitored by Ethiopian officials, and constantly wondered over by passing fares. It was only natural that imaginations should embroider upon observation, and that those imaginations should be further fired by rumors and gossip. One day, just before his friend was scheduled to be released from the hospital, Mudhead paid a visit bearing a Los Angeles Times Column Left article pulled off the Internet. Vane had been persistent news in the gossip rags since his eccentric father’s death. He was rumored dead, in cahoots with the Mob, partying in the Aegean, and searching for Morgan’s treasure with super-sophisticated equipment. Rumors only slightly more accurate popularly vilified him as a swaggering Egyptian overlord using thousands of slaves to construct a monolithic idol to himself. This heartless, flamboyant character, assembled from gossip originating half a world away, had earned the paper nickname Kid Rameses. Apparently the Times had purchased, from at least one of these rags, information considered reliable and newsworthy. The article described how Cristian Vane, perennially-soused continent-jumping billionaire playboy, had recently been involved in a shootout while running drugs on the Red Sea. The article wasn’t sure how the escapade correlated with rumors of secretive doings on a farm in Ethiopia, whether he’d been growing cannabis or poppies there, or even if the pampered American adventurer, now kept under wraps in an international clinic for strung-out rock stars, had survived the relations-straining Red Sea battle. Vane stewed for days over this swashbuckling criminal image fabricated by the sensational press. Fortunately he had constructive distractions that continually forced him to refocus. In moments alone he thought only of Mamuset’s new Highway, of his great responsibility, and of the enormous lesson he was still in the process of learning. That old guy in the desert was right: ego’s a monster. When it comes to seeing the big picture, the worst thing you can do is get bogged down in your microcosm’s details. Designing Mamuset had been possible from afar; micromanaging the completed project was another animal altogether. And as Vane got better, reality found new ways to wear him back down. He tried to run his world from bed, but remotely keeping the peace between squatting workers bordered on a full-time job. Supervisors were in and out of his room all day long. Again and again he was pushed to arbitrate fights between Afar and Amhara crews over rights to work as little as a few square yards of earth. A similar bullheadedness possessed those individuals in charge of half-mile sections. Once their jobs were completed they became entrenched; refusing to be relocated, distrusting the asphaltrunners and threatening the rovers. While awaiting steamrollers, these workers grew meticulous with their plots, smoothing the new road surface ahead of the crews, cleaning stakes and trimming flags. As soon as the rollers became apparent as articulated heat waves, these men positioned themselves as human barriers. Not until they were paid in full on the spot would they relinquish their sites. When that last birr kissed their palms they took their camels offroad and began the long trek back to apply for work.

Homecoming was tough for Vane. The worst part was his pre-dawn cruise with an over-competent second-in-command, in a giftladen Isis, on a road as smooth as polished glass. A thousand crew workers and section laborers proudly lined the way, each man waving a custom-made welcoming torch. But Vane, weary of ordering Mudhead to flash the Land Rover’s brights in response, slumped gloomily in his seat and 130

Microcosmia Kid nursed his battle wound with the dignity befitting a returning commander. Mudhead didn’t brag, or in any manner acknowledge his success—he seemed light years above that sort of thing; and that was another thorn in Vane’s craw. The CO’s initial compliments quickly tapered to grunts of approval, then to surly silence. Who were these people really waving at? By the time they’d reached the new Onramp, Vane’s mind was made up. He tore off his sling and used it to buff his turban’s sapphire, fluffed out his fresh-as-daisies black silk robes, and rose majestically behind his microphone while the citizens of Mamuset were being wakened by a chord like thunder. For some reason the Afar appeared none the worse for his absence. Rather, they embodied Mudhead’s description of loyal dogs; patiently guarding the house while awaiting Master’s inevitable return. But Mudhead’s analogy involved behavior in a world of tooth and nail, against readily identifiable foes engaged in clearly defined assaults upon territory, propriety, and, ultimately, upon principle. That analogy did not embrace unknowable assailants cropping up in the dead of night, nor did it include the senseless dismembering of women, children, and animals. That kind of assault, on both body and soul, produced a much different reaction in the Afar—a very African reaction. One tranquil night, not long after that uncomfortable homecoming, Vane was lying flat on his back in an open field, watching the stars clumping and dispersing pyrotechnically while the plastic earth played with his shoulders and heels; nibbling here, massaging there, rolling over his ankles and wrists like warm water—clamping, gently but firmly, on his throat and limbs, tenderly pulling him down. He might have been swallowed without the least resistance, had not the exquisite peace been broken by a single electrifying scream. Vane tried to sit up, but the clamps only tightened. With all his strength he raised his head and forced his eyes wide. An entirely naked, brightly painted savage leaped up just beyond his splayed feet, screaming insanely. The savage’s flesh, wherever unpainted, showed jet-black; its ivory-white eyes, lacking both irises and pupils, took up fully half its face. Vane somehow tore himself free and rose weightlessly, in slow motion, all the while struggling to free his lead-heavy jile from its sheath. That strange screaming face transformed as it approached; first becoming a black leopard’s mask, then a scarab’s pinched mandible, and finally the rock-hard face of Mudhead, burning with deceit. As Vane watched, gaping, Mudhead’s face morphed into John Beregard’s spewing death mask, which in turn became the self-despising, negative-image face of Cristian Vane himself. Still screaming, the savage reached, its yellow nails like curling bamboo shoots. The jile was anchored to the ground. Veins standing out on his arms and forehead, he snarled and strained until he’d torn it free, then swung the dead weight in an arcing motion, lopping off an arm before the jile’s tip, passing its zenith, fell like a shot to the ground. The savage screamed at its spurting stump, leaned in hard, and slashed at Vane’s face with its remaining claw. Again throwing all his will to the task, Vane swung his jile in a counter-arc, chopping off his assailant’s other arm at the elbow. The savage came on. Vane totally lost it; backpedaling while swinging the weapon side to side, screaming in return, hacking off one leg, hacking off the other. But the limbless monster continued to advance, a lurching, gory trunk swinging four gushing stumps. With a final effort Vane swung his jile like a Louisville slugger, cleanly decapitating the thing. The headless torso flopped around for a minute, jerked violently, and stopped. Vane was done in. He stumbled up to the settling head one frame at a time, saw his own dismembered hand drift off to lift it by the hair, saw the head turn under his fingers, scream maniacally, and bite down hard. Vane dropped it and staggered backward, and that still-screaming head pursued him like a bloody flesh ball, its eyes now huge empty sockets in a wildly contorted face. Vane saw it as through a camera’s blood-spattered lens, bouncing erratically as it neared, growing larger and larger until its gnashing, spewing, screaming mouth filled his vision. 131

Microcosmia Kid He sat bolt-upright, marinated in sweat. The ghastly wash of a full moon was seeping between his Domo’s wide-open gills, capping the furniture with a fuzzy white veneer. He held his breath. A scream tore across the still night like nails on a blackboard, followed a moment later by two others a hundred yards apart. Mongrels, howling in response, were immediately muted by owners, leaving only the nervous grunts of camels and cattle. To Vane, still in that half-conscious realm between slumber and full wakefulness, it all seemed an extension of the dream. He focused his senses. Half a minute later the screaming was renewed. He’d just swung his legs off the bed when his door burst open to reveal the black-and-white ghost of Mudhead, hunched in a skewed rectangle of moonlight. Vane fumbled on his robes and, barefoot, stumbled up the Steps on his friend‘s heels. From their vantage on Top Step, Mamuset’s dully glowing Streetlamps created a false impression of security and serenity. It was dead-quiet. “Why,” Vane whispered, “isn’t anybody moving? Who’s been doing all that screaming?” “Visitor,” Mudhead whispered back. “Mamusetman now stoneman. Try no-noise hide.” “Hide from what?” Another shriek, perhaps a quarter-mile away. The response, much nearer to their right, was quickly followed by a few seconds of commotion inside a Domo. Complete silence. Mudhead bent to his tripod. Vane, for some reason compelled to tiptoe, pulled his Massawa rifle from between the Big Clock and Grid Map. He spun off the wing nuts that secured the binoculars to their mounting, balanced his rifle’s barrel just above the trigger guard, and crouched to peek into the night scope’s blood-red unreality. Mamuset was a shantytown in Hell, the distant East Rim a dead ridge on Mars. He swept left to right, very slowly, until a pair of screams gave him a fix. A lanky black figure came loping out of a Domo, something in his hand glinting dully. Vane’s free eye squinted. The man, painted head to foot, was naked except for a thatch skirt, a massive necklace, and an oversize mask made up to frighten. A second later the figure was lost from view. “Not one of ours.” “Three . . .” Mudhead counted, “. . . four. Now two more on Street. Run crazy.” “Let me see.” Vane peered into Mudhead’s mounted binoculars. Thermal imaging produced bright-line features vacillating from startlingly clear to irksomely muddy. The digital processors that made night detection possible created an artificial, two-dimensional image interrupted by a nearcontinuous vertical shift. Trying to control this shift only produced spikes, abstracted from moonlight, that broadened and shimmered with the least vibration. But Vane was able to locate his original culprit, and at least four others running Domo to Domo. He picked out a definite pattern: black form runs into Domo brandishing some kind of sword, scream of terror, scream of triumph, distant answering cry. He stepped back to his rifle, and found it slippery in his hands. Vane heard his voice say, “Sorry, Mudhead.” “Sorry why?” He took a very deep breath, trying to imagine his next move as a harmless, video game experience. “I don’t know. Maybe saying it first will make this easier.” Squinting into his eyepiece, he focused on one of those big ugly Halloween masks and froze. Just as its owner opened his mouth to scream, Vane simultaneously squeezed the trigger and slammed shut his eyes. The shot, coming as it did in the razor stillness between screams, snapped and reverberated through Mamuset like the crack of a buggy whip. He briefly opened his scope eye, saw the mask jerk back and disappear. Vane’s face twisted into a godawful grimace, and for an instant time screeched to a halt. Then dogs were barking hysterically, and Mudhead was shouting beside him. Vane sagged, his trembling fingers releasing the rifle as though it were a hot frying pan’s handle. The gun fell butt-first between his big toes and he jumped back three feet. 132

Microcosmia Kid “Real money shot,” Mudhead said appreciatively. “Man down. Otherman run to Rim.” He stepped aside. “Quick look.” Vane shook his head, his hands gripping the hard knot of his stomach. “Okay, Bossman. Stay put.” Mudhead melted off the Stage. In two minutes Isis’s horn was sounding on Stage Street. Vane pitched down the Steps and toppled into the passenger seat. Mudhead threw her into first. By now every dog was howling bloody murder. Mudhead, guided only by his impression from the Stage, hurtled around corners to a Domo indistinguishable from its neighbors. In the front Yard of that Domo a few Afar were curiously creeping past Vane’s hard-flung, very spattered kill. Most of the population remained indoors. “Cowards,” he mumbled, looking everywhere but down. “Not coward. Afarman fierce fighter. But fight man, not spirit.” Vane peered at the sprawled body. The top half of its head was a bloody plateau. “Looks pretty solid to me.” Both men knelt. The Afar trickled out of doors. A feminine wail poured from a Domo across the Street. A pair of oxen smashed through an adjacent Yard. Somewhere children were chanting a family member’s name. A light crowd grew around the costumed American and his grim African friend. Mudhead picked up the dead man’s bloody machete by the fat of its blade, turned it in his fingers and gently set it back down. Vane lifted a corner of the mask with his thumb. It was heavy and quite large, secured by skull-and chin straps. A strangely familiar design: sharp horns, pointed tongue, long fangs, wild eyes. Underneath, what was left of the face was in repose and unpainted. He kept pushing the mask until the mess above the brow was covered. Vane’s initial adrenaline rush had passed, and he was gradually acknowledging something reserved for blue-moon fantasies: he had just killed a man. “Recognize this mask?” his mouth asked. Mudhead stood up. “Not Africaman.” “You’re sure?” “Hollywoodman.” “What?” Mudhead toed the painted horns and fangs, the clumsy thatch skirt. “Hollywood.” He nudged the multilayered bone necklace. The resulting clatter was certainly plastic. “Hollywood.” His big toe traced the swirls of body paint. “All Hollywood.” Vane lifted the machete by its handle. “And this? This is Hollywood too?” “This,” Mudhead said somberly, “Port Massawa.” “You think?” “All,” Mudhead extrapolated, “message Mamuset. Port Massawaman mean send Bossman scare.” “But why not just take me out? What’s the point in killing innocent people?” “No.” Mudhead shook his head. “Bossman still long way understand Africaman. Slow terror important. Quick death no big deal. Revenge long sweet feast. Dead Bossman,” he said, performing an abruptly-halted ballet with his fingers, “no more dance for Port Massawaman.” He watched a wave of black spiders scurrying up North Rim and nodded to himself. “Mudahid bet doughnut Massawa truck wait outside. Mudahid up bet one: Port Massawaman only tickle. Next time many more. But not Hollywoodman.” His ramrod forefinger directed Vane to the smashed face between them. “Next time real deal.” He peeled a mat off of Isis’s floor and draped it over the face. The dark sheik, rising slowly, found himself the awkward nucleus of a very primitive, very curious crowd. “Damn it, Mudhead, you’re right! A troop of Cub Scouts could take this place.” He 133

Microcosmia Kid appeared to gain confidence in standing erect. “Nobody pushes C.H. Vane around, man. No body!” He whooshed back a step, imagining himself a swirling, philosophic Zorro. The crowd did not whoosh with him. Vane tucked in his butt and pulled snug his wilting robes. “Mr. Mudahid,” he said with dignity, “I’m deputizing you.” The word seemed so out of place he felt compelled to address his people. “In America,” he said expansively, “to deputize means to bestow certain powers on the spot. Anybody can be a deputy. It could be you, or you. Or you! That’s because in America, man, nobody, but nobody is better than anybody else!” His words trailed off. “It’s a democracy,” he tried. The ring of faces waited. Vane deflated like a black toy balloon, mumbling, “Actually, it’s more of a democratic republic.” Mudhead glared, turned, and delivered the most abrasive monologue Vane had ever heard. The crowd tightened with him, standing tall. It was a short speech. Mudhead turned back. “Everyman understand. Tomorrow Afar fist rise with sun.” His normally reserved expression became frankly sardonic. “Democratman,” he said, sweeping his arm, “bring Bossman equal share Massawaman heart.” He inclined his head. “Unum.” Vane looked man to man. There must have been a hundred standing around him now, waiting. It was like being surrounded by strings of black ping pong balls with white-painted eyes. “Okay then,” he said, nodding snappily. “Okay! If you guys need me, I’ll be in the War Room.”

Daybreak found Vane pacing the Stage like a caged beast. He hadn’t slept a wink; mentally repositioning bugs, tossing and turning through fantasies of valor and praise. What was it he’d told Mudhead . . . he’d said a rich man in this part of the world could equip a private army. It was just a matter of shifting Denise into high gear, and maybe throwing a few bones Tibor’s way. Right after Strauss he began the militarization of Mamuset, repeating the manual of arms hourly. The Afar dutifully mimicked his actions, using wooden pallet ribs in place of rifles, while Mudhead barked out commands in Saho. With great ceremony Kid was made Site Sergeant, and permitted to wear Vane’s turban during drills. Site Sergeant Kid was the most thorough instructor imaginable, swaggering Square to Square and Street to Street, inspecting pallet ribs dawn to dusk and making sure every Afar male moved with speed and precision. Vane was finding himself. He plagued the Foundation with calls; at first beseeching, then commanding. Within a week Mamuset’s mail plane took Mudhead to the Depot, where a Honey agent produced a wicker basket full of American cash. Mudhead, flown at ground level over a terrain familiar only to lizards, was put down in the outskirts of Massawa. The cold black soldiers in dark glasses paid scant attention to another basket-toting beggar inching down a crooked little street into a crooked little cinema. For the next eight days drills were interspersed with rampart construction, a seamless process featuring chains of human worker-ants continuously porting miscellaneous material up Streets and Inner Slopes in order to fashion Rim Bulwarks. A typical Bulwark was roughly the size of a railroad car—basically a skeleton of bound wood ribs stuffed with debris and covered by a staked canvas tarp. Each Bulwark supported a standing aluminum ladder, that its flat roof might be accessed by marksmen. Bulwarks were separated by a space of twenty feet. In those spaces Mamusetans quickly built thatched Guard Posts, sturdy little huts modeled on the circular Amharic wattle-and-daub homes. But they differed from those solid-wall traditional homes, in that each Post utilized a single high broad window yielding a 180 degree desert vista. A Guard’s status was hard won and jealously sought. Posts were communally provisioned and universally envied; provided with, thanks to Vane’s 134

Microcosmia Kid hyper first-day spending spree, high-tech surveillance equipment, Post-to-Post “Intercoms,” and personal Nissan pickup trucks. Vane intended they also be provided with semi-automatic weapons, flare guns, and manually-operated sirens. Rim Road was quickly hewn, along with a series of steep Inner Slope ramps. Only the Mamusetans’ near-maniacal industriousness made it all come together so quickly. A casual observer would have seen countless crews busily attacking solid earth with the most basic of tools, with improvised wedges and levers, with bare hands. But unlike members of paid or compelled crews—pacing themselves or relaxing the moment the crew boss had passed— these workers approached their tasks passionately; wrestling for positions, shoving one another to be first to break a stone or fill a hole. In the middle of construction Mudhead arrived on Vane’s old An’erim-Massawa Highway, riding shotgun in a tractor hauling a forty-eight foot, kemlite-lined Dorsey reefer with a malfunctioning refrigeration system. The trailer was backed into Dock, where Mudhead joined Vane, Kid, and a pair of strong pickax-wielding Afar. The driver unlocked the door and the Mamusetans rolled it up. A blast of white cold burst from the trailer. Inside was a solid wall of frozen food: two whole sides of beef and three cheese wheels in bas relief, with chickens, pork butts, and lamb shoulders cemented in haphazardly. Everything was coated by a thick ice glaze. “Now,” Vane said, addressing the two adults, “one guy on each side and start breaking away toward the middle. We‘re cutting a corridor.” Halfway through Mudhead’s translation Kid stepped up to show his stuff. He bowed and saluted Vane sharply, clicked his bony ankles together, performed a dizzying about face, and snapped out an order. The two adult Afar produced their pickaxes at parade rest. In a brisk, efficient move, the Site Sergeant snatched one in each hand. Without further ado he began assaulting the ice wall, swinging both pickaxes insanely. The men all jumped back, battered by flying chunks of frozen meat. “Wait!” Vane called out. “Damn it, Kid, that’s an order!” But Kid only swung with greater ferocity, grunting and yelping as he alternated swings left and right. Soon a jagged niche appeared between the sides of beef. Kid attacked this niche wildly, metal ringing on metal, occasionally embedding one pick and using the other to smash it free. When the first side of beef broke away it took a 3 X 5 piece of the trailer wall with it. Kid, with this advance, went berserk, all the men backing off for their lives as his pickaxes became whirling, slashing blurs. Five minutes later he staggered out into their embrace, his arms shaking out of his control, both tools solidly embedded. But he’d managed to clear a walkway through almost four feet of ice-locked meat and bone. The two adult Afar left the pickaxes embedded. They fatigued the ice wall by rocking side to side on the handles, one man’s weight on each. A large section containing the second side and a wheel began to give. Vane and Mudhead stepped in to assist. Kid and the driver kicked out chunks sliding on the trailer’s floor. With four strong backs on it, the section immediately tore away. The men used their feet to shove the marlin-sized mass out onto the hot concrete platform. The rest of the wall came away in substantial chunks. The hackers now encountered a barrier of wood and earth over Styrofoam slabs; actually one end of a huge mass surrounded by a foot-wide space stuffed with newspaper. This mass stood on a knee-high bed of pallets. Everything was iced over. The men used the blunt heads of their pickaxes to smash the ice veneer, then tore out all the paper and packing they could reach. The Styrofoam, wood, and earth came away easily, exposing stacked oblong crates wrapped in skins, canvas, and cloth. The Afar wrestled off the top crate and eased it to the floor; it was quite heavy. Each crate measured four feet long by three feet wide by two feet deep. The trailer held eighty-four in all. Vane lifted out the lowered crate’s recessed top panel. Packed in straw, and wrapped in oilskins, were 135

Microcosmia Kid thirty-two M16A2s, laid butt-to-barrel. Vane plucked one out by its handle. He blew off pieces of caught straw and balanced it under Kid’s rolling eyes. “The official rifle of the United States armed forces. Two thousand, six hundred and eightyeight of ’em, if the head vulture can be trusted.” He laid a hand on Mudhead’s shoulder. “Mister Asafu-Adjaye, you done all right. And the rest of the stuff?” “Siren, flare, more magazine come later. No problem search.” “Excellent!” Vane posed menacingly with the rifle. The Afar grinned uncertainly. “It’s time to bring Mamuset into the so-called civilized world! Ring up Utility Squares! Roll out the pickups! And once these guns are stocked you can tell my people to lose their sticks. From now on they’re using the real McCoy!” From that moment on progress was smooth and practically effortless. While the Afar men were learning to handle their numbered weapons individually and in regiments, their women and children were training in a reloading exercise that rhythmically swept them between arbitrary field stations and Bulwarks. This maneuver, the Ripple, would come in handy down the road. Throughout training and drills, revolving Utility Square commanders distributed ammunition, graded results and passed them to Kid, who was incapable of being pleased. And so gun-happy was Kid that Vane forbade the use of live ammunition during target practice. This drove Kid crazy. After a day of unbearable peace, he enlisted all the children of Mamuset to smack wood blocks together whenever men mock-fired their weapons. This drove Vane crazy. He retaliated by blasting rock music during drills, but succeeded only in further jazzing his manic Site Sergeant. Soon Rim Road was completed, and all Posts and Bulwarks fully erected. Vane’s ammunition, hand-crank sirens, and miscellaneous materiel arrived at night by camel train. The weeks passed. And as Mamuset rediscovered its center the punctual daily drills deteriorated to weekly random drills, much to Kid’s, and to the population’s, chagrin. Vane again stressed cultivation, exercise, and education. Rifles were assigned to numbered spaces in Utility Squares, just like any other implement. The big scare was over. For the first time a real lassitude descended on the crater. There were always new projects, always new problems, but interest plummeted with the passing of war fever. Days grew increasingly long, the Afar correspondingly less energetic. And out of the great peace came a great boredom. Men tinkered, rather than worked. Greater free time meant greater leisure time. With leisure to bicker and side, the sense of purposeful community dissolved. The crater suffocated while Vane, resplendent in flowing black silk, grew impatient and crabby, pacing the Stage and alienating himself with petty outbursts and amplified asides. He refused to acknowledge that the fabric of Mamuset was fraying, though in private he prayed long and hard for something to shake up the place. But, needful as he was, when the explosion came it caught him completely off guard.

