Text and Art © 2010 by Ron Sanders

http://ronsandersatwork.com/ ronsandersartofprose@yahoo.com

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:

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 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.

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 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,
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 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
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 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

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 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—”
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 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
rd
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 outpost-
to-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 Ages-
leaning 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,
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 re-
hitch 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 barely-
touched 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 half-
carried, 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.”
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 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. Re-
entering 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.”
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 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.

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 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 blue-
and-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?”

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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
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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
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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
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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.
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“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.”

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 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

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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.

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 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
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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.”

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“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.

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“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.
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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 high-
ranking 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
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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 wall-
mounted 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.

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“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.

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There they’d pulled over an old Cept veteran of the long haul, his back as curved as his three-
foot 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

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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.”

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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 death-
stench was so wrenching she had to wince and half-close her eyes. The figure clamped that wide-
open 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
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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
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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.”
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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!”

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 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-and-
wobble 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.

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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 snow-
white 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’.”
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“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
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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

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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?”

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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 non-
white 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
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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!”

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 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.”
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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:
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“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.

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“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!”

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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.”

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“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,

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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
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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
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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.

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“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

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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 grid-
map 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.
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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
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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
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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

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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
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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, half-
rising 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.

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 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.
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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.

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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?”
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“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 cross-
evolved 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.
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“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.”
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“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!”

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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 fist-
sized 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.

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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
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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 stretch-
room.”
“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.
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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
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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.
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“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!”

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“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
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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,
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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

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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 green-
spotted 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-over-
gauntlet. 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.
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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.

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 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 fast-
forward: 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.
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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—”

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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
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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!”
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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 you-
know-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.

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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-to-
column 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.

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“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
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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!”
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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
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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
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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.
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“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.

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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.”

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 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 ill-
equipped 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.
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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.

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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
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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-to-
wall 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.

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“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 igloo-
shaped, 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.

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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.

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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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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
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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
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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.

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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 QX-
Tandem-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.”
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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—00-22-
46.”
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.

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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.

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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.

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 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.”

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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?”

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“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
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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?”
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“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
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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.

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 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 parti-
colored 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! Ah-
haha—” 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-And-
Disco, 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 long-
broken. 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 booty-
shaking 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 cross-
referenced 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 1-
800-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
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 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,
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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
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 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 . . .”

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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, still-
connected 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.”
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 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

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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.
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 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:

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 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 recklessly-
publicized 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 way-
close, 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.

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 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 message-
maker. 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, trampety-

19
 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 scarce-
proper 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 torch-
lit 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-oo-
oo!” 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 angina-
ridden 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 electronically-
magnified 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-and-
hiss 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 dog-
eared ‘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 plague-
driven 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 teak-
and-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.

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 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-and-
flurry 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, pre-
Colony, 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-of-
works 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

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 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.

40
 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 post-
barnstorming 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,

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 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

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 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

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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

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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.”

46
 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 cross-
reference 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.”

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 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 byte-
on-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.

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 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,

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 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! Blinkety-
blank!” 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.

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“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

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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 fickle-
footed 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

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 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!”

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“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!”

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“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

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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 chipped-
out 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!”

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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.

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 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

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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

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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 well-
adapted 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. “‘P-
prick 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.’”

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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 man-
eaters.”
“One rat over many. Josh! For Christ’s sake, get me out of here!”

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“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

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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

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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

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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.”
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“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,

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“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

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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.

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“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

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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

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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 half-
around 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

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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-to-
side. 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

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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

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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

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

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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

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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

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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 near-
hysterical 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

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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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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

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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

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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!

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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 vice-
versa. 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

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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.

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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 mid-
stride, 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

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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-to-
right, 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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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
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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 oh-
one 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.”
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“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
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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
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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 beautifully-
highlighted 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
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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
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will require Solomon’s adoption of my every idiosyncrasy . . . and I will confess to periods of wool-
gathering.” 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 wave-
sensitive 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 stress-
responsive 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 nose-
shaped 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,
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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 God-
becoming—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 two-
inch 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
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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.
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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.

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 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 self-
attained. 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
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 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 soul-
searching 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
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 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 purple-
white 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” Anti-
Discrimination 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 Kumba-
Sanchezski 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-but-
equal” 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 WIMP-
enforced 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 life-
form, 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 banyan-
like 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; tax-
free, 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 ever-
widening 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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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 boxcar-
shaped 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,
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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 paper-
clipped 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. Vi-
len-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 self-
abuse. 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 borderline-
13
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 camera-
shy—”
“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.”
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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, off-
again 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
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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.”
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“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.
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“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 at-
large 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
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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
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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
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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.”
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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
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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
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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 half-
turned. “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.
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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.”
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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.”

