Slimy Underbelly

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “It’s a sinkhole!” I said. The crater yawned even wider. “We don’t know how big it’s going to grow.”

  The blood bar dropped into an ever-widening pit. The crashing, groaning sounds were deafening.

  Robin was more angry than frightened. “We’ve had floods and blizzards and mudslides—now sinkholes? We have to end this weather-wizard feud. The Quarter won’t survive another election like this.”

  I didn’t think sinkholes were necessarily a meteorological phenomenon, but that’s not my area of expertise.

  By now, the crater had sucked up half the street, pulling down peripheral buildings and swallowing the entire blood bar. Vampire customers managed to crawl out of the wreckage, dusty and battered.

  “I need to talk to Thunder Dick—after we help out here. These people need us,” I said to Robin.

  She didn’t hesitate. “Let’s get started, then.”

  “This area’s still dangerous,” I pointed out. “We’ll have to be careful.”

  Two werewolves assisted an old woman whose fangs were dulled with age as she hobbled to a bus stop bench where she could rest and recover. Robin and I guided a disoriented necromancer as he hauled himself out of the rubble. “I wasn’t even there as a customer,” he muttered. “I just came in to buy a gift card. You shouldn’t have to worry about falling into a sinkhole if you’re just buying a gift card. What kind of world is this?”

  Sirens blaring, an arterial red fire engine rolled up with a full crew of rescue workers and firefighters—all golems, whose clay bodies were entirely flame resistant. They swung down their ladders and tossed ropes into the sinkhole.

  McGoo arrived in a flurry, accompanied by Sheyenne, and both of them looked determined and overwhelmed as they viewed the disaster. “I need a less interesting job, Shamble,” he said. “First killer tentacles in the bathhouse, and now this.”

  Sheyenne joined other helpful ghosts who flitted into the unstable rubble in an ectoplasmic search and rescue. They focused their poltergeist skills to move fallen bricks out of the way, but had to take turns as they exhausted themselves. I knew how much effort Sheyenne expended just to keep herself firm inside a glove when the two of us wanted to hold hands. Looking decidedly paler and more insubstantial, she drifted back to the top of the sinkhole and had to take a rest.

  “It’s those damn weather wizards, I know it,” McGoo grumbled as he did his best to direct the rescue efforts. “We’ve never had a sinkhole in the Quarter before.”

  Some much-needed muscle arrived when Stentor the ogre joined the rescue efforts. He had been out on the streets, walking for block after block as he cried out in his tiny tone, “Help! Someone has stolen my voice. If found, please call the police,” then listening for an operatic echo from the lost catalyst frog.

  Stentor peered down from the edge of the crater, alarmed and dismayed. He proved even stronger than the golem firefighters, wrestling large chunks of broken walls, hauling up sections of collapsed countertops, even tossing an espresso machine out onto the street.

  In the midst of the activity, seeing a crowd of possible undecided voters, Alastair Cumulus III arrived in freshly washed wizard robes to show his bright and sunny disposition, and handed out campaign posters. But when the crowd noticed him, they began grumbling and turned ugly (or uglier).

  “Blizzards were bad enough,” yelped one werewolf. “Now sinkholes. How many more sinkholes will there be?”

  Undaunted, Cumulus said with an arrogant sniff, “How many more would you like? I shall see what I can do.”

  When the crowd snarled, howled, and flashed their fangs, the weather wizard finally picked up on the mood and beat a hasty retreat.

  Over the next hour it was heartwarming, at least for those with warm blood, to watch the people of the Quarter pull together. As rescuers, we gave priority to the most vulnerable humans first, for there are plenty of human workers, tourists, and commuters in the Quarter. Two vampires were entirely buried under the rubble, but although it was an inconvenience, vampires are accustomed to being buried; some even find it nostalgic. Sheyenne recovered enough of her ghostly strength to dive down into the rubble again. By now most of the blood-bar customers had been accounted for.