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Chapter Fifteen Rebecca The bomb arrived without warning, without warhead or fins, without a protracted heartstopping scream of descent. It came instead on Mudhead’s black magic carpet, in a dusty Ford Explorer almost sagging with superfluous chrome. Magnetic signs on the rear panels certified media clearance. Decals portraying the logo of some tacky periodical were plastered all over these signs, on both bumpers, and across the upper windshield. A toy American flag hung from the radio’s antenna, toy Djibouti and Ethiopian flags from the grille. The Explorer, having majestically climbed the new Onramp onto Ridge Bridge, halted adjacent to the Stage facing the Big Clock. The passenger door swung open. A very long, very supple leg oozed out like honey from a hive, and a tiny, spotless hiking boot hovered for half a minute. The brown knee bent. The perfect thigh extended . . . and extended . . . until it seemed every sidelong Afar eye must bulge and explode. But at the moment of truth an impeccably folded hem caught the sun, and out stepped the most beautiful California bunny Vane had ever seen. The abrupt insinuation of this goddess threw him completely out of whack. In the first place, as a healthy young man months removed from titillation, he was instantly aroused. In the second, as a man of vision attempting to stand for something profounder than instant arousal, he was instantly deflated . . . Cristian Vane had been groomed for failure from the moment that cold-hearted, skinny white whore had—Vane was outraged (albeit quietly, and with great dignity) . . . a spoiled, nearnaked Western wench had come to parade her privates in front of his innocent multitude, to treat Mamuset like the French Riviera on a fat summer noon. Not only that, she was press—and the level of press that had, for way too many years, portrayed him as a clueless prince. Vane hated her, immediately and absolutely. Right away he knew They had found him. Somehow. Those ruthless, fabricating parasites had reached across two 137

Microcosmia Rebecca continents and an ocean to further mangle his name. It had to be that whole silly Kid Rameses business. Of course she was gorgeous. They wouldn’t have sent a plain woman; not to shatter the guard of a conceited, paranoid billionaire playboy. Vane probably had a stable both fair and dark, probably went through beautiful women like Kleenex. He might even be keeping ranks of innocent young boys hopped up on drugs and promises, if there was even a scrap of truth to the rumors. Who knew what went on in a lawless, backward country, where the remedy for an atheistic fatcat’s raging libido was only a voodoo dance away? Then there was all that adrenaline-junkie malarkey; the dope dealing, the treasure hunting, the shootouts on the Red Sea. Vane was a dangerous man, and a secretive one. He’d certainly view the conquest of attractive blondes as a challenge as natural and appealing as narcotics and gunplay. But the airbrushed model They’d sent, now performing a sound check in the shade of her sensible parasol, was obscenely beautiful. She was far too perfect for weariness—or for genuine sweat, for that matter; only the daintiest beads of amber clung to the down on her nape and arms. Skin too perfect to burn, lips too perfect for paint, a figure too perfect for support; she stood poised without posing—sensuous, sleek, and silky, but way too perfect to care. And either she’d mastered the subtlest applications of makeup, or, even in this dark and diseased part of the world, every part of her perfectly sculpted face blushed the rose of ultimate health. The capper: a spun-gold ponytail, cheerily catching the merciless sun, wagging behind a cute little denim cap with a shocking pink press badge. She was an erotic angel. This uncomfortable contradiction posed a real problem for closet misogynist Vane: by not typifying the classic slatternly dumb bombshell, she made it difficult to justify his natural contempt. He ogled her peripherally as she leaned in to retrieve a large suede bag. Catching herself holding this bag like a purse, the woman slung it over her shoulder and playfully tossed the parasol to a driver obscured by glare. The door closed. Vane looked away nonchalantly. The Explorer, relieved of its dazzling cargo, motored back across Ridge Bridge and rolled to a rest. The man in black turned to face his unbidden guest, bracing himself for the chirpy greeting and pretty extended hand—but the blonde woman walked past him and stood looking over the community, her hands on her hips. She extracted a video camera from the bag, looped its strap around her neck, and brought the camera to her shoulder. It was the smallest, sleekest instrument of its kind Vane had ever seen. A tiny red jewel appeared on its front panel. The woman panned left and right. “Cristian Vane,” he tried. “I run this place.” She said through her teeth, “So I’ve heard.” Backing off a notch, Vane studied her unobserved while she panned. She was his age; maybe a bit older. Early thirties. But from different angles, and at different approaches of light, she could pass for her late, mid, and early twenties. There was even one scary moment, when she lowered the camera to study the community critically, that a freak of sun revealed a tender golden teenager with wide-set emerald eyes. “Can I help you with something?” “Just looking.” She swept an arm above the wide field of aluminum cottages. “So this is where you keep your people?” Vane‘s expression locked up on him. “Why did I just get the impression you used the word ‘people’ as a euphemism for slaves?” “Then what do you call them?” “I don’t call them anything. They live here. I live here. The damned donkeys live here.” 138

Microcosmia Rebecca “One big happy family.” She swiftly raised the camera and directed its lens at his face. The red jewel lit up. Vane threw out a hand and the woman lowered her camera. The red light disappeared. “Perfect. Now I’ll look like some hit man hiding his face as he’s escorted from court. Is that what you came for?” “Mr. Vane. It is the policy of M & S to respect the rights of its subjects. We don’t print photos without permission. So if there’s a problem, perhaps we could discuss your druthers, preferably somewhere off of this hotplate.” “S And M? What sort of enterprise do you work for, anyway?” The pretty nose crinkled in annoyance. “M & S, Mr. Vane, M & S. Movers And Shakers.” She wagged her head. “I realize you’re cut off from the real world out here, but surely you receive some news in some way. Movers And Shakers is just the biggest, just the glossiest, just the fastest-growing alternative news magazine in America. I write a column: Rogue Bulls. It’s a very successful column. I mostly work out of our main office in sunny California. You remember California, don’t you, Mr. Vane? California definitely remembers you.” Mr. Vane bowed and gallantly swept his robes, but his tongue betrayed him. “You’ll forgive me, my dear, but I’m afraid my company removes me from the worlds of movers and shakers, nor have I time for the pleasuring of lovely young ladies, um, Miss?” Her eyes burned. After a minute she muttered, “My name is Rebecca King, both professionally and casually. And I’m here on business, Mr. Vane.” Vane said quickly, “Look. I’m not a flirt. I’m actually quite uncomfortable around women—” He caught himself. He’d almost added especially pretty ones. His eyes toed the dirt. “It’s just that I’m not really all that sure what you expect me to say here.” “Try being honest. And don’t embroider. But don’t be evasive, either. We’ll get along just fine.” She reached back, slipped the band off her hair, and removed the cap for a couple graceful shakes of the head. Aureate cascades billowed, fell, whipped side to side. The tresses rolled like water over her shoulders and down her back, continuing to flash at the least movement. “So . . .” Vane hemmed, “. . . tell me. How do I come off in the States? Or need I ask? You weren’t exactly gushing when you got here.” King pulled an enormous pair of sunglasses from her fanny pack. The massive lenses did nothing to diminish her beauty. “There’s a dichotomy,” she said shortly. “There are exactly two breeds of Vane-watchers. There are the ones who think you’re a virtuous lunatic, and the ones who’re sure you’re an evil genius. The latter far outweigh the former.” “Why ‘lunatic’?” “Because it doesn’t make any sense the other way. No sane man steps down in life.” She folded her hands behind her back and took a longer look around. “It may be the world’s oyster,” she punned, “but it’s your pearl.” The sun leaped lens to lens as she varied her gaze. “Mr. Vane, please don’t get me wrong, but I’d like you to be just as honest with yourself as you’re very definitely going to be with me. Consider: every healthy criminal knows he’s unfairly accused. Just as his mother knows he’s a ‘good boy.’ Just as everybody knows everybody else is at fault. We’re all victims, and we’re all good people. We’re just misunderstood. By the same token, we’re all certain that everybody else is less scrupulous than we, and that the most successful people are ipso facto the least scrupulous. Suspicion fosters fascination, and vice versa.” She held out her hands, twisted one around, and peered through the frame formed by her thumbs and forefingers. “In our commercial system the strength of a celebrity’s appeal is directly related to his mysteriousness. Our uncertainty makes him sexy. We, the soap loving public, want dirt on our latest bad boy, and we’re willing to pay 139

Microcosmia Rebecca up the yin-yang for it. A kind of gratification comes from the piling on of this dirt. But, like the gratification that comes from sex, the bashings become increasingly inadequate. We want stronger stuff—sensational stuff, graphic stuff. It becomes harder and harder to get off, and, Lord knows, we’ll never be truly satisfied until the ungrateful son of a bitch is lynched. Now I’m warning you, Mr. Vane. You’ll face interviewers a lot tougher than me, so you’d might as well come clean right here and now. People will forgive you for being human. Just don’t lie to them. It insults their intelligence.” “What makes you think I’m a liar?” King tore off her shades and raised a hand sharply. “Look, you’ve got a lot of charges to answer, okay? One way or another I’m coming out of here with a story, and with an interview on tape.” She circled him critically. “Try thinking before you open your mouth. There’s a simple approach to this business, Mr. Vane. Forget you’re a big shot. Instead, try to imagine yourself a viewer: “You’re Joe Anybody, sitting in front of the tube in your two-bedroom apartment, sharing the sofa with dog hair, a Banquet frozen dinner, and your calorically-challenged wife. Now cut to a news blurb leaping across the screen. The set’s speaker grabs you, overpowering the squalling of the kids. The blurb’s about that freaking egomaniacal tabloid billionaire who refuses to go away. What’s his face? Oh yeah. That celebrity jet-setter Vain Somebody-or-Other. You’ve hated him at least as much as you’ve hated all those other philandering, dope-snorting superstars, who run around publicly gallivanting with supermodels and super agents and more supermoney to burn in a giddy week than you’ll see in your miserable lifetime. And there’s that spoiled California superprick again, all ready to dole out another emotional mugging. What’ll be his latest escapade? How shiny his newest plaything? And how common, boring, and unhappening is he gonna make me, Joe Anybody, feel? Well go ahead, you lucky dumb son of a gazillionaire. Emasculate me some more.” Vane had simmered long enough. But before he could open his mouth to protest, that hand was back up like a crossing guard’s. “Stop gushing about your golden life! Don’t give Joe the luxury of hating you personally. But don’t be self-deprecating, either, and don’t try to sell him on your love of the arts and humanity. Your father’s ghost won’t go away that easily. Try to not smirk or sneer. Do let Joe know if you’re cooking up something super-dastardly, but never, ever be super-specific.” Her green eyes went gray. “And don’t you little-girl me or I’ll hang on your gonads until you sing like a patriot. Peacocks always do. And when they sing off-key I just squeeze until they get it right.” The shades went back on. “Are you done?” “You’re being pre-interviewed, Mister Vane. You’ve got lots and lots of explaining to do. Laying the groundwork can save us needless stops and starts.” “You’re not pre-interviewing me, lady, you’re killing me.” “Rebecca.” He looked down and took a couple of deep breaths. It was already way too late to go for a natural, comfortable relationship; the roles were all messed up. But Vane wasn’t about to be bullied or berated by some blonde bimbo with a video camera. They walked with affected casualness, like awkward first-daters. He kicked a stone off Ridge Bridge. “It behooves me to be a gentleman, Rebecca. However, there’s a kind of etiquette we share around here. I’m afraid your . . . hostility . . . might be misinterpreted by these basically trusting people.” “I should be humbler in your presence, Mr. Vane?” “Cris.” “So you’re saying, Mr. Vane, that they might be confused by Master’s sudden show of 140

Microcosmia Rebecca submissiveness?” She looked around. “Just where is the House of Pain, anyway?” “Ah, for Christ’s sake.” “All charges are alleged, Cristian Honey. Even Joe Anybody’s knowledge is a media-filtered thing. But it doesn’t matter. He hates you already. Just like he hates all the plum-perfect talking blonde heads like me . . . who also represent the unattainable, and who thereby mock the drought of his dreams.” Vane ground his teeth. Not only pretty and acerbic, but smart. An insidious and unfair combination. “Ms. King—” “Rebecca. Miss.” “All . . . right! Now just what the hell am I charged with? I’ll gladly defend myself, or plead no contest, or even non compos mentis, if that’ll clarify for you. But I honestly have no idea why you, and why Joe Anybody, and why God Almighty, for that matter, are so freaking pissed at me!” This little display of passion got her attention; King knew, from long experience, that the sensitive-celebrity type is no stranger to psychotic outbursts. But she’d come for a fight as well as an interview. She cleared her throat aggressively and hurried through her words. The tactic worked well for her; the longer she extended her verbal flow, the ballsier she grew. “Mr. Vane, maybe you aren’t aware of just what a luminary you’ve become back home. Now, some celebrities have their fifteen minutes, while others possess an indefinable quality that gives them lasting appeal. A man of mystery, such as yourself, attracts rumors the way a magnet attracts iron filings. You’re like a personality assembled by an Identigraph: gossip-mongers slap claims on a general impression until the compleat scoundrel is exposed. Okay? The general impression of Cristian Honey Vane is Spoiled Godless Pervert. That’s the reputation you’ve carried, like it or not, accurate or not, since the public’s first view of the little boy at the famous Vane mansion’s snazzy gates back in ’72, being led from a godawful-pink limousine by some bleached, beat-up witch in a slinky black dress. That was the original snapshot the public had to go by—you, Morticia, and money. And this was just when your father’s fancy lawyers were fighting off all those freaky charges of hush shenanigans involving Guatemala’s State Department. Journalistically speaking, I cut most of my teeth on archival images of that convoluted fiasco. Little Richie Rich and his nanny whore, in a loony palace run by a faded, probably treasonous old basketcase. What a gammy group.” She took a deep breath. “Throughout your life there’ve been other snapshots, of you and your crowd. There are pictures of shifty sycophants, rumors of lewd parties, stories of venal shadows flitting between the police station and the mansion. “And the headshots of growing master Vane invariably reveal a morbid, friendless, media-shy enigma. Reasonably attractive, but with an expression that could curdle blood. A man without a soul. “After your father died, the tabloid press pushed the man-without-a-soul angle to the hilt. Your disappearance couldn’t have been timelier. Now every Vane-watcher could toss a sin and have it stick on an initial impression: traitor, gun runner, drug kingpin. Womanizer, pedophile, or outright fairy— it didn’t matter. If it titillated, if it infuriated, it was you.” They walked back in silence. In the Big Tarp’s shade Vane said, “You’re going to savage me, aren’t you?” “We’ll see.” “Miss King, you’re obviously shrewd enough to realize what’s truth and what’s garbage. And you’re absolutely right. I’m a made-in-the-shade rich boy who never had to punch a clock or dig a ditch.” He faced the community and spread his arms so that his black robe’s sleeves swept back dramatically. “But now take a look around you. Forget Joe Anybody. Forget your assignment. Forget the way people see you and me. You’re a journalist; you’re trained to observe. Take it all in. Let your 141

Microcosmia Rebecca eyes bask in the neon and glamour, let your camera linger on the frolicking playgirls and endless buffet.” “I said,” she returned nastily, “alleged. Rumors, Mr. Vane, are only rumors, but they make up a major part of the business I’m in and, believe it or not, they’re founded in fact ninety-nine percent of the time. I’ve never in my life met a genuine philanthropist. Especially of the rich celebrity ilk.” “Then maybe you’re just jaded by your job. If you really knew me, if you really knew what I’ve been through, you’d realize that that class of people makes me as sick as it makes you. Maybe sicker. But go right ahead and describe that great Vane motive for me, so I can understand it too. Like I said, I’ve never once punched a clock, and I’ll never have to. Yet I’m up every day with the sun. No weekends, no holidays. You’re absolutely right, Rebecca. I don’t have to dig ditches.” He showed her his palms. “But go ahead and count the calluses anyway.” “So what’s your angle, Mr. Vane?” She thrust forth her chin. “Why are you hiding in Africa? Enquiring minds want to know.” “I’ve been asking myself that same question lately. But look, Rebecca—” “Miss King.” “Miss King. Look, Miss King, you’re free to walk around and videotape all you want. Consider the place home. There are cool drinks in Cellar, and an assortment of refreshments to choose from in Basement. Many delicacies are made right here.” “I think I would like to interview one of your tenants first. I think I would like to interview. . .” she swung a finger round and paused on an elderly man combing his camel, “him. Or would you prefer to screen him first? Let me forewarn you, sir: I have earned a reputation for brutality. Many of my subjects even consider me something of a bitch.” Vane raised an eyebrow. “The Devil!” He blew out a breath. “Okay. But go easy on him. Like anybody else here, he can do drills, man Bulwarks, and build a damned fine Square. There’s not much more you’ll get out of him.” “So if these people can’t speak for themselves, I am to assume the only source of information is their noble leader? That’s it?” Vane wagged his chin sadly. “Water, water,” he said. “Everywhere.” King tilted her head, and the corners of her mouth slowly turned up. “Mr. Vane, when it comes to information, I am a human divining rod.” He cocked an eyebrow. “A divine what? Oh . . . damn it! There I go again. My most effusive apologies, Miss King. You were looking for what? Information? There are no secrets here. Come with me. I’ll give you the grand tour.” “What about Mitchell, my driver? He will certainly parch in the car.” Vane depressed the transmit button on his radio. Mudhead, at arm’s length facing Mecca, turned at the squeal of feedback. He kept his eyes down lest he be blinded by the golden display of flesh at Vane’s elbow. “Rebecca, this is Mudhead. He’s an all-around go-between, a wizard with a needle and thread, and practically the only other person this side of Gibraltar who speaks English. Mudhead, would you please assist Miss King’s driver while I show her around? His name’s Mitchell. Get him some shade and a drink or three. Jack Daniels would be nice.” Mudhead bowed deeply and slunk away. Vane led her down the Steps, offering his arm at the base. King, smiling sourly, used the projected wrist as a peg for the strap on her camera case. Vane looped the case over his shoulder and followed her around eagerly, awed Mamusetans lining their way like parade goers. Heads popped up grinning as they walked Domo to Domo. He saw more than one thumb raised high. “They’re all the 142

Microcosmia Rebecca same,” said Vane proudly. “Mostly families. You won’t find anybody bound and gagged in a closet, if that’s what your editors are expecting. These people understand very little English, but they’re friendly and eager to please. And they seem to like you.” King ran her camera over the beaming faces. “I’ll admit I expected worse.” “You should’ve seen this place when I first got here.” He pointed west. “Fields are that way. All kinds of grains. We’re even developing rice paddies on West Rim’s tiered inner slope. There’s plenty of water, which we import via pipeline from a river south of here. These domiciles receive their living water through PVC running under their properties. Main lines run beneath Streets, so that there’s actually a pipe grid corresponding to the roads. Everybody helps everybody here, Miss King. There are no disputes about water lines and property rights. That family there probably put almost as much effort into building their neighbor’s place as their own.” “So no wild parties? No drug deals or harems?” “It’s all very dull, Miss King. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that life here is anything but wild. We eat, we work, we do drills . . .” Now Vane, for the first time, looked upon his creation as an observer. It was with an almost paternal pride that he turned smiling on Rebecca, even as a boy no older than twelve ran by waving an M16. King blew it. “You—you fraud! You’re letting children have access to guns? My God! They were right about you!” “Who was . . . who was right?” “I want to know what’s going on here, buddy, and I want to know now!” She looked at the innocent faces around her, gone in an instant from sunny to scared. “To what end are you using these people?” For a moment Vane saw red. Every expletive for female ran tommygunning through his head. “They’re not,” he spat, “being used!” The Afar shrank back, bewildered. “I busted my ass and broke the bank to make this place the best home they’ve ever had. I took a bullet, okay? Do you hear anybody crying about how terribly he’s suffering, man? Huh? Do you see anybody fleeing? For Christ’s sake, lady, quit painting me as the heavy, willya?” “Armed children? You call that a good home?” Vane threw up his arms. “It’s not even loaded!” The crowd broke up, but King didn‘t budge. “Why the weapons, pal? I’ll find out! Don’t think I won’t!” Vane stared out at the Bulwarks, controlling his breathing. How to get rid of her . . . did she ever shut up . . . he clenched his teeth and jammed his knuckles in his eyes. Finally he said dully, “There’s this guy, a general in control of Port Massawa. He’s got designs on using me to expand his power. A Franco Somebody-in-an-Abbey. It’s a long, long story, but he’s already spilled blood here. And boy, is he gonna get it when he comes back.” King shook her head. “You’re an amazing man, Mr. Vane, an amazing man. You really don’t keep up on the world, do you? Franco a’ Muhammed en Abbi died in April.” Vane blinked at her. “Dead?” “Very. He’d been putting together a personal assault force. At least that’s the gist of it from Reuters. He was meeting with his top men in a hangar stocked with explosives. A small plane did a nosedive into the hangar and put der general into orbit.” “How about that.” “The new man in charge of Massawa has completely cleaned the place up.” “How about that.” King studied him clinically. Vane appeared dazed by the sun. She turned up her nose and 143

Microcosmia Rebecca panned the Bulwarks with her camera. “About those fields.” He shook himself. “No poppies. No hemp. I’m sorry, Miss King, but it appears you’ve traveled a long way to cover a story that doesn’t exist.” “All stories aren’t necessarily sensational, Mr. Vane. I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept my interview. Like I said, I’m not leaving here empty-handed.” They strolled back to the Mount. “If you’re self-conscious about being filmed, we can work with Mitchell. He’s an expert lighting-andmakeup man. A magician. He can make you look like George Hamilton if you want. And I’m not hard on a subject if I like him. It’s only the posers who get reamed.” “And,” Vane asked carefully, “do you like me?” She considered. “Personally? You come across as an okay sort, I guess. A bit high-strung. Professionally? I’ve certainly met men more charismatic. But they’re the ones who always turn out to be weasels. Charisma’s developed over a lifetime of personal drum-beating.” She stepped back. “The Darth Vadar get-up will work fine. I might even enjoy this.” “What about your own charisma?” “Me? Skin-deep. Not many men get beneath the surface.” “I’ve been told that patience and persistence are virtues.” They had reached Bottom Step. “We can go back up the Steps to your car, or you can reach it from the road. Tell your friend we won’t be needing his expertise.” Rebecca smiled thinly and turned on her heel. He watched her walking along Stage Street, his eyes, like every other male’s, melting on her pert tail. Vane continued to stare while climbing the Steps. “How does nature do that?” he asked Mudhead at Top Step. “Allah master sculptor. Westernwoman master tease.” He tapped Vane’s temple with a forefinger. “Nature in here.” “I want you making yourself scarce while I’m being interviewed, Mudhead. You look like a Zambian waiter. Speaking of which, be a good lad and run down to Cellar and Basement. Bring up some Egyptian beer and baklava. Let her get a taste of what life is like here. How do I look?” “Like blushing donkey.” “Excellent.” He thought for a minute. “If I face the community I’ll be in shadow. That’ll look cooler, but it’ll be all me. If I face the Wall the community’ll be a great background, but I’ll look like a crowned jack o’ lantern.” “Lousy movie.” “It’s just an interview. Now go get the popcorn, damn you. And don’t do any thespian work for us. I’ll give you a ring if the script calls for a loitering mummy.” Mudhead peered over his spectacles. “Bossman no actorman. Never buffalo cameralady.” He vanished down the Steps. Vane called after him, “Who said anything about buffaloing anybody?” and began positioning chairs around the table, pulling two as close as possible. He kicked back so that he was half in shadow with ankle hooked casually on knee, adjusted his turban forward slightly, buffed its precious stone with his silk robe’s sleeve. Vane pulled the headphones off their Wall hook and set them on the table’s corner, heaping the long spiraling cord to coil rattler-wise before trailing off the edge. And she strolled across Ridge Bridge looking like a runway model for exclusive camping wear, sporting an olive leatherette cross-harness, stylish canvas-and-denim camera bag, and elegant matching case. King tested the table for stability, said, “Good,” and removed a mount from the case, screwed the video camera onto the mount, and levered the mount down. She then placed a miniature monitor on the table, adjusted its angle, and attached a coaxial cable between the camera and monitor. “The camera will be on you, but I can pan and zoom with this.” She showed him a small 144

Microcosmia Rebecca keyboard with joystick, and plugged the keyboard into a port on the camera’s rear. “Nickel-cadmium batteries. Don’t be alarmed if it seems to move on its own.” The camera swiveled on its mount as she demonstrated the remote. Vane could see the instrument’s iris dilate and contract. “It has a condenser microphone. Say something.” “You look stunning.” “No good. The pickup’s hollow. The level’s all wrong.” She stepped up with a tie-clip microphone. Vane sweated as she fumbled with his flowing robes. Her knee rested against his for an excruciating half-minute. “No wires?” he managed. King didn’t miss a beat. “On every move you make.” She studied a tiny meter on the remote. “Go ahead.” “Go ahead where?” “Check.” Vane blinked. “Check what?” “Mr. Vane, what motivated you to set up this enterprise?” He squirmed a little. “It’s not all that simple.” “Start again. Mr. Vane, what brought you here, to the Danakil Desert in Ethiopia?” He rolled his shoulders and cleared his throat, stared uncomfortably at his perched foot. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” “Don’t avoid the camera,” Rebecca said. “Try to relax and be conversational. Don’t mumble. Speak clearly and with conviction. Start again.” “Wait!” Vane said, as Mudhead’s starched white cap popped into view. The African was balancing, on a silk-covered tray, six bottles of beer in a Stonehenge arrangement. Nestled in the center was a small plate of powdered cookies. He slunk up to the table with his head lowered as though fearing a beating, carefully slid the tray between them and bowed almost to the Mat. “How else dirty servant,” he whimpered, “please mighty Bossman?” The golden hand moved on the joystick, the camera swung to face the recoiling server. “Ah, Christ,” Vane groaned. “You’ll edit that out, won’t you?” He glared at Mudhead. “Or maybe he can perform his famous burning man dance for you.” Mudhead clasped his hands under his chin and backpedaled down the Steps, bowing energetically all the way. “He’s a very good subject,” Rebecca said, smiling at her own pun. The woman seemed to glow even in shade. Vane pounded down a beer. “Start again,” he said. The camera swung round. He looked out over Mamuset. “When I was a kid I always thought life was pretty meaningless. I’ll admit that Father’s wealth gave me certain advantages.” He took a deep breath. “I understand that people watching this will probably think I’m a shallow guy, and that all my actions come from being rich, or are reactions from a guilt-trip about being rich. So be it. I’ve got a boatload of money and a bushelful of time. Circumstances couldn’t be any better. “Ask yourselves: if you were in my shoes, what would you do? Buy a different-colored Lexus for each day of the week? Erect palaces in Naples, in Papeete, in Bordeaux? How long before you crashed to a state someone I once knew defined as ennui? “I had an epiphany. Not long before I came here. Like all insights, it was the cumulative expression of countless thoughts, feelings, and memories. Impressions. This particular epiphany placed my life in context with the Big Picture. I saw myself as one of billions. There were billions 145

Microcosmia Rebecca before me and billions more to come. Given all that, there’s not a damned thing a man can do to make a difference. But he can make a statement. For what it’s worth. His very existence should be a statement, an attempt to exemplify certain principles which, I believe, are universal.” “Okay,” Rebecca said. “I’m going to cut here. Mr. Vane, you’re not being asked to pontificate. Nor is the watching public going to be all that interested in the tribulations of privilege, or in your billions of epiphanous whatevers. We don’t want to expend endless tape on your childhood memories, or on your adult philosophy.” She held up a hand. “Not that you’re not a fascinating man. Believe me, you are. But you’re rambling, you’re digressing. What M & S sent me here to capture is the real skinny. Why you came here. Why you’re doing all this. Not your moods, not your life story. We can make that Part Two. But it won’t sell unless we know why there was a Part One. The big apology should come after.” She fanned her perfect face. “Tell you what. Let’s take a break.” “Before we’ve even started?” “Before we’ve even started. This is my fault. Part of the pre-interview should have been an explanation of the ground rules. M & S is looking for a story, not a confession.” She helped herself to a beer. “I’m not confessing! I don’t have a damned thing to apologize for! And I am telling you why I came here, and why I’m doing what I’m doing.” “You’ve told me nothing,” Rebecca said coldly, and for a moment Vane despised her. “You haven’t mentioned a single name, or a date; not a friend or an enemy. This is already the least visual interview of my career.” “Look, lady, why would I be doing all this if I was even half the skunk you seem to think I am?” A shadow darkened her eyes. “Didn’t I just ask you that? Isn’t ‘why’ the operative word here? Jesus.” She inhaled deeply. “Take a minute or two to get your story in order. We’ll start all over, at Frame One. But please this time just answer my questions directly. Everything else will be cut anyway.” She wiped a slender forefinger across her perfect lips. “Mmm! Good cookies!” Vane got to his feet. “I don’t have a story. I don’t know why I’m here. This interview’s a total bust.” He opened another beer, stepped to the shade’s lip and looked over the community. All the little Domos were baking in the sun. It struck him that the heat kept things very quiet. He could almost hear his heart beating. For just a second he had a wild hallucination, a gorgeous vision of shade trees lining Streets and Squares. Tamarinds, elms, sycamores; a broad canopy of cooling green. Saplings by the thousands. Better yet, young and mature trees imported in planters. Then, within Squares, peaches, apples, oranges, avocados. It could be done. Shipped, freighted, trucked. Mudhead’s sweet road was waiting. Vane’s vision vanished quickly as it came. He wiped his moist palms on his thighs and walked back to his chair. The golden woman fanned herself, looking, somehow, radiantly bored. “Then maybe we’ll try the philosophical angle. Maybe we can salvage something. Editing can work miracles, Cristian, but you’ve got to have some meat before you can fillet. Now give me half-profile.” She unscrewed the video camera from its mount and hefted it, peered into the viewfinder. “So when did you get the idea to start all this, Mister Vane?” He took a swallow of the dark, bitter beer. “It was the day my father died. He wanted me to run his empire, fully expected me to. Watching him die was the first blow of the day. Not because it hurt. Because it didn’t hurt. Does that make any sense?” “This is your show. Go on.” “I had to kick out all those people who’d been living at the Rest. It felt right to do it, because they were leeches, but later it struck me that I’d not only disrupted the lives of dozens of people, I’d 146