31
 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
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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
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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 stress-
and-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
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Phelps Freak
stage, while Hysterics could only peep from the wings with half-baked charges of a state-
orchestrated 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 two-
dimensional 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
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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
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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
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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,
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“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 cross-
examination 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.
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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.
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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!”
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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-and-
pepper 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
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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
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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 self-
control, 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.
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“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
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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, eye-
popping 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 carnival-
like 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
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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
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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
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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
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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?
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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?”
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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.
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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
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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 see-
through 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
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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 fur-
fringed 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
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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
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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
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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.
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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,
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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 self-
serving 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-and-
whites 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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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-to-
boardwalk 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
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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-and-
whites 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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.

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 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
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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’s-
his-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.
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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.”
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“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 . . . kway-
shus?”
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
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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 spring-
loaded. 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.”
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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 ex-
husband’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 abuse-
gratification 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.
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 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 mother-
daughter 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 ninety-
seventh 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 custom-
made 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-and-
branch 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-shaka-
hands 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!”

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 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 . . .”

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 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.”
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 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 tie-
downs, 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, graffiti-
riddled 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-and-
seek 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, ta-
tas.

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 in-
the-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 woman-
scolding, 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,

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 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.”

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 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!”
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 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.
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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
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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 . . . Haight-
Ashbury 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
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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 khaki-
colored 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, self-
destructive 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.
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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.”
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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-and-
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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
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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.
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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.
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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 stock-
still, 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
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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.
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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 half-
collapsed 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
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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.
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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,
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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 dangerously-
close 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
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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,
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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.”
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“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.
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“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
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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
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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?”
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“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.”
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“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!”
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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 chocolate-
frosted 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: banana-
frosted! 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
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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 orange-
frosted 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
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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.
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“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
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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
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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 raven-
haired 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
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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
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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.
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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.”
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“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.”
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“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!”
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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.

45
 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.
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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. Doll-
like 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?”
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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
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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, ever-
changing 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,
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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 dishwater-
blond 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
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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)
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“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.”

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
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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.”
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“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 near-
coma.
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.
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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 last-
ditch, 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?”
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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.
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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.
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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-and-
lime 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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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
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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.
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“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
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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
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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
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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.
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“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.
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“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
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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 raven-
haired 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.
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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.
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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
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. . . 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,
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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
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his silly face, and said, simply:
“Let’s go.”

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
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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.
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“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
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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
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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?”
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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.
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“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.
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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 buddy-
buddy 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 wilted-
looking 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.
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“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
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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?”
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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 non-
concrete 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 flat-
out 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
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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
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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
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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.”
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“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 six-
year-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
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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
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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
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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
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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 self-
centered 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
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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, ever-
lovin’ 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
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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
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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
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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
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“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.
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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 post-
combat 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
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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!”
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“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
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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.
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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.
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Kevin changed gears and, wearily at first, began pedaling north in the wake of the bus.

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 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 shop-
restaurant-fish market on the little pier, and somehow the passing of strolling window-shoppers and
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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.
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“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.
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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
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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 long-
disintegrated 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.
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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
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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 rope-
soled 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?”
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.”
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“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 dirty-
minded. 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
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. . . 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.
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“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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 / populations-
deep 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?”
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“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 hewn-
away 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
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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
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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
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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
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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?”
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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
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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
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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,
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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 sleep-
filled 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.
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“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.
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“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 thought-
impaired: 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?”
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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
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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 half-
full 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
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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.”
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“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
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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
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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.
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“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 tukhu-
pes 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.
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“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 cabin-
shaped 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
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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 self-
respecting 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,
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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
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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
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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!”
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“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 municipally-
sponsored 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
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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
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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
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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
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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.”
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“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
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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,
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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
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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
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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!”
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“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.
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“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
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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
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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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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. “Haight-
Ashbury,” 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
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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
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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 boarded-
over 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 unhealthy-
looking 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
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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
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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:

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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.
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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
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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,
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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 cross-
legged 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,
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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
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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,
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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
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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—”
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“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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.”
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“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 window-
shoppers 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
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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
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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

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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 dead-
looking 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!
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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
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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-go-
round 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
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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 soul-
baiting 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!”
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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
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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 rosy-
cheeked 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
 Carnival Be Stupid And Multiply
praz thu lord
i jus wish yoo kood b her 2 fin gzus lik me
i no now i wuz supozd 2 rid up her
i misd thu big kawnsrt in thu prk but i joend thu bigr kawnsrt uv gawd
insid iz litruchr literusher stuf frum owr chrch
i hop yoo wil red it jime in tim 2 sav yr sinfol sol bi taken thu lord gzus az yr savyr
i pra 4 yoo ech minut uv thu da jime
frst i pra 4 yr lag an thn i pra 4 yr hrt an thn i pra yool sa yr u sinr an lt gzus tuch yoo
plez jime plez dont mak gawd go an gt mad at yoo or yoo mit az wl fas it yr u gawnr
thaerz stil tim 2 repnt an remmbr that at owr chrch we r awl polen 4 yoo jime
ps
im kawld bruthr kalvn up her but yoo kan snd yr mune 2