  The hemoglobin boutique had sunk deep, and when Sheyenne’s intangible searches uncovered a vampire barista trapped in the collapsed basement, Stentor secured a rope around his own chest to help with the rescue. He lowered himself down, with three of the golems holding the rope steady. Stentor called out at the top of his lungs to reassure the trapped barista, though his voice was so small that if the victim had more than a thin layer of brick dust in his ears, he could not have heard him.

  The ogre might not be much of an opera singer anymore, but he was certainly being a hero today. He went down deep, hurled rubble aside to free the disheveled vampire barista, tied a second rope around the victim, and sent him back up into the gloom of day. While the ogre was down at the bottom of the sinkhole, we heard him calling out in his minuscule voice, hoping to get an answer from his frog.

  When Stentor signaled he was ready to come back up, he tugged the rope so hard that the sturdy golems were nearly pulled down into the crater. They strained to haul the ogre up again. He stood swaying on the street. “At least I helped someone today, even if I didn’t find my voice.”

  Robin’s cell phone went off with the ubiquitous “Marimba” ring tone, proving that phones tend to ring at inopportune times. She finished giving a hand to a curious mummy who had fallen into the crater, and still managed to answer her phone before it went to voice mail. Sheyenne was next to her, ready to take a message if necessary.

  Robin was all business. “Good to hear from you, Miz Mellivar. Do you have anything to report?” She put her phone on speaker so I could listen in.

  “Something for you and Mr. Chambeaux,” said the Deputy Assistant Manager of Patents. “We’ve had a robbery here after hours.”

  “Shouldn’t you call the police?”

  “I thought I’d get a faster response from you, and I believe you’ll want to look into this yourselves,” Miz Mellivar said. “Besides, the police are busy responding to some sinkhole emergency.”

  “We’re here, too, but the hard part is over,” Robin said. “How does this robbery pertain to us?”

  I was worried that some terrorist had stolen the prototype artificial Medusa head, or some of the other bizarre inventions.

  “They didn’t break into the testing labs, just into my offices,” said Miz Mellivar. “The thief took only the blueprints, proposals, and prototypes filed by Jody Caligari, including his X-ray Spex. It was clearly a targeted robbery.”

  Robin and I glanced at each other. She said, “We’ll be right there to have a look.”

  McGoo put his hands on his hips. “What a mess! Just what the Quarter needed—now people have to worry about their favorite drinking establishments falling into holes under the street.” He removed his cap, wiped his forehead, and turned back to the sinkhole. “Look, Shamble, I’d go to the patent office to check up on the break-in, but that’ll have to wait. Right now, even if everybody’s rescued, this is still a disaster—I have to set up barriers at the perimeter to keep more people from falling in, have teams make sure the sinkhole won’t keep expanding, find out if the ground is unstable, write up damage reports. It’s going to be a long night.”

  “I think I can stop any more drama from the weather wizards,” I said, knowing that I had to confront Thunder Dick and tell him that it wasn’t Alastair Cumulus sabotaging his campaign, but his own traitorous cat. I glanced at Sheyenne and Robin. “Can you two handle the patent office? You know what to do, check out the crime scene and gather the information we need. Meanwhile, I’m going to stop this feud and prevent further weather events. I have to go see a man about a cat.”

  CHAPTER 39

  It had been one of those days.

  I’m not saying that tentacular attacks on bathhouses, meteorological conspiracies, and unexpected sinkholes swa
llowing blood bars were everyday occurrences, even in the Unnatural Quarter, but sometimes it felt as if all the stars, planets, and asteroids had lined up to make everything go wrong at once. The sinkhole was the low point of the day, but more raw sewage was sure to hit the fan sooner or later.

  And now I had to tell Thunder Dick that his feline best friend was his worst enemy. The weather wizard would never be the same, and I wasn’t particularly eager to let the cat out of the bag.

  I felt a heaviness in my unbeating heart as I went to his home, a low-rent rooms-by-the-week tenement that, according to our case paperwork, Richard Thudner had listed as his address for the past two years. If he did win the Wuwufo election, I wondered if he’d move to some sort of presidential mansion where every room had a different and interesting microclimate. On the other hand, if the Weather Wizards Fraternal Order was just a small professional organization, maybe the presidency paid nothing whatsoever. Since the membership directory was held under such tight secrecy, I had no idea what size the roster was, but I couldn’t imagine it was a particularly large group.