Microcosmia Rebecca removed myself from the one thing I’d ever had resembling a family. Then there was this woman who was masquerading as my mother.” “That would have been the skinny Elvira-type?” “I had to dump her too. Suddenly I didn’t even have a mother. I took off in the Lincoln. While driving I got a call telling me the man who had raised me had just had a heart attack. I was now all alone in the world. My father’s company was in my ear telling me I had all these responsibilities and my head was about to explode. “I guess I had some kind of nervous breakdown. I got drunk and staggered around the beach for days, balancing suicide against genocide. Either would have suited me fine. I went to my father’s funeral and drew a blank. I only know I woke up in his big old crypt half-frozen and sick as a dog. But the situation sobered me. I felt I had to do something positive and meaningful with my life. Something that wasn’t all about me. I knew I wasn’t ready to die.” “A mature decision. So, Mister Vane, could we conclude that this place is your attempt to rebuild a family structure in your life? And would it also be fair to assume you’re subconsciously filling your father’s shoes as empire builder?” Vane turned to stare at her, his eyes blazing. “That’s good,” she said, “with all the little houses stretching out behind you. Tell the camera about the little houses, Mr. Vane, and all about the little people who live in them.” “Some other time.” King sighed. “All right, all right. Take five.” She shook her head. “It’s probably not fair of me to come barging in here expecting you to perform on cue. Relax a bit and figure out what you really need to say.” She began stuffing equipment back in the matching carrying case, saying incidentally, “I’ll be staying over.” Vane paled. “You see our accommodations.” “I’ll make do. Is there any way out of here on my own? I don’t want to keep Mitchell if he’s not needed.” “There’s a small plane,” Vane said absently. “Piper Cub. Comes out of Addis Ababa. Brings us our mail and minor supplies. The pilot will do Djibouti if he has advance notice.” “That’s fine, then. A 360 with you out of the picture, please.” Vane hunched on the Mat while Rebecca did a slow pirouette, coiling in place as she turned, then reversing the motion. She carefully repacked her video camera. He shook his head. “They’ll be safe here.” Smiling faintly, King slung the packed cases over her shoulders, clipped them to the leatherette harness, and walked back across Ridge Bridge to the Explorer. Vane slammed on his shades and stepped out into the pitiless sun. He fired a fistful of pebbles at his Domo across Stage Street. Who invited her in the first place? Why did her distaste for the rich and famous have to come off as something so personal? And why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? Twenty minutes later she came padding back to the Stage using Mudhead for a pack mule, her equipment cases now looped over his shoulders, an extra-large case dangling by its strap from his neck. On one shoulder was a folding cot, on the other a rolled sleeping bag, and, on his bowed black head, a cute little snow-white safari hat. King glided alongside, gently teasing while shading him with her parasol. Yet it was all downhill from there. Vane grew increasingly awkward during interviews, King correspondingly impatient. In a tacit compromise, she took to filming him from a distance as he went about his daily business. Their tension was contagious, echoed in a hundred raised voices of the 147

Microcosmia Rebecca normally complacent Afar. But that night, dining on Top Step, the mood was much mellower. There were just so many stars. Looking down at the twelve-volt haze, King said levelly, “I think I’ve got enough to satisfy my editors. If today was any indication, it’s a pretty constructive, non-threatened little world you’ve got going here.” She sawed a tiny triangle out of her flatbread, nibbled it down with her perfect teeth. “Maybe I owe you an apology for the interviews, Mr. Vane. I was operating on a preconceived notion, and I was biased.” “Cristian.” That same wan smile. “I still have to write my story, so I still have to throw that little threeletter word at you.” “Which word?” “Why. I’m still trying to find an angle.” Vane looked away. “Spiritual thing,” he said presently, and pushed back from the table. “I just can’t understand how this can be so obvious to me and to no one else. Wait till it’s over, Rebecca. Wait until your eyes can see what’s in my head.” “I’m not blind, Cristian. But maybe your motives need explaining. Because maybe no one else can afford the luxury of creativity in a pure form. The rest of us have deadlines, and mouths to feed that are dependent on our meeting those deadlines. Sure we’re skeptical of those who have all the advantages.” “To quote Joe Anybody.” “Look, Cristian—” “Cris.” She looked down and shook her head. When she looked back up her eyes were burning. “I’ll tell you something, man. I do my homework. And I always end up knowing more about my subjects than they know about themselves. For instance . . . oh . . . I’ll bet you didn’t know your papa was investigated by the CIA, did you? Yep. Seems he got in a jam in Guatemala and offered the patent on a certain microchip to the government of that sad little country if they’d only reunite him with a dancer he’d fallen in love with in an American bar in Peseta. A place called Rosarita’s Red-Hot Cantina. She was a stripper, billed as Li’l Pink Honey Pot, who performed a very popular routine involving foot-long pork sausages and pink whipped cream. Her real name was Bonita Alvarado, and your old man knocked her up, old as he was, crazy as he was. When he learned she was pregnant he showered her with sausages, honeycombs, and cinnamon jelly beans. He pursued her through term, and in the process fell wildly, fell blindly, fell idiotically in love with her.” Vane said quietly, “A stripper.” “Contempt for the rich and famous,” King went on brutally, “is universal. It’s pure envy, of course, but it’s real nonetheless.” She patted her lips with a monogrammed hankie, sawed off another miniscule wedge of flatbread. “Now, there’s a difference when it comes down to doing a job. Then one has to dissociate one’s feelings from one’s work. Take my job, for example. It has nothing to do with my tastes. I’m hired to come out here and get a story, and to be utterly objective in the process. I’m a tool, a journalist. Not a groupie, not a therapist.” She took a petite sip of her Zinfandel. “On my days off, on my own time, I’m free to hark back and take a subjective approach to the whole matter of Cristian Honey Vane. Then I can love him or hate him, be sensitive or indifferent.” Vane stirred his injera, spooned a large chunk of chicken from the spicy stew. “And what do you think your objective take on this place’ll be?” “Expect a positive piece. I’m guessing people will be pleased with what you’re doing, especially in contrast with all the headaches that make up the straight news back home.” 148

Microcosmia Rebecca “And . . . what’s your subjective take on Cristian Vane, the man? Just for curiosity’s sake.” She rang a fingernail against her empty glass. Vane, guessing he was being tested, offered a crooked smile and filled the glass halfway. He was about to set the bottle back down when their eyes collided. He raised the bottle and continued pouring until the glass was brimming. “Generous guy,” Rebecca said. “Hides a big heart behind a typical show of macho indifference. More sensitive than he’d like to admit.” She drained half the glass in a single draught and grimaced prettily. “Clumsy with women; thinks, like most insecure men, that females are impressed by displays of confidence and chivalry. E for effort.” She finished off the glass. Vane poured the last of the bottle into his own glass and drank it down. He stood up, said, “Excuse me,” and nonchalantly stepped off of Top Step. Once he was out of view he scampered down the Steps, rousted Mudhead and sent him for two more bottles and a tray of date pastries. By the time Mudhead made it back, Bossman and Cameralady were dangling their bare feet off of Top Step, remarking the Domos and stars. Vane snatched the bottles and corkscrew and shooed the African off. He popped a cork. “Pardon me while I grab the glasses.” “Forget it,” King slurred. “Manners don’t become you.” She hiccoughed. “And I get sick of having to be dainty all the time.” She took the bottle by its neck and knocked it back. Vane raised an eyebrow. He popped the cork from his own bottle and swallowed deeply. “Awkward with men,” he said, and nudged her playfully. “Tries intuitively, like most beautiful women, to control them by appealing to their egos. Knows they’ll strut without realizing their strings are being pulled. It’s all a dance. Both sides. Silly-ass minuets.” She took another gulp. “Hogwash. I don’t need to win your affection. And why do I get the feeling you do your dancing alone?” “Probably,” Vane bristled, “because you believe that garbage you write.” “That’s the spirit, tough guy. If you’re going to win me, you’ll do it with bayonets, not with violins.” He snorted. “What makes you think I’m trying to ‘win you’?” King’s answering grin was lopsided. “Oh, come on. Just drop the masks, okay? What straight guy doesn’t want to win a pretty woman?” Vane shook his head. “You know what? You’ve got one humongous ego for a skirt, and one hell of a lot of nerve. Nobody can read anybody else’s mind.” “Nobody needs to.” She really kicked the bottle back. “Listen, Cris, there isn’t a woman on this planet who doesn’t know exactly what’s going on in a man’s head whenever he’s within hailing distance. You guys get silly, you get solicitous. Flirtatious or standoffish. Doesn’t matter. You change. You stop being the simple headlong weenies we’ve all come to know and love. Let a man get a peek at some leg or a whiff of perfume and he’s totally transparent. Laugh at one of his dumb jokes and watch his testosterone go through the roof. Suddenly he’s Goofo the Clown. Tell him he’s strong, cute, smart, sexy. Whatever. The fool’s dancing on cloud nine.” She took a gulp and rocked against him. “So don’t tell me about humongous egos.” Vane rocked right back. “And don’t you flatter yourself. Men aren’t as simple as all that. It’s not easy surviving this world without the benefit of scents and paints and a cornucopia of specialized undergarments. Talk about masks!” They leaned against each other, then leaned heavily on the wine, drinking furiously through ten minutes of electric silence. Finally Rebecca belched sweetly. “How you must . . . suffered. But no mask here. All real; underneath, on top too. What you see . . . what you get.” 149

Microcosmia Rebecca Vane looped an arm over her shoulders. King oozed right out. “Figure speech,” she said. “Where’s ladies’ room? And after that, where in hell guesthouse? I’m . . . done.” “Sorry,” Vane mumbled. “No ladyroom. This’s first time entertained actual lady.” He pointed at a common outhouse just off the Mount. “H’ever, if you can manage, there’s a not-so porta potty right . . . down . . . there! Septic tank under thatch roof. Like Afar temp’rary house. No slight ’tended.” “Cute,” King said, wobbling to her feet. “Very!” he called after her, and closed his burning eyes. When he opened them again she was coming up the Steps, fighting the last few. “Even stumble well,” he gassed. “’pologize ’bout fusillyties, but royalty come . . . rarely.” “Beatsa squat hole anna palm fron’.” She stared at him. “You’re drunk, Mister Cristian! I don’ trus’ you. Not at all.” “Good call.” Vane forced himself to his feet. “Sleep my place,” he sprayed, pointing at his Square. “I’ll sleep . . . here.” He winked ghoulishly. “See? I’m . . . harmless after all.” Rebecca hurled down her gear. “I’m fine!” She tried wrestling her cot out of its bag, tangling everything hopelessly. “Help,” Vane said. “I’ll.” He stumbled over. King was instantly sober. She indicated her pretty brown knee. “One more step and you’re a eunuch.” Vane wobbled there, disappointed and hurt. “Welcome!” he pouted, before pitching headfirst down the Steps. He had fractured memories of Mudhead hauling him to his feet and leading him inside, and then of that same white-swathed, barking black creature binding the Domo’s gills for the night. He remembered fighting the African for some reason, and finally being thrown on his bed like a bundle of dirty laundry. Any amount of night might have passed before the door swung in and that damned golden statue was eclipsing the Stage lights. It had to have been at least a few hours, for most of Vane’s drunk had been replaced by hangover. He saw the goddess clearly, though she should have been no more than a gold-tinged silhouette in a white-light nimbus. His imagination supplied the details. Her figure rounded off the throbbing glare, tapering in bottlenecks and sweet amber fields. Her hair, perfectly mussed, shimmered in a tight corona that crackled with random prominences. “I came to apologize,” the goddess said. “Also, sleeping on that folding cot is a lot like sleeping on a folding cactus.” She began to unbutton her blouse. Vane’s jaw dropped and his mouth worked soundlessly. “You don’t have to say anything,” she whispered. “Anyways, I’m in no mood to argue.” The blouse slid from her shoulders in a flash of gold. King kicked shut the door and stumbled to the bed.

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Chapter Sixteen Solomon Vane paused, a hand glued to the upper edge of the Cub’s door, urgently seeking the perfect parting comment. It wouldn’t come, wouldn’t hang, didn’t matter. He and she’d spent an excruciating day behaving like burned-out marrieds; walking together but well-apart, addressing anybody but each other, avoiding eye contact. Neither could break the silence with anything meaningful, and only when they were separately involved did they resemble happening human beings again. Only then did proximate adults resume their daily activities. Only then would teens run wrestling in the Streets. King directed those adults and teens to a fault; demand-ing unrealistic poses and expressions, getting in everybody’s business, getting in everybody’s way. Time and again Vane would overreact, rushing to their defense and exacerbating the tension. After these mini-explosions the Afar would slink a-round like children avoiding squabbling parents, and by mid-afternoon it was plain they’d all lost their fascination with the golden lady. It became increasingly difficult to photograph a Mamusetan. The human ring grew cooler and wider, until her position and demeanor resembled that of a bull in an arena. Everybody prayed the plane would arrive on schedule. She spent most of the day in Mudhead’s Domo, alone with her notes. When the Piper Cub finally arrived, the Afar came out in droves to see her off. It was a curious scene. Vane and King led the procession like bitter opposing dignitaries. By the time they’d reached the little airstrip they were surrounded by a mob of over three hundred absolutely silent Mamusetans. As the nervous pilot eased open the door Vane looked back guiltily. For a moment he was sure the Afar believed they were about to be abandoned. The last thing he could think to say was, “You’ll make it a fair piece, won’t you?” And she’d spat out, “I’m a journalist!” and wrestled for control of the door. After a pathetic little tug-o’-war, she’d torn it from his hands and slammed it shut. The Afar stared at the receding plane until it was lost to sight. 151

Microcosmia Solomon Vane shuffled back to the Mount in dead silence, a hunched figure in mourning black. The crowd opened before him as he neared, closed behind him once he’d passed. The Afar watched him climb the Steps with feet of cement. Returning to their personal Squares, they picked up right where they’d left off, for by now they were habituated to routine. And, while the Stage remained unoccupied for the whole of that day, the clockwork of Mamuset resumed as though no break had occurred. No one acknowledged Vane’s lapse in leadership, and no one was stupid enough to kid him about the perfect lady. From the moment the little plane was swallowed up in the huge African sky she ceased to exist.

When the first mature trees rolled up Onramp, morning temperatures were flirting with the century mark, the Awash pipeline was being fitted with a series of reflective aluminum skirts, and the political map of East Africa was in a state of rapid flux. The assassination of Hassan Hassan-Salid in Mogadishu had drawn a terrorist response in Kenya’s National Assembly. As a consequence, Somalia’s western border was squirming like a worm. In the Ethiopian pale of Adwa, Eritrea had turned a skirmish into a bloodbath with the introduction of state-of-the-art weapons, promptly taking a bite out of the old Ethiopian border north of Mamuset. Additional forays to the south brought an Egyptian presence into the Republic of Djibouti; the tiny country was fast becoming an international wishbone. Due to American clout, the Foundation’s new corridor was tolerated clear to Suez, although several navies were testing the Red Sea with escalating audacity. Honey now contracted directly with Djibouti in oil and copper, while agents bought up hides for the new leatherworks right in Djibouti City. Toe by toe, the Foundation approached its master. The trees—sycamores, black oaks, maples, and birches—were shipped through Suez in 7 x 7 banded planters to the free port of Djibouti, moved by rail to the Vane Depot, and from there brought into Mamuset by tractor in standing groups of eight, their branches bound and sheathed in canvas. First to arrive were sycamores, some reaching as high as forty feet, hauled with great ceremony to sites decided by lot. Because of this unsystematic method, certain Streets were heavily lined with sycamores, while others had comparatively few. Cristian Vane, with the bitch and the blueprint out of his system, was a changed man; a man happily surrendering mathematical practicality to the aesthetic. A wholly symmetrical community, he now stressed, was a community without personality. He recalibrated the site’s entire routine like a madman, making up the rules as he went along. Over three hectic weeks, seven thousand adult sycamores arrived in a near-continuous train. Sections of PVC were diverted to allow for root growth, plots of 2,560 cubic feet dug from Street, Square, and Intersection. Every nutrient critical to a sycamore’s well-being was worked into soil imported from nurseries around the Mediterranean, that each tree might take root in a carefully controlled microenvironment. And, at the end of those busy three weeks, Vane invited the five thousand-plus participants to file by on the Stage, where they could individually marvel over the broad canopy now filling the crater like a deep green mist. With the wide sun lighting their upper leaves, the foreign-born sycamores, obscenely vital in the midst of all that dead, dry desert, looked like they would burst into flame at any moment. After the sycamores came the oaks and birches, the immature maples and elms, the soapberries, chestnuts and cherries—broad-leaved trees able to weather drastic changes in latitude, elevation, and temperature while providing maximum shade and beauty. The specialists had been up front: with proper care and a preemptive approach, plants indigenous to even radically different climates could thrive in a Mamuset-like environment, so long as certain critical criteria were met and 152

Microcosmia Solomon maintained. That environment must be jealously controlled: Mamuset would have to be treated as a tiny, very vulnerable nursery in an immense, very thirsty wasteland. The site’s salinity had to be reduced. Spot-floodings, combined with religious tilling of the soil, would effectively flush clumping salt deposits. The area’s natural drainage would take care of the rest. The kicker here was a need for regular, massive, and hugely expensive applications of lime. But at this stage money was truly no object. Honey was busily committing suicide; dissolving holdings and reneging on contracts as it diverted major funds to Djibouti and West Yemen oil fields. Thousands of acres of East African farmland were bought up and converted into horticultural stations, an apparently nonsensical move bailing stockholders referred to as “Earthworm, Incorporated.” These fields were utilized for the spot-cropping of everything from asparagus to yams, Ticonderoga to violets. The Honey Oases, viewed from the air, gave a solid impression of chessboards stretching into infinity. Routines in Mamuset became traditions. Streets were night-flooded by Rotating Sector Hands, and each morning fiercely competitive “volunteers” trekked Square to Square wrapping saplings in gauze to spare the young phloem from sunburn. Tossing handfuls of water on these saplings became a good-luck gesture for adults and a game for children, copied Sector to Sector. Vane organized Yard Socials, ordered every Square carted a fruiting citrus, and promoted Sector contests for injured, or otherwise “orphaned” tree specimens. Through a marveling Mudhead, he told the Afar of an American folk hero named Johnny Appleseed, and distributed to every Square packs of miscellaneous seeds. Then, having grown ever more whimsical with the project‘s continuing success, he almost embarked upon a harebrained idea to ring the crater with live doums, dates, and palmyras. The Afar, healthy and happy, would cheerfully have devoted the rest of their lives to it had not Mudhead talked him down. The African knew matching Vane’s fancy would require countless palms, and present a mind-numbing irrigation problem, so Vane compromised, producing a gorgeous crescent of fronds radiating from either side of the Onramp entrance. These palms were “local”— bought from nomads, uprooted and dragged by camel over hundreds of miles. The limitless supply of fresh water made desert miracles possible. Mamuset became an orchard, a forest, a jungle—but in the process the project created its own challenges. Strategic Field Squares, flooded to produce watering holes, over time seeped together into a series of small lakes, occasionally turning Field Quads into marshes. Nothing could have pleased the Afar more. Over one dizzy October week the entire population turned out with wheelbarrows and spades, constructing a highly personalized labyrinth of shallow canals that wended dreamily through the community to the sluice gate at Delta. Afar Fieldhands planted elm saplings and young willows on the banks of these canals in quilts of bluegrass and native purple pennisetum, while community elders delighted in building quaint little ornate bridges of varnished teak and mimosa. Vane stocked ponds with goldfish, introduced ducks and geese into the system, and then, over the course of two long magical weeks, trucked in a vast assortment of birds; everything from humble little sparrows to gaudy birds of paradise. Power over his environment made him giddy and wildly generous; Vane was easily sucked into an explosive, psychedelic decorative phase, considering plants for their exotic beauty rather than their nutritive value, favoring the ornamental over the practical. Dawn lectures became soft and sentimental. Weapons were out, birdhouses were in. The copycat method had evolved incrementally: now Rotating Sector Commanders, repeating translated Stage instructions reverberating from Utility Quad speakers, instructed blocks of Squares from plant-choked, garlanded and festooned MiniStages. One morning the population would be transplanting snapdragons and blood-red celosia, the next day everybody would be constructing rattan trellises while studying Japanese creepers and climbing vines. Gardens were erupting, Domos evolving into quirky inns. Before he knew it, Vane’s 153

Microcosmia Solomon efficient martial project had degenerated into a funky little Eden. The great shade saved everything—cooling the air, cooling the earth, cooling the water in buried pipes. Afar women supplemented the natural shade with sewn canvas canopies suspended from branches, incidentally producing huge sagging Square-to-Square Shade Halls. Connected Halls eventually grew into a series of ramshackle tunnels. With Vane’s encouragement, seldom-used Intersections gave way to miniature meadows and bayou-like bathing oases, while great sections on either side of Bisecting Way (the wide road separating Streets and Fields beyond the Ridge) were worked into experimental gardens and nature trails. In random spots the combination of heavy foliage, standing water, and human eccentricity produced hidden pockets that were quite dark, perennially damp, and occasionally even chilly. In these secret glens were lush stacks of staghorn fern smothering stalks of clumping golden bamboo. And one day the Cub’s pilot showed Vane a photograph taken during a noon pass. Between the photo’s hard white margins lay a raw sienna waste surrounding what at first looked like a petri dish overflowing with green. The Grid was barely recognizable. But, under closer scrutiny, Fields appeared as collections of variegated squares, Shade Halls as tiny tents in an endless park, lakes as bright blue puddles in a quicksilver maze.

