On Writing Well
The Ron Sanders Reader
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Text and art copyright 2011 by Ron Sanders * Justified text is ugly
website: http://ronsandersatwork.com
contact: ronsandersartofprose@yahoo.com
Signature
Thelma
Snapdragon
Hero
Rage
Alphanumerica
A Deeper Cut
Remembering Jack
Elis Royd
Hell’s Outpost
Empire
The Other Side
Common Denominator
Savage Glen
Why I Love Democracy
(writing as Enrique Batsnuwa LaCszynevitch McGomez)
Microcosmia
Now!
Bill & Charlie (a love story)
The Depths
Benidickedus
Boy
Lovers
Freak
The Book Of Ron
Horizon
Yogi
Elaine
ScanElite
More
Why Did You Kill John Lennon
Norm
Piety
Justman!
Home Planet
Carnival
Signature
“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 . . .”
—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:
HAPPY NEW YEAR, 1347!
“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 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?”
“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 trying 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. 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.”
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!”
Izzy hurled down his glass. “To hell with ’em!” The plastic tumbler didn’t crack, but sprang back feebly. “To hell . . . man, 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 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 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 fisheye 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.
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.”
“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.
“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, 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 re-ordered 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!”
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, 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 boundless desert junkyard, and the proud torch of civilization was a wan and distant glow.
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.
“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 thataway.”
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-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.
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 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.”