  When I knocked on the door, a sound of thunder rumbled through his apartment. “Coming!” Thunder Dick called.

  I steeled myself for what I had to do. He was our client, and he had to know the truth about his conniving pet, no matter how difficult it might be for him to accept. Politics was often painful, and the rigors of a hard-fought campaign tore apart relationships. I wondered if the cat would make excuses for what he had done.

  When the weather wizard saw me looming in his doorway, he flashed an awkward smile and let me in. He was still embarrassed by the post-mudslide scolding Robin had given him, but even that mess was nothing compared with the damage and injury the sinkhole had caused.

  “Thank you for seeing me.” I removed my fedora because it seemed polite. “There have been some developments in your case. It’s bad news, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, no.” Thunder Dick swallowed hard. “You’re not going to tell me that Alastair Cumulus the Third is my long-lost brother, separated at birth?”

  “Um, no. Not that at all.”

  The weathermancer seemed relieved. “Good, because that would have been a ridiculous plot twist.”

  In the main room, the tuxedo cat strolled past an elaborate and expensive scratching post and instead raked his claws on the side of the sofa.

  I tried to sound businesslike to prepare the wizard for the even worse news. “Ms. Deyer and I went to the weather network central offices. We already knew the meteorologists were contributing to both of your campaigns in order to buy access to—and exert influence over—the winner.”

  “The networks were my only contributors,” Thunder Dick admitted, “but I thought they supported me wholeheartedly. Two-timers!”

  “In the end, they decided it was easier to keep Alastair Cumulus in their pockets. The meteorologists had a meeting—a company picnic, actually—and decided to pool their resources to make sure that you lose the Wuwufo presidential campaign.”

  “Those bastards! Even the perky ones. How did they do it? Where did they find all that embarrassing information?”

  I hesitated. The cat seemed completely aloof, though I knew he was eavesdropping. On the floor, Thunder Dick had left one of the newspapers with the embarrassing and unflattering photograph of him. Morris/Maurice went over and sat in the middle of it.

  “The networks had an infiltrator, someone close to you who got the photos, exposed your finances, and tore off the word Supporter from your ‘Be a Dick Supporter’ campaign posters.”

  Thunder Dick flushed, and his wild and unruly hair and beard stuck out in all directions. His voice cracked. “Who? Who would do that to me?”

  “Your cat,” I said. “Morris.”

  “Maurice,” the cat said, then licked a front paw, pretending that nothing was the matter.

  Thunder Dick whirled to stare at him. “That’s outrageous. Morris is my familiar. We’re a team.”

  “You’re living in a fantasy world.” The cat licked his other paw. “Has anyone seen my catnip?”

  Thunder Dick’s mouth hung open. “Aren’t you even going to deny what he said?”

  The cat sneezed. “Why? Have you looked at my food dish? I can see the bottom of it, and you know how nervous I get when I can see the bottom. You’re a terrible master.”

  The weather wizard was appalled and deeply hurt, as I had known he would be. “You . . . you’re working for the other candidate?”

  “No,” the cat said. “I just can’t stand you anymore.”

  “But . . . after all I’ve done for you!” Thunder Dick clenched his fists and raised them toward the sky, or rather toward the ceiling of his small apartment. “I’ll conjure up a thunderstorm. I’ll pour rain down on you all day long. A black cloud will follow you everywhere you go.” Nothing happened. He frantically grabbed at the front of his robe, patted his chest with both hands, then cried, “Where’s my talisman? I can’t do anything without my talisman.”

  The cat sniffed and stretched. “I flushed it down the toilet.”

  Thunder Dick was as amazed as he was horrified. “Since when do you know how to work a toilet?”

  “Cats have always known how to use toilets. We just choose not to.” He walked toward me as if he could charm me into petting him. He turned back to his master. “Oh, and I left you something in the corner behind the sofa.”