Vane’s sapphire flashed like a signal lamp in the sun. He stood erect and handed his spyglass to one of a dozen scrabbling children, having counted over twenty camels trudging up Onramp in the rising heat, their riders slumped with heads down, as though dozing. When the train finally reached the gateway of flexed and entwined palms, not a single rider appeared aware he was entering, or that Vane and the children were darting side to side to avoid being trampled. The camels filed under the Arch and crossed Ridge Bridge to the Mount with Vane running alongside waving his arms. When he reached the Big Tarp he kicked the fifth in line and yelled, “Hey!” The entire train pulled up, nose to butt. The man on the lead camel jabbed his brute in the hindquarters. The beast roared and pitched forward, kneeling on its forelegs a moment before reclining fully. At this signal the whole line went down like dominoes, each animal with its own distinctive echoing plaint. Four men near the middle hopped off and ran to an elaborately dressedand-groomed camel. The elderly rider, wearing a bright orange cape and headdress, was eased to a standing position. He looked around dazedly. Another rider ran up and handed him an intricately woven acacia basket. The old man, embracing this basket possessively, looked around until his eyes fell on the queer black-robed sheik wearing the fat black turban with the blue precious stone. Flanked by his four assistants, he tottered over and handed Vane the basket while staring up out of pleading rheumy eyes. Vane peeked inside. In the very center of the basket, on a soiled bed of bright orange cloth, were a black infant and a puppy, both covered by flies and ants. The infant, wretched in rigor mortis, had died of dehydration brought on by diarrhea. His family’s prominent tribal status was revealed by the paint on his forehead, by a pair of onyx anklets, and by a swath of fine cloth around his midsection. The puppy was a mangy little skeleton, just as black as the infant, its eyes rolled up and its jaw hanging at ninety degrees. A leather leash ran from the infant’s granite fist to the puppy’s throat. Foam frothed around the puppy’s mouth as its lungs labored for life. With a start Vane realized it had been strangled to prepare it for accompaniment with the dead baby. He pulled back violently, flies following his head away from the basket. Suddenly he was shaking all over. Quick tears found his eyes. “I’m not God!” he screamed. “Now get the hell out of 154

Microcosmia Solomon here!” The elderly man, studying him meekly, bowed and backpedaled, the basket held firmly against his chest. He and his retinue returned to their beasts. “Wait!” Vane sobbed. He snapped his fingers and Mudhead puffed over. The two huddled. Mudhead ran back under the Big Tarp and returned with handfuls of birrs, francs, and dollars. Vane plucked out the puppy, removed the leash from its neck, and cradled the animal in his arm. He crammed the bills in the basket. The old man’s face fell. He pulled out the bills and handed the basket to a random pair of hands. His assistants, supporting him by the elbows, allowed him to very slowly stoop until his knees touched the Mat. Vane got down beside him. After carefully laying out the bills in a circular pattern, the old man gently disengaged the puppy from the cradle of Vane’s arm and placed it on the Mat in the circle’s center. This done, he righted himself without assistance, and with great dignity was escorted back to his gorgeously-dressed animal and lifted aboard. As the lead camel’s driver jabbed it in the rear, the beast angrily roared to its feet. In a reverse of the original motion, the camels all struggled to their feet, roaring nervously one after the other. Vane watched for a respectful nanosecond, then scooped up the dog and dashed down the Steps to his Square, kicked open his gate and ran puffing through his garden. He placed the puppy on his bed and dropped to his knees. Outside, the bravest children snuck through his gateway in twos and threes. Tiptoeing through the garden, they leaned up against his Domo to eavesdrop through the gills. They heard Vane speaking urgently inside, and their eyes met and flashed. Although his words made no sense, the tone was unmistakable. “Come on, man, don’t die on me! You’re not gonna let me down too.” Vane was applying pressure against its tongue to open the air passage. The puppy’s mouth foamed harder. A leg gave a shuddering kick, and immediately the animal went into body-length spasms. Its jaws convulsed and froze. After a terrible little croak, it began kicking its rear legs frantically. A moment later the legs went stiff and a great sigh scattered the foam from its mouth. The head jerked straight back. “No!” Vane commanded. “It is not going to happen. I forbid it! You are not permitted, under any circumstances, to expire!” He fanned the puppy desperately, massaged its throat, moved his face up close. “I said no!” he whispered. “Nobody gets out of here that easily.” Vane pushed the puppy’s belly in with his thumb and cleaned its mouth with the little finger of the same hand. He then leaned forward so that the puppy’s entire head was in his mouth and blew softly. The puppy kicked. He pulled away, pushed its belly back in. The animal gagged and struggled violently. “When I said no,” Vane muttered, “I meant no.” He mouthed the puppy’s head again, blew harder, backed off, pushed the belly in. The puppy kicked all four legs wildly and froze. “You can fight me all you want, but you’re not getting away from me.” A steady breath and push. “So breathe, baby. Breathe and get used to it.” The tiny puppy flipped as though spring-loaded, dragged itself a few inches across the bed and vomited for all it was worth. Vane fell back on his bed, and he might have been talking to himself when he said, “Just rest and get your strength back up. You’ll need it.” He wiped his lips clean, rolled his head and stroked the shuddering creature. “Because you’re a Vane now.” He didn’t remember kicking off his shoes or closing his eyes, but it was dark, and a squeak by his side indicated he’d rolled on the puppy. Vane swung his legs off the bed, lit a candle, and ran a hand over his face and hair. The dog was curled into a ball, trembling nose to tail. He touched its belly and the puppy squealed again. The belly was warm. “Good sign,” he said, tenderly stroking the puppy with one hand while gesturing globally with the other. “I don’t know if you saw any of the other people here, but they weren’t always so strapping. Hell, when I first showed up they weren’t 155

Microcosmia Solomon any bigger than you.” He very gently placed a fingertip in an ear and carefully probed. “But look at ’em now.” The puppy shuddered. “Seems clean enough.” He checked the other ear. “Around here we start at the beginning.” Vane popped the lid off a plastic bowl on his nightstand and brought back a finger coated with mildly seasoned goat curd. “We run a tight ship. Everybody eats.” He ran the finger around the puppy’s mouth, then stuck it inside. The puppy gagged and recoiled, but a second later was licking the finger eagerly. “Welcome to Mamuset,” Vane said. “It ain’t fun, it ain’t easy, and it ain’t always pretty. But it’s the Vane method.” He scooped another finger’s worth. “And damn it, it works.”

On one weekly aerial run in July, the supplies included, along with the delicacies and regular mail, the May edition of Movers And Shakers magazine. Vane and Mudhead went through it in Mudhead’s garden over cigars and beer. Sure enough, Mudhead’s groveling Top Step pose was the centerpiece of a two-page mosaic of tiles. It was the African’s proudest moment. A caption beneath the shot pointed out that the gesture was all in fun. The article itself was surprisingly honest, and in places even complimentary, defending Cristian Vane against all slurs. Vane was described as a basically decent and compassionate man, but with an annoying flair for the theatrical. King couldn’t help psychoanalyzing her subject. Vane was a well-meaning person, and a constructive and energetic man, yet he was way out of touch with reality, and unable or unwilling to offer a single believable reason for his altruistic behavior. She hinted more than once at guilt over his astounding wealth, and at a schizophrenic response to his fractured upbringing. The Afar, featured in a dozen cozy photographs, were described as happy and healthy overall. Miss King also documented her frustrating attempts to get corroborative information from the famous Honey Foundation. A Denise Waters, represented in a most unflattering photograph, was described as abrasive and highly protective of her distant boss. Just writing about Honey must have soured King, for she concluded her article with a dark spin on the big question: How would it all end? How long would the desert crater last before the globetrotter grew bored, collapsed under the weight of his own ineptitude, or simply left for greener pastures? King wondered what would become of the poor people left behind. Would they leave the way they came, or would the crater become their resting ground? Had the strange black-draped figure, caught looking depressed and confused in frame after frame, in reality built a desert graveyard? Vane tacked the photo spread to the Wall for the delight of curious children. In the interest of clarification, he had the mail pilot take a wide-angle shot from the Mount, showing hundreds of healthy Mamusetans posing in the Streets. Deep in the distance, the miniscule figures of men stood shoulder to shoulder on East Rim below its Bulwarks, appearing to perch on the green clouds of sycamores. Wisps of cooking fires were frozen between trees, jays caught in flight, children captured chasing delighted dogs. Camels yawned at the camera. In the foreground sat an expressionless Cristian Vane in flowing black robes, winking black turban, and broad mirror shades, a cigar in one hand, a banana daiquiri in the other. Vane’s four months-old mutt Solomon, perched awkwardly on his master’s lap, watched a pair of snow-white rabbits bounding through a garden. To Vane’s left, in clerical collar and top hat, a grim-faced Mudhead knelt holding a tray overflowing with bills and coins. To his right posed a grinning Kid, holding a thatch umbrella over the seated master. Nestled in his right arm was an M16, its nose pointed meaningfully at the camera. The photograph’s inscription read: 156

Microcosmia

Solomon

Dear Rebecca, Wish You Were Here. Kid Rameses.

157

Chapter Seventeen Tibor It was that golden hour of day when the world seems to slow; when work is done or slated for the morrow, when east-leaning shadows grow heavier even as one peers. At this hour men are prone to easy discourse, and domesticated animals, picking up on the murmur, find their eyelids beginning to weigh. The music of an early whippoorwill whistled between the gills of Vane’s Domo, for a tantalizing second seeming to mimic the strains of Ravel’s Bolero on his boom box. Lateral shadows had snuck across his desk, leaving his Mamuset memoirs half-illuminated. He adjusted the manuscript to catch the light. Vane was tempted to press on with his Microcosmia, or The Man Who Broke Honey, but it was that golden hour of day when intellectual pursuits move to the back burner. Vane was bored, his mind wandering no less resolutely than those slats of light and shadow. He finished off his kirsch in a quick swallow and lit another cheroot. Solomon, nudged accidentally, shifted gears in his dream and nestled closer to his master’s feet. The dog was a healthy, handsome yearling who loved children, hated camels, and was embarrassingly jealous of his master’s affection. Vane stretched to his feet and ejected the CD, switched off the player. He stepped over Solomon carefully, but the dog, like all dogs, was attuned to the whims of his owner, and leaped to be first to the door. Vane scratched Solomon’s eager punkin head as they made their way through the clutter. Over the last half year his Domo had deteriorated to a chaotic museum-garage, bursting at the seams with miscellaneous gifts. There were dusty portraits by children, long-stale pastries prepared by Afar women, piled baskets and mats, utensils from faceless Mamusetan artisans. There was even an oversized, sun-dried stick-and-mud statue of Solomon, called by the children Saumun Vahn, to reflect his master’s name. Vane was known as Khrisa Vahn, and Mudhead, by association, as Muh-Muh Vahn. Gifts were generally just heaped in corners and stacked along the walls. When space grew too 158

Microcosmia Tibor dear, the stuff was toted across his Yard to Mudhead’s and stored before being moved to Warehouse or Basement. Vane’s place, due to his continuous experiments in creating the ideal bohemian Domo, was without a doubt the most exotic home in Mamuset. Certain innovations, such as his erector shelves and collapsible woven partitions, had been adopted by neighbors. Other imported ideas, such as the rock garden and mood lighting, made no sense to the Africans, and remained mesmerizing features of his revered residence. The Afar had by degrees, and almost apologetically, covered their Domos with thatch in deference to their customary homes, then secured their solar panels atop these new thatch beds. Vane, picking up on the idea, tied thatch on his own roof and found it to be excellent insulation. Vane’s pad was ever dark, cool and airy, aromatic with gifts of baked goods, with spices, with incense and potpourri. The grateful Afar had insisted his Yards receive the finest specimens of trees and birds, and in quantity. As a result his Square was part arboretum, part jungle. Now Vane donned his turban, threw back his flowing black robes, and drew open the door. In two steps he and Solomon were swallowed by his garden—the master of Mamuset was way behind in his Yard chores. A pair of trellises were sagging under the weight of African marigolds, the storage shed was shifting over the avocado’s roots. Grass and weeds had almost eradicated the inlaid rock path leading to his front gate. Spider webs glistened in rare shafts of sun, wasps whirled in and out of a particularly dark space between trunks. His orchids were flagging, and one corner of his backyard was a marsh over a broken pipe. As he did every day, Vane swore that today was the day he’d get around to it. Solomon was off like a shot through the Yard. Worthless, half-asleep on her pad, caught the black streak out of the corner of her eye, but wasn’t quick enough to evade another nip to the bottom. Her head lanced out, the great incisors snapped, and Solomon began dancing side to side excitedly. Vane pounded his fist twice on the back of the camel’s neck. Worthless rose with that old, irksome series of roars and hisses that meant Solomon was just asking for it. Worthless was the grudging possessor of a gorgeous polished crocodile hide saddle, a gift from the Banke’s president. The saddle had sheaths to hold the spyglass and jile, along with snap pouches for pager and walkie-talkie. Vane was proud of it, and dependent on it, for he’d failed to master both the blanket and the bareback method. It was possible to loop great saddlebags over grooved bosses, and so use Worthless as an agile supply vehicle. Vane did a daily round of the Rim, bringing treats for the Guards and their children. Having warned off Solomon, he was leading Worthless to the front gate when he was startled by a puff of sparrows bursting from his neighbors’ trees. They shot into the sky whirling, joined a different flock and just as abruptly dispersed. Watching agape, Vane noticed dozens of distant flocks spiraling in all directions, soaring and plunging, breaking apart and converging. This phenomenon struck him, even then, as somehow ominous. Still staring, he kicked open his front gate and stepped out onto Stage Street. His Square’s front chain link fence, overgrown with creepers, was sagging with rose garlands and the usual mounds of gifts piled high. Vane sampled curiously, running his hands over a few unfamiliar bulges while Solomon and Worthless sniffed alongside. He saw that Mudhead had toted a couple of jugs of homemade beer from Cellar and deposited them on either side of the gate. Vane stuffed a jug in each saddlebag, then broke a large chunk off a date and honey cake, took a bite and passed the rest to his animals. A big eye appeared behind a pile twenty feet along. Solomon went down on his belly, his rear end oscillating as two other children peeked around the first. There were a couple of squeals. Solomon barked delightedly. Worthless shied and the children ran off giggling, Solomon running circles around them. 159

Microcosmia Tibor Vane filled the saddlebags with flatbread, fig jam, and sweetmeats, then pounded Worthless twice on the back of her neck. She knelt and he mounted awkwardly, carefully positioning his moccasins in the stirrups, still determined to become an adept camel rider on these daily rounds. He rode clumsily along the shady side of Stage Street while Solomon bedeviled Worthless. Other dogs and camels responded to their familiar barks and roars. The Mount’s east face was covered with velvet rosettes, patches of scarlet African violets, and a great variety of succulents. No protocol existed for Stage access, and, since camels were notoriously skittish on the Steps, dozens of wending and intersecting paths had been stamped into the slope. Vane let Worthless pick her own way while his dog bounded up the Steps to avoid being pricked. Under the Big Tarp’s shade he pulled out his spyglass and took a long look around his paradise. Lazy tails rose from cooking fires, here and there a strolling figure appeared and disappeared between the trees. He took the Stage Ramp back down and clopped up Bisecting Way clear to North Rim, waving heartily to children while nonchalantly clinging to his ride’s scruffy mane. The Rim was now Mamuset’s most neglected area; Rim Road had fallen into disrepair, Inner Slopes were a canopied riot of wildflowers, impatiens, and blushing mums. Tranquility had completely lowered Mamuset’s guard, making the siesta more a pursuit than a pastime. Field workers moved languidly, avoiding the sun, while Guards, constantly found napping at their Posts, faced only effusive apologies when wakened. Vane, in his theatrical getup and casual ways, unconsciously encouraged the general lassitude. Occasionally he and Mudhead threw a surprise Ripple, wherein squads of defenders in the beds of pickups raced to man Bulwarks, while flanking arms of ammunition-toting women and children scampered up the Inner Slopes behind them. But lately these drills had been lackluster and abbreviated. It wasn’t that the Afar weren’t into it; they still came running at the wail of a siren. The fault was solely Vane’s. He’d become lazy and distant, was putting on weight. The fact that his sole turn-on was writing his memoirs made him admit, sometimes to himself and sometimes in unintended asides, that the project was complete. And so he flirted with ideas of moving on. Now, with his mind adrift on a lovely dying afternoon, he was completely caught off guard by the faraway cry of a hand-cranked West Rim siren. He urged Worthless into a cockeyed gallop along the overgrown Rim Road, his adrenaline up for the first time in months. But the desert was dead as far as his glass could discern. Vane rang the Stage and waited impatiently, watching a number of running bodies in the Streets. After a long minute Mudhead reported, “Runner.” That was all. Vane focused away from the desert, tweaking his spyglass. Finally he made out a flailing speck on Inner West Slope. He jabbed his walkie-talkie’s transmit button. “Why isn’t he using the Ramp?” “Big hurry. Run straight through Guard.” “I’ll be there in two shakes.” Vane clung like a woman as Worthless galloped erratically, avoiding Solomon’s teeth, and by the time they’d reached the Stage he was a breath away from losing it. Solomon chomped Worthless a good one just as she was kneeling, which put her nauseous rider down hard on his tailbone. Mudhead helped him up and over to his Eyes. They watched the runner staggering between patches of alfalfa and millet, only to be brought down kicking by workers leaping out of the grain. A crowd quickly grew. Vane and Mudhead saw the tacklers rough the man up and interrogate him one after the other. Finally an old man addressed the crowd excitedly. Two Afar thereupon hauled the runner upright. They walked him a ways, but that tackle, after all his exertion, had just been too much. He dropped like a dead man. Immediately he was hoisted by four workers, one on each limb, and trotted toward the Mount. Four others took over after a few minutes of hard pacing by the original quartet, and the pace was redoubled. In this manner the dangling man 160

Microcosmia Tibor was passed along between Field Squares, wrestled and mauled up the Steps, and deposited in a pile of arms and legs. “Bring him in the shade,” Vane said, directing with his hands. The panting men heaved the runner under the Big Tarp, where he kicked like a dog having a nightmare. Mudhead nudged him with a foot. The runner jabbered softly and his eyelids fluttered. He tucked his hands between his drawn-up knees. Mudhead tried him in basic Saho, in Amharic and Tigrinya. He was surprised when the man responded to a hailing in Ge’eg. “Falasha,” Mudhead muttered, shaking his head. “Come long way.” Vane drew a Bowlful of water and splashed some on the man’s face and hair. At the shock of wetness the runner opened his eyes and sat upright, took a few sips and nodded gratefully. Mudhead crouched to question him. He remained hunched, his hands dangling off his knees, for the longest time. “Well?” Vane said. Mudhead didn’t move. “Well?” “Falashaman,” Mudhead said quietly, “run many day. Stop only small sleep.” He sighed and shook his head resignedly. “Falashaman famous run long haul.” He looked up. “Bossman famous all Ethiopia.” “Tell him I’m flattered. Now let’s get him something to eat. He’s all skin and bones.” “Come long way,” Mudhead repeated. He rose, removed his spectacles and wiped the lenses on his robe. Such a move was offensive even for a reprobate; he was clearly distracted. Mudhead replaced his spectacles and looked thoughtfully at the northwest horizon. He walked over to Top Step, let a foot hover. Casually he began his descent. “Wait a minute,” Vane said. “Where’re you going?” Mudhead disappeared in eight-inch sections, one Step at a time. When the top of his cap had vanished Vane walked over and looked down. “Mudhead.” The African either didn’t hear him or ignored him completely. Vane pursued him Step for Step, repeatedly calling his name. When Mudhead reached Stage Street he turned like an automaton and paced south. “Mudhead!” Vane caught up with him and draped an arm over his shoulders. Mudhead went straight down, as if a supporting wire had been cut, landing heavily on his rear. Vane sat opposite. “What’s bugging you, man? Why’d you take off like that?” When Mudhead looked up, Vane was surprised to see his friend’s eyes glistening. Mudhead’s mouth trembled. He pushed himself to his feet and walked back the way he’d come. Vane caught him at Bottom Step and shook him by the shoulders. “What did he tell you?” Mudhead’s answering stare was blank. He turned and began climbing the Steps. “Jesus!” Vane lunged after him. At Top Step he pushed him down and held him down. “Tell me, already! What’d he say?” “Locust,” Mudhead said matter-of-factly. “Plague. Falasha see from Ras Dashen. Plague out of Sudan. Eat everything crazy. Nothing stand, manyman die. Never such swarm.” “Oh . . . man,” Vane said, rolling his head. He nodded and sighed. “I’m just so sorry, Mudhead. Really.” He sat hard and squeezed his friend’s knee. “You . . . you had friends in Sudan?” Mudhead turned to gape at him. “No,” he mumbled at last, “no friend.” “Still a shame,” Vane said. He gestured broadly, searching for words. “This country’s a monster. But I guess people have adapted to it. Over the ages, I mean.” He added philosophically, “Where I come from you can die from a bullet and never even know what hit you. Death,” he said, 161

Microcosmia Tibor spreading his arms, “is death.” He shook his head sharply. “Forgive me, Mudhead; I’m rambling.” He studied the back of his hands. When no response came he stole a glance. Mudhead’s eyes were burning at the sky. “Death,” he echoed, “death.” Vane stood up. The horizon was spotless. He patted Mudhead’s shoulder. “Buck up, buddy. I’ll get us a weather report.” In twenty minutes he had the score out of Addis Ababa. The swarm, one of the largest ever observed, had crossed the Red Sea from the Saudi Peninsula in early March, impelled as a natural consequence of the drought’s broad cycle, and by now had devastated the east coast of Sudan. Sudanese planes cooperatively provided information to Sudan’s southern neighbors, but ceased tracking, as per United Nations directives, at the border. The latest report was a week old. Vane was dryly informed that the swarm’s progress would be monitored by an office of the National Game Reserve in Gondar, and that that office would fax relevant data to another in Dese, and so on, until the swarm had made its way into Somalia or Kenya. The culled information would be ordered into a synopsis and correlated with prior swarms. Plagues of desert locusts, Vane was told, were natural and inevitable. They were cyclical events in Africa and Saudi Arabia, as given and irrepressible as storms. No real preventive measures were taken, no institutions meaningfully devoted to their future eradication. They were the hand of Allah, and were taken in stride. Vane, getting nervous, had his call transferred to the Game Reserve in Gondar. Gondar reported the swarm’s position as presently south of Eritrea’s capitol Asmera. It was a tremendously destructive movement, taking out fields, villages, and tribes in sporadic barrages greater than any military drive. Vane learned that this swarm’s direction was determined by March wind currents, and could only be altered by meteorological events such as pounding rain and overwhelming crosswinds. No rain was foreseen any time soon. Winds were steadily moving south. All things considered, the hand of Allah was heading straight for the Danakil, and would soon be passing directly over Mamuset. By now Vane’s blood pressure was rising. He again rang the capitol and got on to Honey liaison Muhammed Tibor. The cold, thick voice informed him that there was little to be offered in the way of aid or advice. Tibor apologized without a trace of compassion, explaining that the country was at war. Vane would have to use his own measures to evacuate the site. He then offered to connect him directly with Honey over the diplomatic channel. “Do that,” Vane grated. “And while you’re at it try hooking me up with somebody who gives a damn.” There was an excruciating hour of dead air. During this period Vane paced with increasing misery while Mudhead flogged him with tales of uncontainable insect frenzy and ravaged populations. His palms grew clammy as Mudhead described the desert locust’s uncanny sense of smell, and how frenzy was biochemically produced when food was sensed by any part of a swarm. But formidable as Mudhead made these creatures out to be, Vane wouldn’t accept an inevitable apocalypse. A pest was only a pest, he argued, and Mamuset wasn’t some lame tribe of superstitious stampeding savages—it was a cooperative, productive entity trained as a fighting machine. Surely brains and teamwork, combined with cash and connections, could kick ass on a bunch of dumb grasshoppers in the twenty-first century. When the new voice came over the speaker, identifying itself as belonging to one Professor Essahal of Dire Dawa University, Vane sprinted across the Stage and switched from speaker to phone receiver. “Right to the point,” he puffed. “Tibor wouldn’t have connected us if he didn’t think you could help me. You’re familiar with these bugs?” 162

Microcosmia Tibor The voice was heavy and pedantic. “I,” it sniffed, “sir, am an entomologist specializing in the physiology and migratory patterns of acridids.” There was an impatient sigh. “Our campus is indebted to Mr. Tibor. This is why you and I are speaking together now. But I have a full workload, and the hours are short. So . . . as you say, ‘right to the point.’ I do not mean to be rude.” “That’s good of you,” Vane said through his teeth. “So how can I stop these insects before they reach my property? What should I do?” “Stop them?” “Kill them, turn them aside, lure them elsewhere. What do you guys do when you want to stop a swarm?” Vane could have sworn he heard a truncated laugh on the other end. “This isn’t funny, professor.” “Of course it is not. Sir, there is no way to deter a desert locust swarm. You will perhaps appreciate my natural reaction to the naiveté of your question.” “Fair enough. But the question remains. Rephrase it any way you want. What can I do?” He bit his lip. “Professor Assahol, I’d like you to understand that I’m so wealthy it’s beyond scary. With a single transmission over this radio I can draw on Banke Internationale whatever sum is necessary to meet my purposes. You can’t tell me that in these modern times the technology to break this crisis is unavailable at any cost. I’m dead-serious.” The response was cool. “I am certain you are, sir. And I am not laughing.” There was a pause. “What did you have in mind?” Vane matched the pause, then said evenly, “Sir, you’re the expert. I’m just the money man.” He waved a hand irritably. “The obvious thing is an aerial drop. Cropdusters. I have an ETA on the swarm of thirty-six hours, so there’s still time to catch it in flight with some kind of pesticide. You’re the one who would know the right stuff to drop.” The response was so emotionless it struck Vane as supremely bored. “Sir, you know not whereof you speak. Aerial application of pesticides is a tedious process, commenced only after extensive surveys and botanical assessments. It consists essentially of dusting plants in a large, commercially viable crop area, for the sake of minimizing damage to neighboring quadrants. Malathion and carbaryl are commonly used. The acridids ingest the poison during crop consumption, and in most cases achieve demise before they can produce greater damage. The poison is, in any case, fatal to the crops, and is never one hundred percent effective on the insects.” “Okay, professor,” Vane said slowly. “Call me stupid, but why can’t the Malathion and other stuff be dropped directly on the swarm? Why can’t these bugs be killed in flight?” There was a long, hollow break, occupied only by a pinging echo. Finally Essahal said, as though with an effort, “Mr. Vane, judging by our knowledge of the extent of this swarm, it would be physically impossible to address it fully with the entirety of the Park and Wildlife’s air services, were there even a poison developed for such an application. Additionally, you would encounter problems in simple physics. These pesticides used on acridids come in both powdered and highly granulated forms. Their manufacture takes into account that this fine, dry product will be carried over wide areas and adhere to the relatively moist surfaces of leaves and stalks. The product currently available is almost as fine as talcum powder.” “O-o-o . . . kay,” Vane said with great control. “So why won’t it stick to the relatively moist bodies of grasshoppers?” He clenched his free hand repeatedly while listening to the professor suck air. It had seemed an obvious question, so he’d had to ask. “Sir,” Essahal said gently, as to a child, “plants are stable. They do not jump, they do not fly, they do not migrate. The turbulence created by millions, perhaps tens of millions, of frenzied acridids would serve only to dispel airborne dust. The beating of their wings would have the effect of a 163