krist r us chrch
pos awfis bawx 10095
yooreku kalu4nyu

sa halulooya jime
bls awl gawdz childrun hoo r awl bruthrz an sistrz in gzus wich iz wut thu bibl sz an thu bibl iz thu
wrd uv gawd awlmit hoo luvz yoo jime an hoo kan fix yr lag if yoo wil onle sa yr u siner
so jime plez praz gzus thu fawthr thu sun an thu hole gos
amn
bruthr kalvn

213
 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 quasi-
hypnotic 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-so-
sorry 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. Tighter-
tight, 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 funny-
money 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-last-
forever, 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 multi-
flippered. 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: “Chitty-
chat! 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 rainbow-
patterned mink-and-nylon body stocking with rhinestone-studded peacock feathers, floor-length see-
through 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!

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 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 guts-
and-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 bo-
sheet, 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—thuda-
thuda-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, all-
feeding, 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 street-
watching, 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. Pat-
pat. 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 broken-
down 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 twisted-
round 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, lane-
hopped 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 wracked-
and-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; gold-
sequined 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, well-
placed, 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 All-
loving 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 self-
perpetuating 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—

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 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 flaming-
sword-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.

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 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-great-
great 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 dung-
crusted 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.

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 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

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 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

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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
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 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.
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 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, drunk-
breath, 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 half-
carried, 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-freaking-
hundred 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 long-
suppressed 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, eggshell-
white, 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
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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 daisy-
chained 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 pony-
shy, 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
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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
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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.”

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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 real-
time 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.

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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 tension-
factor. Okay. Whatever you assholes say.
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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.

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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

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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 muscle-
headed 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 a-
b-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 pine-
smothered 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 soft-
yellow 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 off-
property 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 pine-
smothered 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 lickety-
split. 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, lamprey-
like 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 off-
putting—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 bone-
white 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’ right-
hand 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.
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 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.
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 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
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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,
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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 street-
bought 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
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 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
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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-and-
cream 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.
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 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.

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 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.
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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
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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.
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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.

15
 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 glass-
enclosed 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.”
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 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
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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
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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.”
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 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.
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“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
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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—
oh? Hey-ey-ey-ey-ey- ey MISTER!
... Are you, like, okay?”
Vane 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 rainbow-
glitter 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
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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.
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“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
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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.
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 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.”
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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 eighty-
five 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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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“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 water-
damaged 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
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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
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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
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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.
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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 welcome-
back. 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.
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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 Asafu-
Adjaye. 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
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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
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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
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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 gaily-
jetting 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
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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.
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“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;
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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
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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
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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 partly-
bisecting 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.
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 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
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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.

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 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
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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.”
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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 self-
serving 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
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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, most-
caring 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.
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“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
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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
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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.”
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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
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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.
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“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
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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
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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?”
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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.”
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“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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.”
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“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 long-
anticipated 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
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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
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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
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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 much-
needed 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
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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 eagerly-
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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
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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 fast-
forwarded 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,
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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, cigar-
chomping 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,
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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 self-
congratulation: 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
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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.
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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
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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 poker-
faced 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.
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“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 three-
island 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 willy-
nilly, 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
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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.”
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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
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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?
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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 joke-
making 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
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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.”
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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—
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“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
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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.
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“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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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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.”
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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
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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 near-
infinite 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 cold-
heartedness 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
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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.
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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
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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-and-
metacarpals 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
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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
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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 al-
Wakil, 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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.”
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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
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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
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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.
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“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
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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 throat-
slitting 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
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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.
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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 side-
to-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
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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
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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 old-
fashioned 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
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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
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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
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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 dung-
covered 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
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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 pickaxe-
wielding 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
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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 asphalt-
runners 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 gift-
laden 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
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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.
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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 near-
continuous 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.
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“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
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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
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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
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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 eighty-
eight 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 heart-
stopping 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, near-
naked 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
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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.”
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“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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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-and-
makeup 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
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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
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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
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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
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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 three-
letter 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.”
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“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.”
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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.
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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
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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 Mini-
Stages. 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
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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 dressed-
and-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
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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
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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:
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Dear Rebecca,
Wish You Were Here.
Kid Rameses.

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 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
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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.
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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
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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,
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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?”
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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
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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.”
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“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.”
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“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
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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,
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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.”
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“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
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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, similarly-
colored 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
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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
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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.
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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.

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 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,
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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
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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-and-
mutilate.
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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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 Saille-
Halla, 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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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.
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“Mudhead know place.”

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.
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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.”
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“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.”
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.