  Thunder Dick was confused. “You caught me a mouse?”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  When I refused to pet him, the cat strolled to the door, which remained open from when I had entered. “This is goodbye, Dick. My feline friends and I are going to make our fame and fortune on the legitimate stage. We’ve all been cast for the Phantom’s new revival of Cats. We’ve been practicing every night.”

  “Oh, is that what that sound was?” Thunder Dick said.

  Morris trotted out into the hall. “And don’t eat my cat food. I might be back when I get hungry.”

  The weather wizard looked at me helplessly. “What am I going to do, Mr. Chambeaux?” He sank to the floor in despair, then crawled on his knees over to wrap his arms around the pristine scratching post. “My life has fallen apart. My familiar abandoned me, and I lost my special talisman.” He clutched at his robes as if to make sure he hadn’t just misplaced his portable sundial, but had no luck finding it. “I’m completely impotent without the talisman.”

  “Let’s not go around advertising that you’re impotent. People will think you’re confusing election with erection.”

  “But how do I salvage this debacle?” He shook his head from side to side. “The Wuwufo members vote in a week.”

  I had to put the client’s needs above my own. With Robin and Sheyenne off investigating the break-in at the Mad Scientists Patent Office, and McGoo still working on the sinkhole disaster, I knew what I had to do.

  “Just because the election’s gone down the toilet, so to speak, doesn’t mean your talisman is gone forever.” I made up my mind. “I’m heading down into the sewers anyway to wrap up a case. You can come along with me and have a look.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Before leaving his apartment, the weather wizard took a Y-shaped flexible willow rod. “Are we going fishing?” I asked, sure we wouldn’t catch anything edible down in the sludge of the catacombs.

  “It’s a dowsing rod. Classic model. I can use it to find my talisman.”

  “I’ll take whatever help we can get.” In the confusing labyrinth down there, I might need Thunder Dick’s help with the dowsing rod, or maybe an underground GPS unit, to track down Ah’Chulhu’s main grotto again.

  The weathermancer walked along with me as if a gloomy cloud hung over him. He didn’t know what he was going to do without his cat, but I promised him that after this night was over, he could find plenty of kittens at the UQ animal shelter. “It won’t be the same as Morris, but it’ll help ease your pain.”

  I chose the direct route into the main business
district of the sewers—straight through the basement doorway in the Chambeaux & Deyer building.

  When we entered the front door and made our way to the lower levels, our building superintendent Renfeld shuffled down the hall from his dim and squalid lair. He looked at me through the tangles of hair under his floppy hat and gave me an apologetic wave. “Don’t worry, Mr. Chambeaux. It’s already taken care of.”

  “What’s taken care of?” I asked.

  “The loud noise from the new underdwellers, a stereo playing humpback-whale mating music. Not exactly something you can dance to.” He regarded Thunder Dick. “Is that a friend of yours? Remember, no after-hours parties.”

  “He’s a client, Mr. Renfeld,” I said. “We won’t make any noise.”

  The weather wizard and I slipped down the basement stairs and found all the new tenants’ doors still closed. From behind one, I heard mournful whale song, like someone belching into a PVC pipe. One of these days I was going to have to take a plate of cookies to meet our neighbors . . . but I could do that after we took care of the other cosmically important complications.

  When I opened the door leading into the sewers, Thunder Dick wrinkled his nose. “Smells ripe tonight.”

  “Smells overripe to me—and I don’t have a very good sense of smell.” Nevertheless, I led the way, easing along the ever-narrowing walkway and then sloshing into the wider canals.

  Uneasy, Thunder Dick braced himself and stepped into the sewage after me, soaking his tie-dyed robes. “Nothing to worry about,” he muttered, convincing himself. “This is completely natural, one hundred percent runoff from the rains.”

  “With a few other ingredients mixed in,” I said, then motioned him forward. “You’ve got the dowsing rod—lead the way.”

  He extended his flexible rod in front of him, letting it droop, then perking it up again, drooping, tilting it from side to side, as if he were engaged in some sort of an aerobic Ouija board exercise. He splashed forward. “This way.”