Microcosmia Tibor hurricane on a field of dandelions.” “A liquid, then,” Vane groped. “Gasoline maybe?” “No such application exists.” The professor was thoughtful. “The physical reaction would of course be different. Distillates of petroleum, heavier than air, would at first be dispersed. The cloud would be swept upward only to fall again, be thrust forward and back . . . a mist would develop, finely coating the acridids. The vapors would certainly affect their respiratory systems adversely, but to what extent I cannot say.” There came a sound Vane recognized as a pencil tapping on a desk. “An interesting proposition for a lunchtime discussion, but now is not the time. Such an application does not exist.” Another pause. “Professor,” Vane said very directly. “You’ve explained what won’t work. Tell me what will . . . please.” The tapping was resumed, then the slow careful voice. “No such application exists.” A tremendous sigh. “Mr. Vane, I sincerely regret the failure of your experiment. I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. However, the time is really pressing and I have much work of my own. Good day, sir.” The line went dead. “Good day?” Vane whispered. He replaced the receiver and turned away. “Egghead always busy,” Mudhead remarked. “Get Tibor back!” Vane walked over to Top Step and studied the northwest sky, hands clasped behind his back. He raised himself with his toes, relaxed. It was a typically clear, searing afternoon. Fragments of the just-concluded conversation nagged him while he tried to visualize a zillion ravenous locusts. In an instant his mind was made up. “Tibor back.” Vane forced a few deep breaths, strode under the Big Tarp and switched to Speaker. “Tibor, pay close attention here! Drop everything and listen like your life depended on it. If you do me right, I’ll make it possible for you to retire before the weekend. I want you to ring up every business that can perform aerial drops: cropdusters, firefighters, Park and Wildlife. Whatever. While you’re dialing, hook up with Denise Waters, the bank, and the Depot. Tell Denise I want complete and instant access to the bank’s deposits. When you get hold of these plane owners, don’t haggle with them. Just meet their demands. Buy whatever they’ve got. They won’t rent them out when they learn what I have in mind; the hoppers and holds could be damaged. Okay? Top dollar to all owners and pilots. Then get hold of the military and see if they’ll give us a hand. After that, ring up every gas station and every refinery and work some magic. I want all the gasoline you can get your hands on, pronto. And anything stronger you can find that’ll mix with it. Talk to the chemical men, call the factories. Time is everything. The money is not an object. Did you catch that? Write it down, Tibor. Underline it, put it in all caps, and relate it that way to Honey. Then secure some hazmat trucks and arrange an airstrip loading zone. Get everybody on their horses! Once you’ve got the timetable—” “Stop!” The word came like a pistol shot. “I have been handling your affairs,” Tibor snarled, “for going on two years, and I have yet to raise an objection. It has been my policy to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself, but I am telling you right now, Mr. Ever-loving Vane, that you are the absolute limit. The living end!” Dead air. Vane purpled. “Abandoned!” he howled. “Deserted!” He kicked over a table and three chairs, ripped the Big Clock off the Wall. “Betrayed!” It seemed another entire hour elapsed before that familiar peal sang on the radio. Vane hurried over. “Go.” 164

Microcosmia Tibor “Cris?” “Miss Waters! What did Tibor tell you?” “Enough. You’ve got some kind of emergency, and you’re after gas and planes. What’s the story?” “Okay, listen very closely and try not to interrupt. Time’s the big factor here. Time and you.” He explained the situation calmly and intelligently, laying out his plan with confidence and careful attention to detail. There was the longest pause. Vane banged on the receiver, suspecting a bad wire. Suddenly Waters screamed, “Get out of there, Cris!” There was a sound of random manic activity. “You’re not thinking clearly, baby! Let your project go. You can start it up again next year, somewhere else, anywhere else! Everybody knows you did your best.” Vane ground his teeth, realizing he was dangerously close to losing his final bid. “I . . . I guess you just wouldn’t understand, Denise.” “Then explain it to me! Tell me why one of the richest, luckiest, most eligible men in the world would commit suicide in an African desert, half a world away from the ones who love him.” She was hyperventilating. “Take a deep breath.” “Why do you think I’ve clung to this job for so long, Cris? Why do you think I’ve perched here in this gilded cage, monitoring your progress, handling your affairs, guarding you against enemies you’re not even aware of?” Vane blinked, sincerely confused. “Perhaps,” he said quietly, “you could fill me in.” “Not to watch you die in the middle of nowhere, darling. I’m not going to let that happen. I don’t care how pigheaded you are.” “Miss Waters,” he said levelly, “I’d like you to conference me with Saul Littleroth. Can you do that right away, please?” “Not until I’ve had a chance to prep him.” “Miss Waters—” “Now you take a deep breath, Cristian Vane! You’ll wait your turn.” There was a whispered curse. Half a minute later the voice said professionally, “One moment, sir.” The ether flickered with echoes and pings. A distant droning phased in and out while Vane seethed. “Cristian?” “It’s me, Saul. I don’t know what’s gotten into—” “Now you shut your mouth and listen, boy! I should have whipped the pants off you when I had the chance. You are without a doubt the most irresponsible, fatheaded person I have ever known.” Vane drew back from the radio. “Is everybody but me having a nervous breakdown?” “I’ll break you down,” Littleroth swore. “Just as soon as I get my hands on you. I’ve been patient all this time, and I’ve protected your interests at home, because it’s my job. But this is the end of the dance. You’re simply too immature to be let loose on the world. Denise is contacting your mail plane now. Hop aboard and get out of there while you still can.” “There are over five thousand people here with me, Saul. It’s a small plane.” “They’ll deal with it the way they always have. They’ve lived for ages in that damned desert. They’ll get along just fine once your little garden’s gone.” “Are you finished?” “I’m just getting started.” “Good. Saul, I want every detail of this conversation recorded.” “Done. That was my first move.” 165

Microcosmia Tibor “Denise, I want this call recorded on your end, too. Both records are to be time-stamped, copied onto floppies and hard disk. Transcribed, signed, notarized, sealed. Copies are to be held independently by both parties on this line. Should any of these conditions not be met, this order is to be considered legally null and void.” Denise sighed. “Alright, Cris. We’re on.” “Go ahead,” Littleroth said, speaking very clearly, very carefully. His voice came across like a sound-check. “By this transmission I, Cristian Honey Vane, officially relinquish my position as chief executive officer of the Honey Foundation in all its offices domestic and foreign. That position is hereby awarded to the Foundation’s very able presiding officer, Denise Waters. I declare myself sound of mind and body, and not under coercion. “Denise, you are now in full command of Honey’s assets; lock, stock, and barrel. I admit it, you guys; I admit it, I admit it. I’m not cut out for responsibility. Saul’s right, and you’re right. I’m a walking disaster. For Christ’s sake, Saul, is any of this legal?” Littleroth grunted. “Nothing’s finalized, Cristian. What this record demonstrates is that you are unfit to manage Honey by proxy.” He hesitated. “We won’t pretend any longer that your position is anything other than symbolic, if that’s your wish.” Littleroth sighed hugely. “Why was everybody expecting this call? And why do you always have to be so abrupt?” “Is this cool, or isn’t it?” “You have the legal right to release any or all of your interests to anyone you choose.” “Well, I’ve made my choice! And now maybe you two can start pulling Honey out of the red.” “Why not discuss some options first?” “You’d have to be here to understand,” Vane said. There was an undertone of excitement, of envy, in Littleroth’s response. “You’re really facing a plague of grasshoppers?” Vane drew his jile and turned it flashing in the sun. “Desert locusts.” He attempted to throw back his robes, but found he was standing on a hem. Vane knelt and very carefully rubbed out the smudge. “What’s it like?” “The feeling?” He stood erect, puffed his cheeks and blew out the breath. “It’s immense! Insane! Fantastic! Unreal!” “Listen to him!” Denise said. “Cris,” Littleroth said quickly, “get out of there. Now! I watched you grow up, boy. I was one of the guys who made sure nobody took advantage of you. And I saw a young man with tremendous potential, not a loser gobbled up by grasshoppers in the armpit of the world. Now listen to me, son. Get yourself a sleeping bag and a good bicycle. Wheel around the world and see and feel all the wonderful, all the real things Denise and I will never see and feel. Fall in love, fall out of love. Win and lose and start all over. You’ve got the stuff to make a real go of it, boy. Don’t let your heart mess up your head. Wire me, or wire Denise, whenever you need cash, and we’ll be right on it. Live, Cristian! Don’t be a sentimental ass.” Vane jumped right back at him. “It’s not sentimentality, Saul! I’m being practical. I’ve done a lot of growing up since I’ve been here. I’ve built something, I’ve made it work, and I’m not giving up on it! I . . . I talked to a scientist about this, Saul, an entomologist at Gabadube University, and he said I was practically a genius. My idea is not only right-on, it’s groundbreaking. We went over and over this for hours, you guys, and he guaranteed me it’ll work. The desert locust can’t breathe in a gas-air medium. I mean, think about it. Could you?” He had a sudden brainstorm. “What’s the name 166

Microcosmia Tibor of that stuff you spray into carburetors to make engines start quick? Paris used to use it when the Lincoln was cold. Ethel Somebody . . .” “Ethyl ether?” Littleroth wondered. “Yeah! That’s what that bug scientist called it. He said my idea would work a thousand times better if it was mixed in with regular gasoline. Completely cuts off the insects’ oxygen supply.” “Cris,” Denise said quietly. “Do you know how strong that stuff is? It’s liquid dynamite.” “What of it? Noboy’ll be hanging around smoking, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not crazy, Miss Waters. We’re as good as out of here. But I’m not just passively surrendering everything I’ve worked for to a bunch of goddamned grasshoppers! If this stuff’ll kill ’em before they get to my place then it’s worth any expense to me. I can always come back later, clean it all up and start over. But I want something to come back to! Don’t doubt me on this, Denise. I will start all over; I’ll start from scratch if I have to. But why should I? And why shouldn’t we make these drops to save the trees and gardens? Do you want to go through all that again? The purchases, the shipments?” Littleroth cleared his throat. Denise shot, “Don’t help me, Saul! I can see whose side you’re on. And don’t waste any more breath trying to reason with him. He’s not listening. He’s got a martyr complex. It’s not his fault, and he’s not even aware of it. Shut up, Cris!” “I didn’t say anything.” “You were going to. You were all set to make a lovely politically-correct speech about doing the right thing in a wrong world. You were just about to try to make us all feel not only guilty, but downright evil because of your project’s demise.” She was stuttering. “Oh, come on—” “Shut up! Shut up and listen.” Waters took a deep breath. “Before I’ll agree to anything, I want to know you’re out of there.” “You’ve got it. But, Miss Waters, the clock.” “The clock is stopped. I want your word.” “Can you pull it off?” “Mr. Tibor said the contacts are open for petroleum and equipment, as well as for a variety of volatile chemicals. The man was quite busy while we were waiting to be put through. You’re lucky to have such an efficient person on your side.” “Don’t I know it!” Vane gushed. “Me and good old Tibor are just about as tight as tight can be. God bless him, and God bless you too, Miss Waters.” “Cristian?” “We’re evacuating everybody right now, using pickup trucks. I’ll call you the moment I reach the Depot.” “Cristian . . .” “I give you my word, Miss Waters; my solemn, inviolable word. I swear on my life. I swear on my mother . . . besides, it’s my money, and I can use it any way I feel. That has nothing to do with Honey, right, Saul? Isn’t it mine?” “Shut up! I’m the boss now, Cristian.” “Denise,” Littleroth tried. “You shut up too, Saul!” “You may be the boss, Miss Waters, but you’re not my boss. Like I said, I quit.” “Isn’t this just childish,” Littleroth said. “Yes, it’s childish. It’s childish because I’m dealing with children. Believe it or not, Cristian, 167

Microcosmia Tibor there are people who love you, people who would be horribly affected it anything bad were to happen to you.” “Name two.” “Childish,” Littleroth muttered. “Grow up! Stop being so selfish all the time.” “Yes,” Vane said sarcastically, “mom.” For a long cold moment the line was dead. “Denise!” Vane called into his mouthpiece. “Miss Waters!” “Please don’t do anything foolish,” the voice said quietly. “Think of the people who worry about you.” “Name one.” “Cristian!” Littleroth challenged them both. “Why do I feel like an eavesdropper?” “Because you’re as immature as this idiot. All you little boys with your little fantasies. Go on, Saul. Gallop off with him. Simply throw off your responsibilities and join Huck wherever he roves. Run barefoot, run naked, run innocent and free. Steal apples instead of serving clients. God knows I’d love to go with you. But some of us grow up, boys.” “I knew it, Saul! I knew it, man! I knew that I, immature little polliwog that I am, could make at least one adult decision in my life. And I picked the best person on the planet to take over Honey.” “You did, boy,” Littleroth admitted. “My instincts were right about you.” “Good luck, Saul.” “Good luck, son.” “Shut up, both of you!” “You’re breaking up, Miss Waters,” Vane said, gradually moving his head back from the transmitter. “You’re . . . going, girl.” “Cristian!” “Believe in me, Deni . . . show me . . . care.” He switched off the set and popped out the power cord. “Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye, I think it’s about time you made one of those great speeches of yours I’m so famous for.” Mudhead bowed almost to the Mat. Vane returned the bow and threw the lever activating Utility Square alarms. After the short triple beeps had died away he enabled all Quad Speakers. To the Afar gathering around the Mount he bowed deepest of all, then looped an arm over his friend’s shoulders, flipped a switch on the motherboard, and steered Mudhead to the microphone. There was a short squeal of feedback. “Go ahead,” he said. “Do me proud.” Vane sat on a three-legged stool with his hands pressed between his knees and began to speak. “After all we’ve been through together, it looks like we’re all gonna have to shut down together. In a way we got lucky: we’ve got advance notice of a humongous swarm of locusts coming our way. We can’t see the swarm from here, but airplanes like the one that comes every week have seen it from high in the sky, and know its course and speed. The men who talk to the airplanes have told me the swarm will be here some time tomorrow night. It will spare nothing, but, before we all ‘achieve demise,’ I don’t see any reason we can’t evacuate this place, working through tonight and tomorrow, using the pickup trucks. We’ve done so many drills it shouldn’t be a problem.” Mudhead’s translation into Saho tapered off. Other than the small noises of animals and children there was dead silence. With his hands clasped behind his back, Mudhead slowly turned around, his expression bored. “Mamusetman already know plague. Runner tell Fieldman. Fieldman tell boy. Boy tell everyman.” A certain smugness lit his face. “Radio small deal.” 168

Microcosmia Tibor “This isn’t about your stupid pride, Africaman. It’s about survival. I just spent all day arguing with everybody and his mother, trying to make this happen so nobody gets hurt. We’re evacuating! ¿Comprende?” He glared at his motionless audience. “Excuse me. Am I stuttering? Why are all you bozos just standing there?” He rose dramatically, thrusting out his robes like great black wings. “Everybody pack up! You heard the man. Shoo! This fiasco’s history.” His only answer was a field of grins. After a minute he said out of the side of his mouth, “They’re not going anywhere, are they?” Mudhead shook his head. “Mamusetman.” Vane threw up his arms. “Idiots!” he cried. “I’m surrounded by idiots.” Mudhead nodded ironically. “Pretty amazing idiot.” The rest of the day was devoted to hammering out a strategy. Zero-hour drills grew increasingly tight and smooth, due both to the Afar’s conditioning and to their almost blind obedience to the harsh translated commands of Mudhead. There was absolutely no indication of a threat on the horizon, but that night dogs were howling like banshees, the bird population was all in a flap, and bawling cats were taking to the rooftops and Fields. Goats bleated, camels roared, children screamed at the constantly rattling hatches and coops. Fathers sent boys and girls shinnying up trees to hand down nestlings, and before dawn the last birds took off, ditching paradise for Hell. Within the hour they were all back, lighting in the canopies and rebounding. It was a big desert out there. When Vane opened the new morning with Strauss, he was surprised and elated to be standing before a perfectly clear sky. He spent half the day up on North Rim, pinching himself with one hand and gripping his walkie-talkie with the other, giving useless reports to Mudhead while wrestling with the idea of telling Tibor to call it off. Vane searched the horizon until his eyes were burning. A little after noon he noticed a wavy haze that gradually condensed into a thin dark line. The line wobbled at its flanks, appearing to thicken even as he stared. That was enough. He immediately rang up all Posts. At the sirens’ wail the Afar broke into a manic supermarket sweep, hurling everything salvageable into wheelbarrows and truck beds. Immature fruit was ripped from trees, leaves of root vegetables were hacked off for fodder, livestock and pets were rounded up and tethered indoors. Pickups were moved from Utility Squares to Guard Posts, that Guards might have last-minute transportation to the safety of Basement and Cellar. The Posts wouldn’t last five minutes in the coming storm. Upon completion, the Afar responded to a prolonged series of triple beeps by calmly filing into their Domos and firmly closing their walls and doors. Everything went without a hitch. With little else to do but be out and visible, Vane devoted himself to Bulwark stops, unable to keep his eyes off the horizon. By three o’clock the dark line was a flat black flow. Occasionally grayish towers would rise a thousand feet and more, collapsing even as others rose. In this way the swarm came on; an unreal, deepening entity lunging in slow motion. Four hours later the skyline was a heaving black shelf under the natural deep blue of twilight. Through his glass Vane could see dozens of swarm appendages appearing as independently flaring plumes; visible one moment, replaced by flanking plumes the next. The Afar remained locked inside their Domos, gills drawn. Only Vane, Mudhead, Kid, and the Guards were up on the Rim, watching the black cloud appear to compress itself as it approached. Soon it was so dense it completely obscured the world behind it. While they waited they grew aware of the swarm faintly pattering, its numberless wings beating like a distant downfall. Vane, twirling his forearms, signaled a Guard to trigger the chain of sirens. He was just turning over his pickup when a black hand found his shoulder. Though Mudhead brought his face up close, he couldn’t be heard under the sirens. At last he pointed upward. Vane leaned out. At around four thousand feet the fading sunlight was being reflected by a slowly banking 169

Microcosmia Tibor particle. In Mudhead’s binoculars the object became a helicopter flying well above and ahead of the swarm. As Vane gazed, a pair of enormous pontoons dropped from its undercarriage and erupted like pods. Two waves of a pink-green liquid broke up in the air. Behind and above the copter came an old Air Tractor, and behind and above it another little plane, and another. Vane squeezed the binoculars until his knuckles were white. “Tibor!” he cried, watching the twin puffs merge into a single slowly expanding cloud. The closing Air Tractor cut its engines. A few seconds later a smaller, similarlycolored cloud plunged and evened out. Once clear, the little plane’s engines were re-fired and the red gleam rose, banked, and receded. Vane swung back to the initial drop, glistening in the setting sun, and saw that the blood-olive droplets were slowly spreading. He lowered his gaze. Through the binoculars, individual insects could now be made out in the swarm, popping about in plumes that distended like flowing smoke and ash. High above and descending from the northwest, the long line of tiny aircraft blinked in the sun, veered deeply north, then swung ahead of the locusts to make their drops. So high were the planes that their loads, five hundred gallons and more, approached the earth only very gradually, buffeted by lofty winds and suspended by rising desert heat. The men on the Rim watched fascinated as each dully gleaming drop expanded to join a massive drifting island of dark greenish-violet mist. As further loads were absorbed, the mass gradually developed tapering limbs, and these fuzzy limbs, blood-and-bile against the glinting black swarm, descended as blown and battered shadow tentacles. The body of locusts couldn’t have been more than a few miles away. The swarm’s head was already being misted. Vane pounded Mudhead on the shoulder. “This is where they get it!” he exulted. “The end of the ride!” For the benefit of the Guard at his elbow he shouted, “They won’t be able to breathe! That godawful cloud is a mix of straight gas and Ethel Merman. When it gets in their little lungs they’ll suffocate, they’ll drown.” He nodded excitedly. “They’ll be dropping like flies any second now!” The Guard grinned and copied the nod, but as soon as Vane turned away he looked over at Mudhead with a completely perplexed expression. Vane strained against the binoculars until he thought his head would split. “They’re really taking a soaking, you guys! They look like little rubies with that ruddy sun on ’em. Jesus, there must be a billion, ten billion of them.” He sucked a deep breath between his teeth. Then for the longest time there was nothing to be heard but that otherworldly pattering of numberless wings. Finally Vane lowered the binoculars and squinted thoughtfully. “They don’t die all that easy, do they?” Mudhead grabbed his arm and shook it hard. “No more scienceman!” he said with uncharacteristic fervor. Vane didn’t like the look on his friend’s face at all. His eyes slid away guiltily. “Into house!” Mudhead snapped. “Now! Everyman! Go now!” Vane angrily yanked his arm free and stared up through the binoculars, desperately searching for anything unusual—a break in the pattern, a show of sluggishness . . . anything. What he saw was tens of thousands of frenzied locusts smashing into one another, zipping in and out of view, so close they seemed almost in his face. Behind the frontrunners, countless vaulting insects flashed like sparks before the setting sun. Like sparks . . . inspiration rocked Vane, ignited his brain, shook him like a wet dog. He dropped the binoculars and shoved Mudhead passionately. “Get in, man; get in-in-in-in in!” Mudhead backed away, regarding him strangely. After a sufficient pause he primly adjusted his white robes, walked with dignity around the front of the truck, and climbed in decorously. Before the door was halfway closed Vane had thrown the truck into first and taken off in a storm of dust and pebbles. “Tell the Guards,” he hollered, “to ditch their Posts. Order them to man the Bulwarks instead. I want 170

Microcosmia Tibor holes cut in the tops.” Mudhead’s mouth worked soundlessly. Before he could frame a sentence Vane had pushed the truck to the nearest Post and yelled, “East!” Mudhead leaned out barking instructions, hanging on with his left arm and pointing with his right. The Guard immediately sprinted for the neighboring Bulwark. Vane sped along to the next Post and screamed, “West!” Mudhead shouted the message while making chopping motions with his left arm. The Guard ran off. Vane tore down a Ramp honking the horn like a lunatic. The Afar popped out of Domos and came running behind, leaping into the truck’s bed recklessly. Vane fishtailed into a Utility Square and continued to hammer the horn while shouting himself hoarse. Mudhead, confused and unnerved, could only cling to the door and translate urgently. A dozen men and boys obediently grabbed pails and hopped aboard. Vane threw her into gear and made straight for the Mount. The nearest trucks, filling quickly with bucket-wielding bodies, fired up and raced right along behind him. The Afar, leaping out before their trucks had slowed, hit the ground running and made for the tarp-covered gasoline tanker. Nobody pushed, nobody fought or fell; each man balanced his pail as it was filled and jogged back to a waiting truck without spilling a drop. Once the bed of Vane’s pickup was full he stalled in reverse, lurched in first, nearly stalled again. The men and boys in back balanced their pails frantically, using their cupped hands to scrape spilled gas off the bed even as their driver careened across Ridge Bridge with the other trucks close on his tail. When Vane hit Rim Road he was so blown away he almost stalled the truck again. He drove weaving like a drunk to the bleak oblong silhouette of Bulwark NW14, the roiling, glistening spectacle filling his vision. A Guard stood on top waving his machete, looking like an animated scarecrow before a sky that was all locusts. Men leaped out of the truck and immediately formed a brigade up a ladder leaning against the Bulwark’s flank. While boys doused the Bulwark’s taut walls, the Guard ran back and forth along the top, pouring gasoline through holes he’d chopped in the canvas. Vane watched the trucks pulling up down the line, saw the spiders scurrying up the tall ladders. He ran to a Post where he could observe from between Bulwarks, and found himself confronting a solid wall of insects, completely saturated and coming on strong. He scanned high with Mudhead’s binoculars. The last plane was receding to the west, the final light in a string of miniscule jewels. He dashed back to his truck, hauled up Mudhead and yelled instructions in his face while leaning on the horn. In thirty seconds the bed was full of black clinging bodies. Pickups along the Rim honked in acknowledgement and raced to follow the leader. Mudhead leaned out the passenger’s window and coughed out directions in Saho as Vane sped along East Rim. The smell of gasoline was everywhere. They took a Ramp on two wheels, came down hard on Bisecting Way, and made straight for Stage Street. Other trucks, responding to the waved signals of Vane’s bailing riders, shot into the community, the men and boys spilling out and sprinting for their Domos. Vane hurtled round the Mount and straight into gutted Warehouse, taking out a stack of pallets and almost turning the truck on her side before stalling in a cloud of flour. The men staggered out coughing; Mudhead to a broad wood centerpost, Vane to a lethal pile in the corner. Vane commenced scattering boxes of explosives, miscellaneous chemical stores, and bits of broken machinery every which way, at last letting go with a whoop of triumph. That sound verified Mudhead’s worst fear, and when he saw Vane hauling out the sealed crate of flares he dropped to his knees in horror. “No, Bossman!” he gasped “Not fire . . .” The apocalyptic vision was too much for him. Mudhead collapsed on a pile of damaged gills, hands clutching his chest. Vane backpedaled dragging the crate, and as he crouched over Mudhead the gangly figure of Kid appeared outside, creeping up between the truck’s tracks. His black flashing eyes ran over the pickup, the men, the crate of flares between them. Putting two and two together, Kid ran inside, grabbed the dead end of the crate and helped 171

Microcosmia Tibor Vane heave it onto the bed just behind the cab. He watched intently as Vane stumbled back to help his number two. Vane had Mudhead halfway to his feet when he was arrested by the sound of shattering glass. Both men turned to see Kid spinning a pickax above his head and grinning wildly. The youngster cleared the remaining glass from the truck’s rear window by swiping the tool side to side, jumped behind the wheel and started the engine, revved it dramatically. “Not yet!” Vane hacked. “Guards first. Stop!” He sagged in the weight of Mudhead’s embrace. “God damn it, Kid, that’s an order!” Kid saluted smartly and threw the truck in reverse. He slammed it into a mound of loose fertilizer, jammed it in first and tore outside, barely keeping the truck under control. Still clinging, Vane and Mudhead ran wheezing up the Mount’s west slope just as the pickup swerved out of view. They froze in each other’s arms on the Stage, overwhelmed by the strangeness of the view. The entire northern sky was heaving with insects. Something wet slapped Vane’s face. He put a hand to his cheek and brought back a struggling locust, threw it down in disgust, stamped on it twice. The next thing he knew they were plummeting all around; bouncing off the Big Tarp, slamming into the Stage, instantly rebounding in the direction of anything growing. Vane bent to his Eyes in a dark driving rain. North and West Rims looked like fog banks dissolving in a blizzard. Behind this blizzard a black wave was crashing in slow motion. He scanned Rim Road rapidly, west to east, until he caught the little white truck reeling through the blur. A tiny red light appeared above the cab. A second later it was arcing toward a Bulwark’s wall. “Go!” Vane shouted. He shoved Mudhead hard. “Run like hell.” Mudhead fluttered down the Steps toward his Domo, slipping on flopping insects, while Vane watched Kid tossing flares as fast as he could reach back and grab them. Gas-soaked canvas caught immediately. Flames raced up the sides, danced along the tops, and then a strange, jerky strand of fire was leaping Bulwark to Bulwark. Landing locusts combusted and shot off like sparks in a foundry, blew away as fiery puffs, ignited pyrotechnically in random clumps and streaks. Silhouetted against leaping spires, the wriggly sticks of burning Guards ran staggering down the Inner Slopes. Kid’s weaving pickup slammed into a Bulwark and bounced away, red tendrils clinging to its side. An instant later the little truck was a fireball spinning down East Inner Slope. Right before Vane’s eyes, the entire Rim blew into a swirling ring of fire. He pried himself from his Eyes and tumbled down the Steps to Stage Street, his body casting erratic shadows in all directions. He paused in the middle of the Street, unable to resist a last look. The Bulwarks were now a string of exploding firecrackers, hurling lightning-like prominences in all directions. Behind this intense display, the great wave of locusts was just breaking on the bright hoop of leaping flames. Vane put down his head and ran, kicked open his gate and staggered through his front Yard in a vile downpour. And then all hell broke loose: locusts, exploding in pockets, shot into the crater as flaring pinwheels, radiated shrapnel-wise, flashed and passed. Those insects separated by a yard or more caught fire individually, while those coming down in tight groups went right back up like sparklers. Locusts in actual physical contact created zigzagging streamers and wobbly arms. A tower of flame rose out of West Rim. Another appeared to the north. Vivid red veils swayed back and forth, momentarily spiking at points of particular intensity. Then, in one great spewing ejaculation, the entire Rim became a broad envelope of flame. Overhead, a cloud of tiny meteors shot past in a dazzling rush, their moist smoke tails dropping to drag through the trees as long wavy ghosts. Suffocating in a hot noxious fog, Vane shielded his face, was knocked on his side, groped to his feet and was knocked right back down. He scrambled to his knees and pitched headfirst through his front door, pulling a cloak of smoke in behind him. He slammed the door, his eyes and lungs on fire. The door flew back open. A heartbeat later a hundred lunatics were hammering on his roof. 172

Microcosmia Tibor Worthless and Solomon lay huddled in a far corner, trying to escape the inrushing smoke. Vane was overcome by coughing. On his knees, he swam blindly through the acrid fumes and lunged into the huddle. Jus outside. a torrent of flaming locusts spattered and skidded on the walk. The last thing Vane remembered was choking on a mouthful of fur in a jackhammer hail. He and his beasts, competing for air, went spinning into abyss.

173

Chapter Eighteen Worthless To the Afar, Daybreak had become a near-religious event; they saw sunrise without Strauss as Mamuset’s death knell. Still they’d shown as a unit, their faces and bodies smudged, their eyes roughened by want of sleep. But there was no functioning equipment left to meet the dawn; everything was fried and mangled under stinking drifts of slag. The crater’s floor was a deep dish of ash and carbonized locust carcasses, peppered with chunks of charred wood and blackened foliage. A burnt stench clung to everything. So much smoke remained in the air that the pocked hulls of Domos stood indistinctly amid the scarred trunks of birches and elms. It was thick enough to make dawn a miserable twilight. Still, the Afar had shown, and, when that first feeble ray cut to the Stage, they watched dumbfounded, standing elbow-to-elbow as their logy leader threw back his head and spread his singed robes wide. “I,” he cried to no one in particular, “am a freaking genius!”

Throughout the morning, Afar men ran their wheelbarrows up and down the Streets, halting to accept shoveled piles of locusts and running on. Stationed teenagers did the shoveling. Women raked the bodies into piles. Tots with wet rags tied below their eyes used sticks to knock carcasses from the remains of trellises and shrubs. The men would hurry their full wheelbarrows back to Utility Squares, where drivers shoveled pound after pound of roasted vermin into truck beds. The dead locusts were then dispersed around the Rim and raked down Outer Slopes into a narrow encircling ditch. For miles beyond this ditch, the desert was carpeted with burned insects and crawling with scavengers. The noxious shroud rose as the day heated up. Noses and mouths were covered less frequently, 174

Microcosmia Worthless animals got underfoot with new vigor. After a good soaking, boys and girls climbed into trees. Once secured, they were handed up long poles. Hundreds of thousands of dead locusts were beaten from the leaves. Vane’s sense of triumph over nature was short-lived—his victory-ride around the Rim turned his stomach. Everything that could be burned had been burned. Thatch roofs were now peaked piles of ash, Shade Halls fire-eaten rags. Warehouse was a collapsed, reeking mess of dark hanging threads. Black rivulets, produced by the constant hosing down of charred material, were everywhere. Overall it was a gray and dismal world, but here and there flashes of color showed in devastated gardens. What depressed Vane most was his Rim view of the yellow, sickly-looking treetops. It was difficult to objectively assess damage to the great saving Canopy, central as it was to the wonderful home he’d built. Even as he was staring, a couple of long poles pierced the ruined crown of a nearby higan cherry. The poles banged about crazily, accompanied by squeals of delight. Fried grasshoppers rained all around. And then Worthless, hypnotized by her own plodding rhythm, was almost clipped by a sooty truck tearing along Rim Road, its bed full of grinning teenagers wielding shovels and rakes. It struck Vane then: the place would heal! Mamuset’s only real casualties had been Kid and the Post Guards. The Afar were strong, experienced, and eager to rebuild. And even now, outside his command, that eagerness was running through the Streets, up the Ramps and over the Rims. Children, their little black heads bobbing and racing in the Fields, were scooping locusts into sandbags with competitive zeal. Oxen were dragging lakes and ponds. Burned patches of grass were being uprooted, tainted soil replaced with fresh. All at once Vane hated his memoirs. He’d been behaving like a retiree. He poked Worthless into a half-assed trot, his mind shifting gears. First off, he’d have to prepare for another swarm. They’d been lucky; now it was time to be smart. He’d been a self-absorbed, arrogant peacock. But how to have known? Guns and grasshoppers . . . Vane thereupon determined to be equally tutor and student, to ready Mamuset for anything. It was time to get dirty. It would be old days again. The ditch accepted its last locust and was covered over. Trees were pruned by adventurous teenagers, leaf by leaf, until the Canopy achieved its former luster. New thatch was laid on roofs, new equipment purchased for the Stage. The Afar patched and puttered, as focused as ever, determined to build a community more exotic and splendid than before. The weeks passed. Fields were revitalized, gardens restored with daily imports from the Honey Oases. But the new Warehouse, Big Tarp, and Shade Halls had to be erected out of salvaged patches, for, in the process of ordering fresh canvas through Army Surplus in Addis Ababa, Vane learned that supplies were being sewn up by the government. A very real war was taking place outside his little fantasy world. Vane’s failure to take his surroundings seriously perfectly illuminated his irresponsible nature. Anywhere you put him, he’d be out of sync with reality. Practically on the borderline of warring nations, and he’d been too busy studying insects and weather patterns to heed the approaching front—though he was warned almost daily by his capitol connections. Then one day, while ringing Tibor to be put through to Honey, he was shocked to learn he was on his own. A bomb-laden locomotive had taken out a terminal in Addis Ababa, expanding Tibor’s State Department duties considerably. Now non-critical use of airwaves was flat-out denied; only a bona fide emergency would get Vane’s voice across the Atlantic. As time passed, it grew harder and harder to squeeze anything out of the capitol. Worse, the Vane Depot was being shut down due to a dynamiting of the tracks on the Ethiopian side of Djibouti’s border. Goods ordinarily transported from Port Djibouti to Addis Ababa via rail were being trucked overland by a complicated system of roads and passes. Aksum and Mekele, small but 175

Microcosmia Worthless commercially important centers northwest of Danakil, had fallen to Eritrea without protest. According to Tibor, the Depression was all but surrounded. Vane’s final conversation with Honey’s liaison came on the eve of the project’s penultimate threat, but it had nothing to do with broadcasts and borders. It was all about drugs and savages. Tibor told Vane that communication outside Ethiopia was no longer possible. He warned the American to pack up and seek refuge in the Republic of Djibouti, coolly explaining that Ethiopia was way too busy to support Mamuset once it came under attack. And he stressed the inevitability of that attack. Fighting to the north and south was described as far more intense than Vane’s peripatetic sources would have him believe. But what really got his attention was Tibor’s description of the Eritrean vanguard. The man drew a nasty verbal picture of a particularly bloody brand of guerrilla warfare, practiced by rogue Somali and Kenyan mercenaries who attack without warning, and with a frenzied behavior reminiscent of the Berserkers during their European assaults. These mercenaries are a loose company without discipline, and although they are provided the uniform of Eritrea’s elite Port Guard, they swear allegiance to nothing higher than an ancient form of Kenyan demonism. Their only weapon is the machete. They come at night, soundlessly and without preamble, assaulting their victims regardless of age or gender, spontaneously and collectively morphing into adrenaline-blinded dervishes of whirling steel. By way of response, their deeply superstitious victims become frozen slabs of mute terror. This reaction, according to Tibor, only further excites the assailants, who will not be freed of their murderous mania until felled by exhaustion. Even then they will continue to hack and dismember the dead, howling all the while. These savages, Tibor explained, are fueled in their attacks by megadose injections of heroin and amphetamine, distributed through Port Massawa. It is these drugs, taken singularly in encampments and in combination just before an actual assault, that are responsible for initiating and maintaining their demonic religion’s ages-old practice of seek-andmutilate. The addiction is sponsored by the Eritrean Army, which organization also provides this bizarre company, its most feared and effective weapon, with syringes and strike points. It is the job of these maniacs to soften up a target before the actual military strike. They proceed well ahead of traditional ground forces, but not because their superiors think they’re such clever scouts. It’s because they scare the hell out of the regular troops. And once they’re up they will not take orders, or in any manner be put off their game. They are utterly merciless and entirely without remorse. Vane was bugged enough by this conversation to renew drills in Mamuset, complete with target practice, mobile distribution fans, and that family-oriented, run-and-load maneuver, the Ripple. New Bulwarks and Posts were erected. The Piper Cub, sent on a Mekele reconnaissance flyover, returned with two bullet holes in a wing and one in the fuselage. Vane set up sentry shifts all around the Rim, fortified the Onramp, and hired wandering tribes of goatherds to sniff out the expanding Eritrean front. But when the assailants showed they breached all defenses, and virtually without warning— only a single, quickly truncated siren’s wail spoke for the dozens of throats slit in complete silence. The hopped-up savages, singly and in clusters, came rolling down the Inner Slopes like water. Relying on surprise and terror, they burst into Domos whirling steel. They were obviously ignorant of the project, for these wildmen, some two hundred in all, were quickly lost in the unfamiliar crisscrossing jungle of Mamuset. Without leadership, and without anything tighter than mayhem for a battle plan, the savages, in their official Port Guard uniforms, red and gold berets, and Nike knockoffs, found themselves wasting precious wrath chasing individuals through the strange obstacle course of Yards, gardens, and Shade Halls. When an invader did halt, 176

Microcosmia Worthless from exhaustion or disorientation, he was likely as not to find himself standing amid three or more Mamusetans with M16s leveled. The Afar were not stingy with ammunition—some of the spot carnage taking place in secret garden pockets that night put to shame all the damage done by the savages’ blades. Those who came in over West Rim found themselves nonplussed by a maze of open Fields, with nothing to take their bloodlust out on other than an occasional tethered camel or snoozing Field hand. Disastrously conspicuous in their frustration, they were picked off by treetop snipers one by one as they approached the community. Vane could find no pattern in the muffled popping of rifle fire. Fearing a diversion, he called for a defense of the Onramp, and in less than five minutes was heading a force of over a hundred armed men and boys making for the Arch. But by the time he reached that goal he was practically on his own. Only he, Mudhead, and half a dozen excited children remained to defend the Arch—the men had deserted en route to join the fighting in the trees. Vane raged mightily at this treachery, storming back and forth with his black robes swirling impressively, but it really didn’t matter. Generally speaking, surprise attacks don’t use the front door. The Onramp was deserted. Vane’s ego was the attack’s most dismissible casualty; once their blood was up, the Afar had absolutely no use for him. Ditching the children with difficulty, he stormed back to the Stage, attached his night-imaging binoculars, and hunkered down to his tripod. Not a trace of activity on the Slopes; no sign of a continuing assault, no sign of a retreat. But there were cries of exultation leaking out of the trees, punctuated by volleys of rifle fire. The place was out of control. Vane jumped in Isis, roared up a Ramp, and screeched to a halt at a Guard Post. He climbed out with dignity and panache, adjusted his turban, fluffed his robes, and strode purposefully to the Post’s quarters. Inside he found the Guard and his family decapitated, dismembered, and mutilated in ways suggestive of great passion. Vane staggered back to the Land Rover and sat with the door open wide, his head between his knees. After a while, when he’d found his breath, he rolled down a Ramp to Bisecting Way, motored along to Stage Street, and so on up to his front gate. For some time he sat idling in a fog, sick to the quick. At last he killed the engine. Mamuset was as still as a cemetery. Vane gently opened the gate, tiptoed over to Worthless’s pad and quietly hauled out her saddle. Solomon, seeing the camel move, shot from concealment and nipped her rear a good one. Worthless roared to her feet. Vane kicked back the dog and heaved on the saddle, walked her out the gate and mounted. The three moved uneventfully through the dark community until Vane noticed, perhaps a quarter-mile away, a rectangle of light spilling from a Domo’s doorway. A few wraithlike figures could be seen scooting in and out of that slat of light, their arms encumbered by white bundles. When the Square was still again he steered Worthless into the front Yard, careful to guide her around hard surfaces that would herald his coming. He brought her right up to the side of the doorway, just beyond the spill of light. Both brute and rider craned their necks to peer inside. In the room’s very center, a mortally injured man lay on a thatch bed, attended by four smeared and bespattered women. Blood all over the place. The women, two kneeling on either side of the bed like nuns at prayer, were holding fresh rags against the bleeding man’s wounds. Soaked rags were piled in a corner. Vane was painfully moved by their silent efficiency, but the preoccupied women were unaware of his bloodless suffering presence until Worthless, her nostrils quivering, snorted quizzically. The women looked up as a unit, and as a unit glared. The scene froze like that, and threatened to remain frozen if someone didn’t do something soon. Finally one woman rose and stormed around the bed to the doorway. Her eyes screamed at the startled man in black as she slammed the door in 177

Microcosmia Worthless his silly pink face. Worthless stuttered and spat, shied, rocked up and down. With Vane holding on for dear life, she went running backward through the Yard, Solomon nipping her bottom excitedly. Once in the Street, Worthless turned face-forward, threw back her head and galloped wildly, Vane hammering the back of her neck frantically, his feet slipping in and out of the stirrups. He clung giddily for half a mile, and was positively relieved when a small crowd of men with flashlights ran out of the dark to intercept him. Although he couldn’t understand a word they were saying, he felt the war excitement leaping man to man. Aiming their flashlights south, they hauled him off and hustled him down the dark Street. In a minute he made out a Streetlamp’s glow on a functioning Utility Square, and heard a kind of chanting from what must have been several dozen voices. A little boy ran out of the Square to greet them, squealed with delight, and ran back in. Soon a knot of grinning men appeared. When they saw Vane they grabbed his arms and dragged him along joyously, like children urging a parent to their big Christmas surprise. Gently shining in an eerie halogenous frost, a huge mound of cadavers and body parts spilled out into a wide ring of ecstatic Afar, each man brandishing an M16 in one hand and a machete in the other. The corpses had literally been shot to pieces; heads and limbs blasted off torsos, uniforms blown off bodies. Faces and guts were black gaping holes. Now the ring of men, for Vane’s savage delectation, went ballistic on the pile with their enemy’s machetes. Pieces of the dead flew in all directions. That same little boy scampered flapping to the pile. He bent down, reached in, and ran up to Vane giggling deliriously. In his tiny fist was three fifths of an oozing black hand. Vane turned to stagger back and forth along the Street, at last stumbling into a Square’s side Yard. He dropped to his knees in a bed of violets and was violently ill.

That morning Mamuset held its first communal funeral. Forty-one Afar had died at the hands of the Eritrean vanguard, every one on the spot. Two hundred and nine savages—the entire offensive force—had been killed outright, or by means as slow and agonizing as the Afar could devise. Having learned, through Mudhead, of the victors’ intrinsic need for further mutilation, Vane ordered all enemy body parts trucked to East Rim and hurled over the side. The lazy vees of carrion birds were making for the perimeter before the last head rolled to a halt. The funeral was not arranged or conducted by Mamuset’s founder and guiding hand; indeed, he didn’t have a clue until Mudhead pointed out certain Squares where men and women were dismantling Domos while their children carefully dug up gardens. He watched through his Stage Eyes, fascinated, as the personal Square of each slain defender was systematically reduced to a blank patch of dirt. Even the Squares’ trees were uprooted and dragged, along with every scrap of material, to Warehouse. There gills were neatly stacked, flowers potted, thatch rolled and tied, foundation concrete shattered, pulverized, and bagged. The dead Afar were wrapped in hides and buried at the centers of these glaringly bare dirt lots. Their Squares were retired, the numbered tools placed neatly in corresponding Utility Square shed slots. The slots were adorned with personal items. Family members of the deceased were smoothly adopted by neighbors. The entire operation, with all hands involved, took less than two hours. Vane, again struck by his total uselessness, spent the morning in Warehouse dabbling with Inventory and trying to rethink his place in affairs. He didn’t like being left out, didn’t like being 178

Microcosmia Worthless taken for granted. Not that he needed praise or gratitude or anything, of course; he was light years beyond that kind of stuff . . . but, alone there in that hot dusty cavern, he began indulging in retributive fantasies, imagining the Afar worshipping him as a great white god capable of wrath as well as wisdom. The oppressive atmosphere of Warehouse stifled him, the passion of these dreams wore him out. He shook off a large draping cloth and laid it on a pile of bagged potting soil, carefully smoothed his robes and got comfortable. Vane tilted down his turban to block the light, and was just drifting off when the compound wail of a dozen sirens snapped him out of it. He squared his turban and swept back his robes, unholstered his walkie-talkie and called Mudhead to the Stage radio. Mudhead reported the advance of Army vehicles from the northeast, still at a considerable distance. Now wide awake and dead-serious, Vane made straight for Isis. When he reached East Rim he marched to the nearest Post and stood shoulder to shoulder with the new Guard, whose personal items were still being ported up the Ramp by his donkey, camel, and family. The Guard made a sweeping gesture while nodding with grudging admiration. Vane squinted and looked concerned. The desert was absolutely vacant. He placed a comforting hand on the Guard’s shoulder and squeezed, nodding in return, then slunk around a Bulwark and peered through his spyglass. Now he could make out a dark crescent in the waves of heat—a crescent that soon became endless ranks of troop transports approaching from north to east. Vane hopped back in the Land Rover and raced around to South Rim with only one thought in mind: the Onramp! The damned Onramp was a red carpet. The wild sound of his horn drew a scrambling crowd of M16-toting men and boys. Vane shot under the Arch, over Ridge Bridge and into Warehouse. There he transferred to a dirty white Nissan pickup while the crowd poured in behind him. He repetitively and emphatically lowered his arms, until the Afar obediently put down their weapons. But they were reading his broad hand gestures through the eyes of an eager fighting unit, and commenced cheerfully tossing cases of dynamite into the truck’s bed. Vane sat on eggshells while they wrestled for spots. He drove back to the Arch like an old woman. It broke his heart to blow the Onramp, but he knew the Afar would repair it, rock by rock. The blasts took a huge bite out of the ridge just where it became one with the Rim; nothing short of a company of hang gliders would span it. By the time the demolition work was done the enemy’s trucks were fanning out to surround the crater, forming ripple-like rings, maybe a hundred feet apart. The nearest ring halted half a mile away. Soon a number of jeeps and trucks split ranks to drive up the Onramp the long way, parking crosswise at the gap. Vane stood watching defiantly from the Mamuset side, until a call from Mudhead got him back in the Land Rover and jamming to East Rim. Tiny in the desert, a single jeep had broken from the pack and was slowly rolling their way. East Rim was already lined with Mamusetan sharpshooters, atop Bulwarks and on the ground, their rifles dead on the approaching vehicle. Vane climbed a Bulwark, stepped around the prone bodies, and stood silhouetted against the sky, peering through his glass. In the jeep were only the driver and a man sitting on the passenger seat’s back, rocking all over the place as he fought for balance. This man, noticing Vane, slapped his palm on the driver’s shoulder repeatedly while pointing with his free hand. The driver veered and made for Vane, stopping the jeep a few hundred yards away. The passenger stood on his seat and studied the billowy black figure through binoculars. He swatted the driver impatiently. The driver handed him what looked like a telephone receiver. The passenger disentangled its cord and waved the receiver over his head. Still watching, Vane fumbled out his walkie-talkie and called Mudhead, who transmitted back as soon as he picked up the caller on the Stage radio. Vane demanded an English-speaking officer. Half a minute later he saw the man in the jeep nodding emphatically. “On my way,” Vane said. He 179

Microcosmia Worthless drove back to the Stage like a hyper teenager. Mudhead was waiting under the Big Tarp, his expression closed. He handed Vane the receiver. “For you.” Vane caught his breath. “Cristian Vane here.” “And here, field commander Haile Muhammed Sai-erin. Sir, you are presently entrenched in territory occupied by the nation of Eritrea.” “Not the last time I looked. Mamuset is a tract legally purchased from Ethiopia state.” “I suggest you look again, sir. Your situation is entirely untenable. You are surrounded by regiments of the Eritrean Army, under orders to take this desert. You and your subjects will be allowed safe passage. It is our wish there be no casualties here.” “I think we got a taste of your intentions last night.” Long pause. “Sir, if you are referring to this moat of gore . . . those men were not Eritrean soldiers. They were Kenyan nationals, hired to precede our forces as scouts against possible ambush. Their behavior in no manner represents the official policies of Eritrea, regardless of what you may have heard. If they were prey to a savage call outside our purview . . . well, it would appear they were unequal to that call. At any rate, they were little better than animals, and blasphemous ones at that. You have done both the Eritrean Army and the vultures a great favor.” “Don’t make us do those vultures any more favors, commander. Way too much has gone on here to just passively pack up and march out. I don’t expect you to understand that.” “Of course I understand, sir, of course. Your project has become quite famous in East Africa. She is known as The Desert Rose, and to storytellers everywhere Cristian Vane is pure Hollywood legend: the great celluloid adventurer. He is Charles Allnut, he is Captain Blood, he is Indiana Jones. You did not know this? Sir! Your exploits are followed with much envy and admiration. And your pirating of a major cargo vessel beneath the very nose of Massawa—cracking good! Ah, Mr. Vane, it would crush we lambs of Muhammad, may peace be upon him, to see harm befall such an original and creative man. Ours is a great tradition of honoring the independent and innovative. Having such a man perish at his peak would be a sinful thing, sir, a sinful thing. I will not countenance it! No! I will not have your blood on my hands. In fact, I will guard your life as though it were my own. To this end I give you my word. Accept my escort. Come parley with me and I guarantee you, Allah be praised, that no harm will come upon your fair head this day.” Vane ground his teeth. “But it’s so very hot in the desert, commander. How much better to discuss the situation here, under these lofty green trees.” An uncertain laugh. “My word, Mr. Vane! But how would that appear to my command? You are trifling with me, sir. Let us speak no more of this. Let us, instead, speak intelligently; as men more accustomed to grace than thunder.” A thin wail began on North Rim. Seconds later, three others joined in from East Rim. In half a minute sirens were crying from all directions. “It would appear,” Vane said coldly, “that the first man has already spoken.” He handed the phone to Mudhead and jumped back in Isis. He was really putting on miles. As he neared East Rim he made out the sound of gunfire, but the reports were far too clear to be coming from outside the crater. The Afar were firing! Vane floored Isis and tore up a Ramp recklessly, his heart in his throat. His people were defending Mamuset! By the time he reached Post E17 the Ripple was already in full motion. East Inner Slope was a steady flow of women hurrying up to Exchange Stations with fresh rifles, then running back down with discharged guns to Load Stations for new magazines. The boys at Exchanges scrambled up 180

Microcosmia Worthless ladders to the prone riflemen, often as not their fathers, with replenished rifles, grabbed the spent guns and scrambled back down. This operation was done with such ingrained precision that riflemen could exchange arms almost without a break in what seemed relentless triple-bursts of gunfire. Kid’s swaggering leadership had been taken seriously: the Afar were hard-wired to fire. And fire they did. Vane, as he viewed East Rim’s Outer Slope leaping with billygoats in fatigues, cursed mightily the enemy commander and all his forebears; while he’d been distracted on the horn, the inner ring of troop transports had been pulling right up to the Outer Slopes. These vehicles now shielded snipers, who occasionally hopped out to fire in volleys while their storming partners scurried for whatever shelter they could find. From his vantage in front of the Post, Vane saw over a hundred trying to make their way up the Slope in spurts as the second ring of transports roared forward. But the Afar were only invigorated. Like drunken cowboys, they fired without hesitation, without fear, sometimes without aim. Fresh M16s appeared in their hands before the children could scoop up the hot spent rifles. The rattle of gunfire became a sonic blur; one long rolling wave of nerve-wracking detonations. Vane crept along a Bulwark’s side wall like a man on a ledge, peeped over the edge and got a good look at East Outer Slope. Soldiers on the way up were now soldiers on the way down, the earth erupting around them. They were dancing as if their shoes were on fire, all adrenaline and prayer. Bullets, whizzing about in an unbroken swarm, pulverized rocks into clouds of dust. The retreating men were being shot off their feet, shot in the air, shot as they tumbled. At the bottom, body parts from the previous night’s butchering popped like corn. Trucks, their windows and tires already shot to pieces, were jerking and rocking from the constant metal hail while soldiers scrambled to burrow beneath them. From flat on the Rim and from prone on Bulwarks, the Afar rose in unison, firing wildly in their passion, caught up in a sustained howl of bloodlust. Their women echoed this passion on the Inner Slopes, punctuated by screams from children. And the bodies on the Outer Slopes bounced and burst with the fury of the barrage, were lost in clouds of dust, reappeared flipping through the air, were blasted to pieces that again were lost in the dust. A hellish choir of sirens cut through the voices and gunfire. More sirens joined in, and then the Rim was a ring of screaming bobcats. The few trucks containing living drivers broke as one, driving on their rims over the dismembered dead in a desperate slow motion flight. These pathetically fleeing targets were shot up until roofs, hoods, doors, and fenders had been blown away. The sirens and voices faded, the storm of gunfire died, and in less than a minute a profound silence embraced the crater. Vane might have been a cartoon painted on the Bulwark’s side; the only things alive on him were his eyes, intently watching the Afar for the least movement. But all defenders were standing in a pose of complete attentiveness, staring out over the immediate desert like wooden Indians. On the Inner Slopes the women and children were sitting silently, almost reverently. Camels, oxen, and dogs, picking up on this new tension, reclined deeply, without a hiss or whimper. The stillness, the unreality of the situation, became so protracted Vane began to experience little panic attacks. Yet he’d been around the Afar long enough to respect their deep-rooted responses. So he remained there, splattered against the Bulwark, while his pink face purpled and his gray matter faded to black. The world was absolutely static. Finally, on some subtle signal lost to Vane, the surviving soldiers jumped from beneath their trashed trucks and bolted across the desert. The Rim instantly erupted with fire. The sprinting men all dropped in their tracks. But this sloping hail of lead seemed it would never end. Vane watched sickened as the scattered corpses flopped about like fish out of water. The butchery ceased abruptly, and the first battle for Mamuset was history. 181

Microcosmia Worthless The Afar strutted back and forth, their blood up and their heads tossed high. When Vane had seen enough he peeled himself from the Bulwark and staggered back toward Isis. Before he could protest, a multitude of men and women had converged on him, lifted him on their shoulders, and carried him to the back seat on a carpet of cheers. He was placed standing on the seat with children clinging to his legs. A howling old man hopped into the driver’s seat and fired the Rover up. Honking the horn insanely, he slowly drove through a crowd soon numbering in the several hundreds. As Isis crept along Bisecting Way it seemed the entire community was turning out for Vane’s elevation to godhead. Men, women, and children ran down the Inner Slopes and across the Fields, burst out of the trees, locked the Land Rover in a roiling sea of heads and shoulders. And for one wild minute there his eyes were misting over. He was Caesar, he was MacArthur—Cristian Honey Vane was the bleeding Pope. When he was himself again he raised his arms in a gesture for silence. Those nearest responded with a deafening cheer. Vane shook his head sharply and lowered his arms by degrees. The crowd went wild. “Help!” he hollered into the CB’s transmitter. “For Pete’s sake!” Mudhead, watching impassively on the Stage, obediently switched on the Utility Square alerts. It took a few minutes for the triple-beeps to pierce the hubbub, but little by little the crowd drifted off to the Mount to catch Mudhead’s translation of Vane’s exultant transmission. Mamuset, Mudhead announced, had performed splendidly. Khrisa Vahn was proud. The cheer that went up shook the new Big Tarp, shook the leaves on the trees, shook the dumbfounded Army listening without. But, Mudhead went on loudly, what they had endured was only a skirmish. The Army would be back, angrier than ever, and this time with many, many more men. Ecstasy. Vane sat hard on Isis’s punished upholstery, fighting back the tears as the cheering went on and on and on. Up on the Bulwarks, the specks of dancing riflemen could be seen shooting into the air. “Wasting ammo,” Vane sputtered. Mudhead reported back: these men were shooting the guns of butchered soldiers, salvaged by children on the Outer Slopes. The celebration leaned this way and that, perplexing to Vane in its exotic African ways, and when he finally broke free he found himself drifting home, confused by his emotions. But he was still too excited to sit. So he saddled up Worthless and clopped off to the Rim to watch the enemy buildup. It was far more impressive than he wanted to admit. All day long he rode round and round, and all day long a parade of trucks and caissons buttressed the growing web of troops and artillery. Soldiers set up canopies between the corner posts of their trucks’ sidings, and in this artificial shade cleaned their weapons, took naps, played dominoes. Mortars and small cannons were wheeled through and locked down. And still the trucks rolled in. By twilight it was solid Army as far as the eye could see. The Afar, entranced, competed for gawking space atop Bulwarks, piggybacking their children. That night they stood in their thousands around the Rim, scattering eerie shadows by the light of hundreds of tiki torches. The troops occasionally responded with lights of their own, idling their trucks with high beams blazing. When they grew bored they played with directional signals and emergency flashers, hoping to unnerve the defenders. Confused, the Afar responded by leaning their torches left and right, lifting them up and setting them down. It was all very disconcerting for Vane. He slept fitfully that night, under the stars on a canvas mat at Top Step. His dread of the coming day pursued him into his dreams. But at the crack of dawn he was on his feet and waiting, along with a breathless audience of 182

Microcosmia Worthless over five thousand Afar, for Strauss’s theme to peak. And when that first spear of perfectly-cued sun broke the horizon, it was accompanied by a rolling cheer that flowed across the crater and over its walls. Vane pounded Worthless to her feet and paraded around the Stage like a rock star, caught up in the growing blush of dawn. Only the radio’s familiar chiming snapped him out of it. He knelt Worthless with an attitude, dismounted lustily and snatched the receiver. “Yes?” “You don’t carry, by any chance, Blue Danube?” Vane sobered. “Sorry. Wrong Strauss. Besides, we don’t take requests from enemies.” There was a huge sigh. “Mr. Vane, this whole business is a grave misfortune.” “You can change your fortune.” Another sigh. “I will concede that so far we have been mightily embarrassed. And I will share a piece of intelligence with you: there is nothing in our training to prepare us for a ground assault on a natural fortress such as yours. Be that as it may, you will certainly see that, with persistence on our part, your cause must inevitably be lost. Sooner or later your walls will be breached. Sooner or later your ammunition will be depleted, your stores of food and water exhausted.” “Commander, our supplies, and our heart, are no less imposing than our walls. We are prepared to hold out indefinitely. I like it here, commander. And I’m looking forward to dying of old age.” “Mr. Vane, nothing could make me happier than to have you die of old age. But that will not happen here. Please command your subjects to remove themselves in an orderly fashion, and to distance themselves as a population from you personally, and from any of your underlings. Your palace will be spared, your retinue permitted to retain whatever privileges they have been accorded. You will be escorted in complete comfort, and with pomp sufficient to maintain your regal image. We understand the necessity of such impressions.” A pause for emphatic effect. “I am empowered to authorize your unmolested transfer to Massawa or Aseb, or to Djibouti by way of the Red Sea, or, in fact, to any amenable port that is non partisan in this affair. You will be generously remunerated for your losses and trouble. This offer is not a bluff. I am prepared to present certified proof of your guaranteed safe passage and compensation for title. The document is signed by President SailleHalla, who feels your demise would not only be a tragic blow for him personally, but would perhaps not be taken all that well in those States whence you originate. The Afar will be released to return to their old ways. They will not be harmed. Our business is with the state of Ethiopia and that with rapist Negasso, not with you or these innocent people. I beg you to reconsider.” “Commander, at this point in the game I sincerely doubt anybody in here’s actually paying attention to me. Your little gambit’s stirred up one helluva hornet’s nest.” He thought for a bit. “Goodbye.” “Mr. Vane! Please do not abandon communications. I urge you to leave this channel o—” Vane slammed down the receiver and whipped out his walkie-talkie. “Mudhead!” “Bossman.” “I want you back up here on the radio, partner. And pronto. My troops need me.” From his vantage on the Stage Vane saw the door of Mudhead’s Domo open and his friend emerge resignedly. The African stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his robes brilliant white against the variegation of his garden. He looked around as though appreciating it for the last time, lowered his head, slowly made his way up his new polished stone walk. Vane whooped in acknowledgment, waved his jile high, and mounted Worthless with a vengeance. Solomon got in two good nips before bounding on ahead. For the very first time Worthless bore him with alacrity, almost with dignity. The confidence 183

Microcosmia Worthless and enthusiasm Vane emanated radiated throughout her frame, made beast walk tall and rider sit high. They eagerly negotiated the prickly Mount, trotted regally along Bisecting Way, charged up a Ramp in a streak of black and tan. When they reached the top they found the entire Rim packed solid with Afar, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in silent awe of the vast military sea. Vane, having sufficiently clopped along with his turban held high, paused in his inspection to scan the enemy with his minaret spyglass. What he saw was a massacre in the making. Except for a respectable few hundred yards of empty desert surrounding the crater, the world was all trucks, jeeps, and troops. In that one naked instant all Vane’s bravado revealed itself as pure homespun foolishness. He was forced to face his immaturity like a man, to admit that the only sane move would be to order the Afar to lay down their arms, and with the utmost haste. Vane sagged in the saddle. He was in command of nothing. He didn’t even know these people. Once again he was, if anything, in the way. A crazy, Technicolor idea came to him. His blue eyes blazing, he would majestically ride Worthless down the Outer Slope and across that vacant space to surrender Mamuset to the Eritreans. It would be an act of great character. Commander Sai-erin would be impressed, his men terribly moved. The Afar would drift back to their previous lifestyle, none the worse, to mesmerize their grandchildren with time-embroidered tales of the great white miracle worker. And he? Detention, interrogation, some tough lectures. Honey would bail him out, as always. Vane glazed over. A minute later he was roused by a dull boom and passing whistle. A mortar shell exploded in the trees, begetting a great growl all around. He sat straight-up—it was that same glottal storm he’d experienced on Dock when surrounded by threatening drivers. Vane looked back to see the bristling Afar shoving one another for better views, every expression twisted by a rage that remained beyond his ken. There came a trio of detonations in the Fields, this time from launches in the desert outside West Rim. The Afar’s common guttural expanded in response, rising steadily as the barrage continued, until the ringed men of Mamuset were a howling, flailing mob. Worthless was squeezed to the very lip of the Rim. Her toes vainly sought purchase while her eyes rolled crazily at the desert below. Vane pounded and pounded her neck, trying to turn her against the furious press, but as the Afar’s howling rose to a nerve-shredding scream the camel threw back her head and brayed right along. Vane finally yanked her around and they teetered, facing an oncoming wall of wide-eyed shrieking psychopaths. Worthless roared, reared, and spat in their faces. “Forward, you idiot!” hollered Vane. “Go forward!” He whipped out his jile and poked her in the rump. Worthless bellowed, pounded her throat on the dirt, kicked her rear legs in the air. “Go, damn it!” Vane cried. “I . . . said . . . go!” He poked her again, very hard this time, only to find himself clinging to the camel’s neck as she skidded backward down East Outer Slope. Worthless, issuing a resounding plaint of terror and rebellion, was nevertheless able to turn face-forward without spilling. Half-stumbling and half-galloping, she hurtled down the Slope with Vane fighting for balance by holding his free arm overhead like a common rodeo cowboy. His jile caught the sun as it waved back and forth. The bloodthirsty scream of the men on East Rim ceased, though the howl continued to rise elsewhere around the Rim—the result was much like a phase-shifted echo. Suddenly Vane was able to hear his and his camel’s grunts and gasps clearly, along with the clatter of her feet and the excited panting of Solomon hurtling in and out beneath them. Overhead, the whistle of a mortar shell flanged with all the clarity of a sound effect triggered in a recording studio. A great shout erupted behind them. Down the Afar came. Their running battle cry galvanized the entire community, so that men and boys poured out of the crater like ants out of an anthill. Upon 184

Microcosmia Worthless hearing that cry, Worthless lifted her head and raced across the flat desert floor as if the Devil were after her. In seconds they were swallowed up by the sprinting mob. Vane bounced along in the manner of a bobblehead toy, stammering commands and stabbing the air with his jile. He jerkily made out the first row of soldiers, kneeling coolly with their rifles leveled. He heard those rifles popping away, and he saw the first line of racing Afar drop like dominoes. And he saw the soldiers leaping to their feet, one by one and then in unison, as the wave came on without hesitation. The Afar screamed continuously while they ran, shooting without a trace of discipline. Their second line collapsed almost as handily as the first, but now the wave was breaking, and now the soldiers were turning to run for cover. The Afar hit the first row of trucks as human battering rams. Vane heard isolated rifle shots, a young man’s cry of anguish, and what may have been a Gatling gun. And the Afar went right out of their minds, shrieking and whirling and diving, firing with one weapon and cudgeling with another. Trailing youngsters and seniors, hunched like spiders, tore down the aisles formed by rows of parked vehicles, leaping on occupants with total disregard for their own lives, savaging the trucks and jeeps, smashing their windshields, shooting and pummeling the bodies. As horror took the disintegrating ranks, soldiers howling to Allah began dashing through the maze of vehicles in zigzagging spurts that became all-out runs, crowds of kicking and caterwauling Mamusetans hard on their heels. Vane yelled and yelled until his throat seized; disoriented by all the action, yet exhilarated beyond his wildest fantasies. There wasn’t a man in uniform who wasn’t running for his life. He croaked out a string of gasping congratulations, poked Worthless jubilantly and continuously. The camel wheeled round and round like a turnstile as the thinning sea hustled by, giving her master an unrequested 360 of the battleground. Dead and dying Afar lay mingled with butchered Eritreans; bodies were stretched out in the dirt, scrunched one upon the other, sprawled across hoods and seats. But there were still small pockets of violent activity between vehicles, where Mamusetans mercilessly tore into cowering soldiers. In the distance Vane could see the backs of pursuing Afar, and beyond them the backs of screaming Eritreans. The battle was won, the siege wholly blown. It was every man for himself. The Afar continued to fire as they ran. When their magazines were exhausted they ran swinging their M16s, and didn’t stop until they’d caught their hysterical enemies or collapsed. Even then, on hands and knees, they forced themselves on, coughing and gasping, pounding their fists on the ground. Vane was flabbergasted. They hadn’t just survived the Eritreans; they had defeated them utterly. He stood high in the stirrups as he spun, giving vent to an oscillating, shredded war whoop. He coughed, he wept, he waved his mighty weapon high. Cristian Honey Vane went right over his camel’s hindquarters and headfirst into the dirt.

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Chapter Nineteen Mudhead Vane tentatively opened an eye. The first thing he saw was Mudhead’s expectedly glum, yet strangely distorted countenance— the whole face was extended like a muzzle and covered by a heavy red veil. Vane rolled the eye carefully. Someone, without a trace of taste or consideration, had up-and painted every gill in his Domo a dull crimson. It took Vane a whole minute to realize the air itself was red. Mudhead’s muzzle continued to project, the black lips rolling round and round. “How Bossman feel?” The voice was miles away. Vane weighed his impressions. Oddest of all, his thoughts seemed to be swimming in his mouth. It wasn’t all that unpleasant. Someone behind him replied, “Weird. How should I feel?” Mudhead nodded. “Weird.” Leaning forward in his chair, he showed Vane a small vial and syringe. “Present from past.” Vane nodded back, but his head didn’t move. “What happened to me, man?” “Bossman hero.” Mudhead touched a finger to his own right ear. “Take bullet. Dead for sure.” He heaved a sigh, placed his hands on his thighs and pushed himself back. The face flattened to normal. “Sorry all out purple heart.” The red room blushed deeper as Vane tentatively directed a hand to his ear. His head was completely bound up in gauze. “A bullet got my ear?” “Direct hit.” “How . . . how bad?” “Whole ear gone.” Mudhead tilted his head. “Now you lopside.” “What? You’re lying! Show me!” He started to sit up, and was immediately knocked down by a stomping nausea. An odd pain—dull with a sharp core—projected into his brain like a tentacle, 186

Microcosmia Mudhead fragmented, and passed. Mudhead groaned and pushed himself out of view, reappearing a minute later with a shaving mirror. Vane gaped at his reflection. His head was a huge mass of cloth scraps wound up in half a mile of gauze. An area the size of a saucer was brown with dried blood. His eyes were puffy crimson caves, his face a pale, haggard mask. He tried different angles and various expressions. Slowly a smile cut the reflection in two. “Bossman lucky. Can grow pretty blond lock.” “What? Where’s my turban?” Mudhead shook his head sadly, and Vane went paler still. He was just sitting up in protest when the room hit him in the face like a fist. Vane’s fingers dug into the sheets. “What . . .” he sobbed, “man . . . what happened after I got hit? I seem to remember us . . . kicking ass . . . royally.” Mudhead now recounted the events succeeding Vane’s triumphant exit from consciousness. He was patient; enunciating as best he could, repeating sentences carefully whenever his logy one-man audience lost contact. To all appearances, the rout of field commander Sai-erin’s regiments had been astonishingly thorough. The Afar not only embarrassed and butchered their attackers, they dispossessed them of their weapons and transportation. Having chased the survivors deep into the desert, the chanting victors tramped back to commandeer jeeps and transports, picking up fallen comrades and every usable weapon they could find. The Eritrean dead—and there were so very many—were left for the Danakil to do with as it would. Four hundred and thirteen Afar had died, most picked off in that initial blind rush across the open space separating Outer Slopes and the first ring of waiting soldiers. Some were but children. It was difficult to estimate the number of dead Eritreans. From the top of any Bulwark they, along with the ugly kites of swirling vultures, were all one could see. Vane’s heroes drove every navigable vehicle around to Onramp. Those disabled vehicles worthy of salvage to any returning army were doused with their own petrol and set aflame. A dozen empty transports were then driven to the dynamited space and rolled in, one on top of the other. The indefatigable Afar, revisiting the constructive zeal they’d applied in the building of Mamuset, packed the space with boulders and loose earth until a perfectly serviceable bridge was created. Over this bridge the long line of trucks were paraded through Sectors to Utility Squares. But first the community’s fallen master was carried ceremoniously up East Outer Slope on his camel, somberly attended in a massive procession up Bisecting Way, and reverently delivered to Mudhead at Vane’s Domo. After dressing the wound and administering the pain killer, Mudhead sat back to await the resurrection. Vane proved a tough patient, hard to keep down. He wanted to see the battlefield, wanted accurate tallies, wanted to congratulate the victors. His exuberance and intoxication would eject him from bed like a Pop Tart, but his injury and attendant illness would knock him right back down. Mudhead fed him beer and Percodan, hoping he’d burn himself to sleep. Still, the African was worn out long before his boss. By late afternoon the beer and high-strung behavior caught up with Vane. He curled up on his left side and closed his eyes. He looked dead. Solomon snuck up to the bed and very gently climbed on, knowing his master forbade it, and watched Vane sleeping until his own eyes grew heavy. Shadows crossed the floor. The room grew dim. Mudhead transferred his butt to Vane’s favorite padded chair and let his eyelids kiss. His old bones were sore and his neck stiff, but the padding was generous, and for one guilty moment there he thought he might actually have dozed. When he reopened his eyes the room was black, and Vane nowhere to be found. Mudhead 187

Microcosmia Mudhead creaked to his feet, loped outside, looked around the Yard. Worthless was missing from her pad. He flapped across Stage Street and labored up the Steps to the Mat, his old heart flapping right along. Mudhead bent over until his tarboosh brushed the Mat, his withered old palms resting on shaking knees. After a minute he grabbed a walkie-talkie and depressed the transmit button. “Bossman?” “Mudhead!” “Bossman stay bed!” Mudhead gasped. “Play general tomorrow!” “What? Come on up to North Rim and join the fun.” Mudhead slumped against the motherboard. “Fun day over,” he wheezed. “That’s too bad. It’s a nice bright night. You can still see all the bodies left out in the . . . wait!” Mudhead waited. “What matter?” “What?” There was a lull. “It looks like we’ve got company.” “What,” Mudhead whispered, “company?” No answer. “Bossman?” “There are lights on the northern horizon, Mudhead. In the air. Hang on for a minute while I get a bead.” Mudhead repeatedly paced the Mat. Finally he walked over to Top Step and searched the northern sky. Nothing but a billion stars. “It’s helicopters again. Guess they’re gonna try that dumb trick one more time. Remember the Red Sea? Well, I sure as heck do! What? This time we’ll have every rifle in the house on ’em.” Mudhead sat gently, holding the walkie-talkie tightly against his ear. “Six or seven in a line. They’re coming fast.” There was a break in which Mudhead tried several times to call. When he picked up Vane’s voice again it was muted and accompanied by static. It sounded worried this time, and a whole lot soberer. “They’ll probably try strafing runs. God, they’re big. I’m gonna get everybody down off the Rim under cover of the trees.” Slowly, dreamily, the sirens wound up along North Rim. “Get below ground, Mudhead! What? They may be bombing. Get to Cellar or Basement and stay there until I come for you.” “Ten-four, Bossman!” Mudhead tucked the radio under his robes. He stood high on his toes, staring over the canopy of treetops. Now he could see a broken ribbon of lights approaching between the stars. Mudhead hoisted his robes and puffed down the Steps just as fast as his feet would carry him. He hurried to his left around the Mount and fell up against Warehouse, looking back over his shoulder. A column of light was burning through the night. Mudhead dashed to Cellar, hauled up the right hand door and tumbled into pitch. In his left hand the radio came alive with an enormous clatter of rotors. Finally Vane’s voice sounded, “Mudhead!” There was a long wedge of silence. The hard thumping of air came again, much louder this time. “They’re in!”

The black rabbit darted tree to tree and Yard to Yard, not daring to trust the narrow plains of crisscrossing Streets. Occasionally he was startled by a singed camel or cow bursting out of the murk and stamping past. Occasionally, too, he caught the gray silhouette of a masked soldier treading 188

Microcosmia Mudhead cautiously through the noxious smoke. The stuff was everywhere, drifting in slow motion— diagonally as suspended leaning pillars, horizontally as thinning and fatting wisps. It tended to roll on the roofs of Domos, like an unctuous substance, before oozing off and gathering in depressions. All around these smoke-matted Domos, weird flames were clinging surreally to trees; metastasizing, popping and sighing, trickling down trunks and dripping to the ground. Mudhead nearly collapsed at a Square’s hedged boundary, his head swimming with fumes. Through streaming eyes he caught a commotion in the haze: down the Street came that same nightmarish mob, that same reeling wave of heads and arms that had pursued him halfway across the Sector. For a tense minute the wave was lost in drifting reek, and when it reappeared it was almost on him. Mudhead gasped enormously. He clutched his chest, turned, and staggered across the Square with his white robes trailing. There was a hard change in the pursuing voices. The crowd halted abruptly, and a second later was pouring through the Yard after the slow flapping ghost. Mudhead burst retching onto a Street so dense with smoke it appeared fogbound. Overcome by fumes, he threw out his arms just as the howling mob came down on him. He was hauled to his feet. Mudhead promptly collapsed on his knees, was again pulled upright, and again collapsed. The shouting crowd scooped him up and roughly propelled him down the Street. Swooning, Mudhead was borne supine by his limbs; first as a limp bit of dragging backside, then as a cruciform slab high on the shoulders of the roaring tide. Burning leaves and branches rushed by above and on both sides, interlaced by shifting cords of smoke, as he was washed down a dark acrid tunnel to his doom. The blood beating in his head made that tunnel dilate and contract, made the mob’s cries seesaw in his ears. It didn’t take long to reach the Mount, though to Mudhead it seemed the ride would never end. At Bottom Step he was set firmly on his feet and pressed upward, gasping and shaking. He managed three Steps and dropped. Mudhead was straightened back up and forced to climb, and by the time he reached the Stage he was wheezing desperately. Yet when he collapsed on the Mat it was not from exhaustion; the scene before him knocked him flat on his knees. Vane’s twitching body lay surrounded by his dead dog, comatose camel, and a variety of charred personal belongings. He was so badly burned his skin looked like red bubble wrap. His robes had been scorched away, along with his hair, toes, and eyelids. Mudhead’s hands trembled above Vane’s chest. “Boss . . .” he tried. He could barely breathe. “Boss . . .” Vane’s hand shot off the Mat and seized Mudhead’s right wrist. Mudhead watched the lipless mouth writhe for a few seconds, then carefully brought down his ear. Finally Vane hissed, “Oh, Jesus.” His eyes rolled up. “Not like . . . dear God, not like this.” The hand dropped to the Mat. The African rocked back on his haunches, adjusted his robes, and reclined onto his rear. He sat there like a man of stone while voices of the Afar pattered around him. Once his mind had cleared, his thoughts automatically converted to Saho. The Afar were confused and breaking up; some were heavy with grief, others full of fury. They had no one to follow, nowhere to turn. From the gist of their plaints, Mudahid Asafu-Adjaye realized that the monster was now in his lap. He pounded a fist, and in Saho snapped, “The thing is done!” That quieted them. An elderly man responded, gently, “They will come for him.” There was a disapproving murmur. Another said, “They will find him here.” Mudahid snapped, “They will not!” and chilled them with his expression. He looked back down, leaned forward, and held a steady hand over Vane’s eyes. 189

Microcosmia “Mudhead know place.”

Mudhead

Every aspect of Vane’s consciousness revolved around pain. He’d stopped screaming when his body went into deep shock, but each time a bearer stumbled his head would jerk back, his mouth fly open, and his fried lungs emit a short hissing squeal. He watched himself stiffen and relax, stiffen and relax, from the viewpoint of a hovering observer. It was like having a video recorder, attached to a kite just above, transmitting an image back to its arching, silently screaming subject. Vane was having an out-of-body experience. He’d been enduring it, with varying degrees of intensity, ever since Sol’s first spear burned the top off the Danakil Alps and transformed the brilliant black night into a burning blue diamond. Throughout the whole morning he’d watched his body carried on a makeshift stretcher by rotating groups of burned dying people, all struggling to shade, fan, and otherwise comfort him. Why wouldn’t they let him die? How long could that pathetic creature continue to jerk and clench, arch and settle? Vane’s detached awareness watched his body go through its motions over and over, until the horror of the thing became matter-of-fact. The afternoon sun bit into his welling skin like acid, made it cringe, crawl, and burst anew. And so he went on screaming without really screaming, jerking and clenching, out of his mind with agony. Just beneath him, the bearers lurched in and out of the camera’s window, forcing themselves up a rough path that wound round an isolated rocky table. As the weakest fell trying to climb, the strongest worked double time taking up the slack. With a terrible lunge, the remaining carriers began a sickening left-handed ascent that ended in a wild ride over a flat baking shelf. The spinning sun blew outward, swelling until it took the entire sky. Then it was merely the central bright pinprick in an insane kaleidoscope filled with distorted, collapsing faces. A dark fist closed about Vane. He shook up and down, up and down, convulsing like a drowning rat as his wretched red husk was sucked into Hell.

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Chapter Twenty Wildfeather It was easy as pie to track the Afar’s little romp over the Danakil. Captain Wildfeather led his team of three auxiliaries—a pair of jumpy green privates and a pest of a photographer—alongside the unmistakable trail of over a hundred stumbling, rapidly expiring Mamusetans. Occasionally the photographer paused to take a series of snapshots and jot down some notes. During these little unscheduled breaks one of the soldiers would hang back a ways and glare while the other scanned the horizon. Wildfeather was always grateful for an opportunity to segregate himself, and so return his full attention to the desert floor. He was keenly aware of a constant pattern in the prints: while followers were continually kicking over the course of their leaders, there remained two sets of parallel prints that staggered along in tandem, always around three feet apart and made slightly deeper than the others by a shared burden. And though in many places it was obvious a straggler had collapsed and been dragged, it was clear this had been a one-dimensional, tightly-grouped exodus. Wildfeather, part Yakima Indian and part Yukon Inuit, was well-versed in detection, assessment, and pursuit—had in fact earned his promotion to Special Forces by successfully tracking the infamous Wraith Brigade during Operation Desert Sabre. It was jocularly rumored that he could determine, through vestigial evidence alone, the age, gender, and political persuasion of a midget pulverized in a cattle run. So Wildfeather was actually disappointed by the obvious tale-of-the-trail; they’d might as well have assigned a Camp Fire Girl. He was annoyed, too, by the absurdly paranoiac waltz of his assigned men, needlessly sliding and swerving to confound imaginary assailants, and by the intermittent load of the photographer, who was searching for atmosphere rather than evidence. Wildfeather long ago decided he wouldn’t play this man’s game; humoring him was like walking a dog that insisted on stopping to sniff every flower bed. Sooner or later you stop fighting the leash and start leaning on the lash. Or, as in this case, you let go and walk on. 191

Microcosmia Wildfeather Wildfeather paused to study an oblique line at the top of a lonely rocky table. The pillars of heat surrounding this groove would have thrown off an untrained observer, but for Wildfeather they only exaggerated the anomaly’s nearly horizontal aspect. “Mackaw!” he said loudly, without turning. “If you still want that Pulitzer, get your perennially dragging butt over here!” The two soldiers, instinctively tensing and crouching, swung their rifles in broad arcs. The photographer rushed up to Wildfeather, now waiting like a bored pointer. “Yeah?” “You see that funny slope on the table up ahead?” Mackaw raised his digital camera, allowed it to self-adjust, and rapidly took half a dozen shots of a depression a hundred yards to the left. “Got it!” “No, Ansel, I’m talking about that breach in the hard stratum. Notice how you don’t see any heat waves above it? That’s because the darker gray beneath is a source of ventilation. It’s an opening in the rock, probably a cave’s vent. Underground streams used to rush out below the Highlands, through these rocks and onto the dead terrain behind us. They certainly would’ve left a system of east-west caverns, perhaps a series of labyrinths.” Mackaw licked his lips. “You think that’s where all those natives went?” Wildfeather looked at him with distaste. “Not natives. They’re people, just like you and me. You watch too many Tarzan movies.” “I’ll get my lights set up!” Mackaw grasped Wildfeather’s upper arm. “This is it, huh, Scout? This is what we’ve been looking for?” Wildfeather used one hand to peel off Mackaw’s claw and the other to grip him by the lapel. “Now listen, picture-boy. I’ve been real patient with you up to this point. But I’m not going to let you make a farce out of a tragedy. I’m not permitted to bitch-slap a civilian, and anyway it wouldn’t teach you a thing. But I want you to stop being selfish for a minute and just listen.” All four men stood stock-still and perked up their ears. Half a minute passed. “Nothin’!” Mackaw said. “This place is so dead I can hear my career dying.” “Exactly,” Wildfeather murmured. “You saw the tracks of those people.” He pointed with his rifle. “They went up this path here, almost as if they were storming the place. They must have been out of their minds after crossing this desert.” The men clambered up the winding path until they came out on the table’s flat shelf. They all stopped to crouch maybe twenty yards from the fissure. “Well, they went down that narrow chimney there, one on top of the other. It’s a flue, a kind of blowhole from back when those streams were interacting with molten rock. The whole perimeter of the Danakil is volcanic. And those people weren’t some prancing merry file, you guys; they hit that hole like Gangbusters. See how it’s all torn up around the opening? That was one helluva crowd, and it was mighty important for ’em to get down there in a hurry.” Mackaw gently shifted his gear. “So what?” he near-whispered. “So show a little respect,” Wildfeather said. “I’m experiencing a deep sense of the sacred.” One soldier rolled his eyes comically. The other grinned. “I saw that,” Wildfeather said. “You guys go ahead and laugh all you want. But you’re gonna be yukking it up on the outside. You too, Mackaw. Until I give the go-ahead, you three are stationed back here. Willard, you and Barnes watch my back. Keep a sharp lookout for rabid Mau Maus, and if you see any suspiciously pregnant-looking Eritrean hausfraus, well, you just make sure you shoot first and ask questions later. Mackaw, I’m depending on you to record every mind-blowing moment of the madness while I’m gone. It’s your job to save for posterity what only your genius can define. If you don’t see me again, give my regrets to Broadway.” 192

Microcosmia Wildfeather “Wait a minute,” Mackaw objected. “You can’t order me around. How many times do we have to go over this, Captain? I’m strictly civilian. I’m being paid to save this whole ordeal not only by Life but by the goddamned American State Department. I’m an independent observer and freelance photographer. Don’t you forget that. It’s just as important to my bosses that we find Vane’s body as it is to your bosses. So if you’re looking for more medals here you’re gonna need me on your good side when you’re posing.” “I couldn’t agree with you more, Mackaw. You’ve got a real talent for sizing up a situation. That’s why I know it’ll be crystal clear to you when I tell you that, if you really do want to be on my good side, you’ll stay back here until I say otherwise. When I signal, you are to enter only with Barnes and Willard covering your silly civilian front and rear. Until then, everybody stay well back from that opening.” He walked quietly to the fissure and peered inside. The passage downward was nearly spiral and not too steep; a man of medium height could manage it without hunching. He stepped down, using his rifle as a probe. After about thirty feet of descent, Wildfeather came to a level floor. His nostrils twitched and his pupils dilated. Despite the excellent ventilation there was the strong smell of a charnel house. He was surprised to have not noticed it outside. This subterranean world was wonderfully cool and dim, eerily illuminated by sporadic shafts of light emanating from surface fissures. Carefully laid out on the cave’s floor was a broad miscellany of masks, figurines, and baskets. Most appeared damaged beyond repair. Wildfeather knew not to trust his eyes exclusively. He aimed a flashlight and flicked it on and off—one, two, three, four—while swiveling on his toes. He was in a roomy cave leading into a much larger cavern. He froze. His fourth flash had briefly exposed a lurking shape to his right. Wildfeather kept his eyes trained on that spot, knowing that whoever or whatever he had lit would be dazzled, if only for a moment. He simultaneously pointed the rifle and flashlight while his body automatically went into a crouch. At near floor-level he snapped on the light and kept it trained. He saw an ancient, horribly disfigured little man dressed in a tattered sanafil tied on the right in the manner of Afar pastoralists. The man was sitting in the lotus position on an oval mat of interwoven acacia fronds. Wildfeather’s beam probed the yawning eye sockets and distorted features before sweeping down to a ratty lump at the little man’s side, where he saw the wretched figure of a rigid white dwarf camel, her feet bound so as to not be outthrust in rigor mortis. The sitting man had one hand buried in the camel’s scruffy fur. The other lay upturned on his knee. The smell of the dead camel made Wildfeather grimace. “Batsu wem ji’ Saho?” he tried. “Parle vu France?” the little man replied. “Um . . . propos quelques . . . seulement?” “Same here. But it’s a lovely language.” Wildfeather’s eyes narrowed further. He lowered the beam. “Thank you,” his host said. “Save your batteries. Speak with me a spell while your eyes adjust.” Wildfeather switched off his flashlight and slung his rifle behind his shoulder. He took another look around. “You live here, Mister . . . ?” The tiny man inclined his head an inch. “Xhantu of Outer Danakil.” Wildfeather found himself nodding in return. “Captain Marlon Wildfeather of the United States Army. I’ve been sent to locate and return to the States the body of one Cristian Honey Vane. He is reported killed by an Eritrean assault force advancing on Addis Ababa. That force was routed.” Still disoriented, he absent-mindedly handed Xhantu a full-face photograph of Vane. “Oh!” he said, recovering. “Forgive me.” 193

Microcosmia Wildfeather The sage slipped the picture under the folds of his sanafil at the waist and secured it with the sash. “You do not say! That, then, would explain the pell-mell flight of once-sanguine camel drivers.” He tweaked his head to forty-five degrees off the perpendicular. “Eritrea is attacking Addis Ababa?” “Unfortunately so.” Wildfeather could now make out an enormous arched mouth in the rock, perhaps a hundred yards along. It was the source of that deeper coolness he’d noticed upon entering. He felt he’d been conservative in his previous assessment: immense underground rivers, not merely streams, had ages ago torn into what was once the Danakil Sea. “This man Vane,” Wildfeather went on, “was an American philanthropist and social engineer who decided to assist people of this desert rather than those who were hurting back home. He was disgustingly rich; he could have bought Montana if he wanted. Instead he bought a large tract of land northwest of here called Mamuset, and made it into a kind of kinky high-tech commune to show the rest of the world just how clever and generous the filthy rich can be.” Wildfeather brushed the rock floor with one tip of perhaps the world’s only pair of steel-toed moccasins. The rock was streaked and daubed with brown smears of blood. He swept his light. Smears also appeared here and there along the cave’s walls. The trail of dried blood went down the chamber and through that gaping archway into the unseen. “This Vane guy,” Wildfeather said, “was outrageously successful. After some gossip magazine did a spread on him he became a real big shot back home; a household name with all the draw of a movie star or politician. Sure enough, people stopped hating him for being rich. Now he was both popular and rich. Other rich people caught on, and began gabbing about his operation and dressing down—you know, wearing sandals in their limousines, adopting refugees for photo-ops and so on. Now he’s about to become a martyr. After that, who knows? Christ reincarnated?” “You are very cynical, sir.” “The Eritreans napalmed Mamuset and turned it into a volcano. A shame, really. Not because the rich boy got his, but because all those poor people were actually a whole lot better off for a while there. Anyways, the survivors, hysterical and half-alive, took off through the desert. I guess they too had become cynical, Mr. Xhantu.” “That must have been a terrible trek,” the sage said, sadly shaking his head. “No one could survive the Danakil.” “Oh, they survived all right. Most of them did, anyhow. They came in a single burned and bloody wave, and they knew just where that wave was breaking. They made a beeline for your door, Mr. Xhantu. They came down that chimney, burst into this chamber, and went kicking and screaming through that archway.” Xhantu nodded. “They were much distressed; that is true.” “Let’s go see,” Wildfeather said, “why they dropped by so suddenly.” He helped the sage to his feet and they walked arm-in-arm to the arch. Wildfeather immediately halted at a blast of stench. He looped a small disposable nose-and-mouth mask on his face and offered one to Xhantu. The sage shook his head emphatically at the feel of a mask on his face, but Wildfeather insisted. Once they were both masked they stepped into the great cavern, whereupon Wildfeather’s arm went out like a shot to block Xhantu’s progress. The captain’s eyes narrowed. At least a hundred burned and twisted corpses were laid out on the gigantic floor, each in a 5 x 5 square defined by lines drawn with soot. The soot’s source was evinced in numerous imported charred items, now arranged in elaborate and decorative stacks against three of the cavern’s walls. These soot-squares were marked wall-to-wall around a central, unoccupied square of identical dimensions. Most of the dead had perished in their personal squares, some prostrate, some in a lopsided sitting slump. But all faced the central square. 194

Microcosmia Wildfeather Wildfeather pondered the display critically, feeling the place, taking notes in his head. After a space he reached into a pouch on his belt, extracted a small flash camera, and took several shots from various angles. The click of the camera’s mechanism cracked like a whip in the cavern. He then made his way along the west wall, occasionally looking back. The sage was close behind, adroitly stepping around the carefully stacked remnants, the delicate probe of his hand walking swiftly along the wall like a hairless tarantula. The whole setup gave Wildfeather the creeps. When he attained a point opposite the empty square he tiptoed between the bodies to the blank space and went down on one knee, clearly discerning a large smudge created by a slow seepage of blood and sweat. The smudge became a narrow smear that snaked between squares to the east wall. Wildfeather took several shots of the square and smear. The sage crept up behind him, his bare feet making tiny smacking sounds. The two stood side by side. “Like a cathedral, perhaps?” the sage offered, his voice muffled by the mask. “Nah. Cemetery on a chessboard. Man’s surrender to mathematics.” Wildfeather’s cynicism fluttered bravely before plunging. “Y’know, I feel very small in all this.” “Perhaps this rich American you speak of was not so callous and manipulating after all.” Wildfeather stared. “Sir,” he said quietly, “we are standing in the middle of an empty square that lies at the center of perhaps a hundred similar squares, each containing a deceased individual— from my observation members of the Afar group. The slow dissolution of their bodies in this cool chamber has reached the point of putrefaction. It’s the source of this miasma, and the reason I have insisted upon your donning the breather. Judging by your deep familiarity with this place, and by your demonstrated ability to perceive the particulars of your environment, I am going to assume you are perfectly aware of our circumstances here. That said, I am going to request you be perfectly honest with me today, and save us both considerable trouble and embarrassment.” He took a breath. “To what,” he said, tracing the square’s borders with the rifle’s barrel, “do you attribute the significance of this single empty square?” Xhantu nodded in acknowledgment. “Apparently, Captain, it is some kind of space meant to signify a pivotal presence. I am not familiar with the intricacies of the indigenous religions; my intellectual and spiritual leanings are chiefly Western. My guess is that it represents a focal point of some sort, perhaps a kind of hub, or heart. A center is very basic to most faiths, and many Afar have received varying degrees of Islamic instruction. Could it be, do you think, a space meant to represent Mecca?” The captain grinned wryly behind his mask. “Okay, Mr. Xhantu. We’ll play it your way. You’ve suffered enough without having to be intimidated by the United States Army.” He tapped the tip of his rifle’s barrel along the central square’s borders and watched closely as the sage’s face precisely followed the tapping sounds. “Now, the arrangement of these bodies is immediately reminiscent of the American’s operation in Danakil. The floor’s grid-like markings support that proposition. Furthermore, there are stains within this square that are highly suggestive of blood and sweat.” He strained against the heaviest shadows. “Dead men don’t sweat, Mr. Xhantu.” Wildfeather’s eyes swept the cavern, picking up details, at last resting on a nondescript, pencil-thin beam of sallow light. He was having trouble weighing duty against spirit. “Sir,” he said, “forensic operations would be very hard on you here. It would be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to run DNA tests, as well as to gather print and soil samples. But it is fully within my authority to quarantine you elsewhere for the sake of preserving the site’s integrity.” “Then you are running late, Captain. I would have had plenty of time to sully the place were its forensic significance of any interest to me. What you are witnessing is solely the doing of these people you find dead about you. They arrived, as you have postulated, in a frenzy, many badly 195

Microcosmia Wildfeather burned or otherwise injured. I cannot help but agree with your general assessment. Your description of their floor plan definitely resembles what I have heard of the site created by the American. I have never visited Mamuset; I learned of its specific arrangement in my wanderings tribe to tribe.” Wildfeather, looking directly at the sage, found the man’s face trained dead-on his own. “Mr. Xhantu, the government and people of the United States of America are not going to be satisfied with an empty body bag.” Xhantu didn’t budge. “Then you must search Mamuset or the surrounding desert. When these people appeared they bore at their fore but one man. They carried him toward the center of this cavern while chanting the name ‘Mudahid’ over and over in a manner suggestive of great grief. He was certainly dead or mortally wounded. It would be natural to assume it was he who occupied this central space, and his serum you have observed.” “Then where is this man Mudahid? And why would his body have been removed?” “Sir, I do not know. I did not observe the goings-on subsequent to the hysterical arrival of these people. I was flung violently aside upon their entrance, and did not regain access and full control until all was silent.” “And how long was that interim?” “The space of a week or more, Captain. Apparently they considered the passing of this Mudahid person a considerable loss; their grieving was absolutely prohibitive of my entry. The sound of that great grief commenced each morning precisely at sunrise, becoming weaker day by day. And then . . . silence. The people had starved to death, and thirsted as well. It is my impression they did not molest my reservoir; nor did they, indeed, depart from their spaces once ensconced. These, as I say, are merely my impressions. Other than salvaging what I could of my artifacts, I have left this place as they left it. I have walked well around the grid to secure water for myself and little Pegasus. In that sense, Captain, this place is pristine for your investigation.” “I appreciate that, sir,” Wildfeather used his rifle to indicate the brown smudge at their feet, and then to follow it, lazily, into the shadows of the east wall. “Mr. Xhantu, I’m pointing at a dark stain. The trail of this stain leads off the grid, almost as if a body had been dragged away.” He shifted his rifle over his left shoulder and took the old man by the hand. “Let’s go.” They stepped between bodies carefully. “This smear,” Wildfeather went on, “runs resolutely to the east wall, although it veers constantly back and forth, as if the guiding hand took great pains to avoid impinging upon the dead. Now, Mr. Xhantu, on the supposition your haunts are not haunted, I’m going to postulate a very solid intercession here—I’m going to suppose the body of your Mr. Mudahid was dragged along . . . here . . . and here . . . borne sliming all the way to this depression, where it appears a fresh water pool, your said ‘reservoir’ resides.” He crept partly round the rim, flicked on his flashlight, and looked into the pool calmly. After a minute he said, without raising his eyes, “Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come with me. The United States government will financially provide for your move, for your placement, and for your comfort. I have been authorized by the Army to make pertinent decisions in the field regarding my mission, which is essentially to wrap up the matter of Cristian Honey Vane. In that respect I am empowered to issue commands, and to have two American servicemen stationed outside carry out those commands. I also have—” He was cut off by a low, grieving moan issuing from the far end of the cavern. Wildfeather looked back up to see Xhantu’s death mask trained on him. The sound rolled out of the labyrinth’s bowels, swelling as it came; now steadying, now oscillating like a banshee in labor. Wildfeather shivered, from the heels of his moccasins to the bill of his camouflage cap. A steady breath of rock-cooled air played with his scalp hairs, made his ears perk up like an animal’s. The song of the wind came on, crying through twisted alleys, piping up pinholes and calling 196

Microcosmia Wildfeather down wells; filling the cavern with a chorus that was as beautiful as it was plaintive. Then, for a few delirious seconds, the deluge of air was sucked out the dozens of scattered fissures, and the great cavern became a whistling, wheezing calliope. The strange music made Wildfeather’s toes cramp, made his gonads go for his gut. The music just as gradually lost its multitonality, at last becoming the sound of a giant blowing into a bottle. Even that passed. The two men stood tiny in the fading echoes. Wildfeather walked straight up to the sage. “Mr. Xhantu, I feel like a Humvee just did the hula in my head.” “Pardon?” “Nothing worth repeating.” They stood very close for a long minute. The sage spread his arms, and Wildfeather reached round and hugged him as a son would embrace his father. He patted him very gently on the back, afraid the little old man might disintegrate like a puffball in a breeze. When they pulled apart the sage seemed almost too frail for words. “Captain,” he said, “it would seem we are in a quandary.” Wildfeather clasped his hands behind his back and paced in a short circle. “As a soldier, Mr. Xhantu, I am trained to follow orders without question. Obeying my spiritual impulses while in uniform would be most unprofessional.” Xhantu bowed. “Just so. And I am certain that you, sir, are every bit the professional.” He cocked his head. “Yet you know, Captain Wildfeather, at this juncture you impress me as a man with a chronic case of microcosmia.” “Microwho?” “Nothing worth repeating.” They retraced their steps across the grid; the sage a study in quiet contemplation, the soldier every bit the seeker struggling with his deepest demons. Finally Wildfeather nodded emphatically. “I’m ordering these caves burned out and sealed, that no future investigative body be exposed to the perils of mass putrefaction. The search for Vane’s remains will be focused on Mamuset, and I will personally campaign for an intensive look into elements of the Eritrean Army, on the premise that said remains may even now be held somewhere obscene.” At the west wall they paused. “I want to apologize, Mr. Xhantu, on behalf of my country, for this grave turn in your situation, brought about by one of her citizens who, spiritually at least, had no business meddling in the affairs of ancient, respected cultures.” They followed the wall out the archway and into the antechamber. “I hope you will not be left with the impression that all Americans are so self-absorbed.” They stopped. “Not at all, Captain. And you need not apologize for the limitations of others. You possess qualities, both spiritual and intellectual, that are of the highest order.” He turned to face Wildfeather as a master faces his disciple. “As a matter of fact, sir, you strike me as a man of vision.” Wildfeather grinned, embarrassed. “Nah. I’m as short-sighted as the next guy.” “And modest, too! Amazing.” Wildfeather cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Very well, then.” He pulled off his face mask. “I’ll have my men remove these keepsakes of yours, and I’ll allow you to oversee their safe handling. I’m going to radio for a guarded truck, that you and your property may be securely transported to a base in Djibouti. Sorry, but things are still too hot in Ethiopia for now. I’ll make sure someone from our embassy is there to discuss your options with you.” He preceded the old man up the twisting shaft. Once outside, Wildfeather dropped his sunglasses back into place. “Mackaw!” The photographer scurried up, sandwiched between Willard and Barnes. The three men took one look at the sage and froze like rubbernecks at a pileup. Then Mackaw cried, “Man!” and raised his camera. 197

Microcosmia Wildfeather Wildfeather stepped between them and ripped the camera right out of Mackaw’s hands. With a voice hot and cold he said, “You’ve got five minutes, and not a single minute more. Put on your breather. You are allowed up to the archway of the great chamber. There you will find an unpleasant scene worthy of many frames. Take all the pictures you want, but under no circumstances are you permitted within among the bodies. Willard and Barnes will be accompanying you, and will make certain this last order is followed to the letter.” He held out the camera. As Mackaw’s hand lunged for it, Wildfeather pulled it back out of reach. They went through this little ritual twice more before the soldier allowed the civilian to reappropriate his property with a modicum of courtesy. A small hand lit on Wildfeather’s forearm. He inclined his head and the sage whispered in his ear. Mackaw got two close-ups. “Mr. Xhantu,” Wildfeather proclaimed, “would like a private moment to say goodbye to his home. Go ahead, Mr. Xhantu. Take your time, but make sure the mask stays on.” The sage glided back to the entrance, and, white rabbit, disappeared from view. He paused to run a hand over Pegasus, then hurried across his antechamber and into the great cavern. Xhantu felt his way halfway along the west wall, turned ninety degrees, and tiptoed between the bodies until he reached the hollow. He took a deep breath before extracting a picture gripped in the folds of his sanafil. Slowly, methodically, he tore the photograph into ever smaller pieces until he had a little handful of paper shards. He made a fist and held the contents high above the dreaming pool. Xhantu unclenched his fingers, and his final thoughts of Cristian Vane fell like petals on the Nile.

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Notes to The Works: Although several themes appear to run through the preceding quilt, there’s really just a very basic dichotomy— Only extremes possess genuine clarity in this strange electric ride of higher consciousness: virtue and vice, genius and insanity, profundity and profanity, poetry and grotesquerie. The rest is all murky sameness, emotive and ideological lameness—race to race, generation to generation, side to side, sea to sea. A big fat communal dump on the priceless gift of Mind. The purpose of absurdism is to out human foibles via the exaggeration of flaws. Exalting the abstraction of greatness (Microcosmia, Faces, Ascent) and assaulting the reality of groupthink (The Fartian Chronicles, The Book of Ron, Carnival) are two sides of the same coin. Thinkers are lone wolves by nature. The only sin in life is mediocrity.

Author’s bio Ron Sanders was born in a storm drain; the son of a profligate hooker and an itinerant carjacker. As you might imagine, the father’s adroitness in eluding authority provided plenty of experiences for a budding young author. Nevertheless, the near-constant stream of garlicky johns and patronizing detectives proved suffocating; the boy up-and ran away to join a burgeoning underground of lightsaber-wielding YA puppetheads and hollow chatterboxes posing as original thinkers. He hung with his craft through the good years and bad, and on his eleventy-first birthday departed with only a burning talent, a burning dislike of puppetheads and chatterboxes, and a burning laptop holding a Photoshop program and Acrobat Distiller. The result is The Works—a trove of unique material with a pervasive nod to the Big Picture (minus the typical ecumenical gobbledygook, and with a downright magnanimous helping of soul). Inspiration is exceptional, imitation the rule. While I breathe I’ll produce, so if you like to stretch, remember the name. And if Signature was over your head you missed a masterpiece. May I suggest anything by Rowling.