The black curtain refused to part for Sutenhotep, so the flaming man ran into it. The curtain squealed as the fire leaped for it, adding its unnatural voice to the song of pain and fear which Sutenhotep sang. It finally pulled back, leaving the portal to the front of the shop wide open. Sutenhotep plunged through, still burning, still squealing.
Cage listened for a moment, catching his breath. From the other room he heard more squeals of fear and pain. With a herculean effort, he rose from the floor. He could see shadows thrown by dancing flames as he stumbled toward the portal. Thick smoke was gathering around the open portal, and the flames were finally adding heat to a shop that Cage had found to be cold and damp. Cage felt the heat, and he hoped he would have enough time to get out before the shop fell in fiery ruins.
He paused at the opening between the two halves of the shop. The front room was decorated in smoke and flame, and the maze of display cases was on fire. Cage could see dark shapes writhing in the flames. It looked as though the shapes were dancing in the fire, keeping time to an inferno beat. The screams that rose out of that pyre told a different story, however. The shapes were in agony, dying as they fed the flames with their own mutable flesh and the discarded dreams they guarded.
Cage was about to move on when something fell on him from above. It took him only seconds to recognize the shimmering black curtain. Now it was a sheet of fire, and it was trying to smother him beneath its own oily flesh and the burning flames that made it scream in pain. It snaked around his back, a sheet of hot, bubbling flesh crawling toward his neck and head. Cage slammed into the wall, crushing the flaming curtain between himself and the shop. Unlike the stone chamber, the front room had normal walls of wood and plaster. The fire leaped from the curtain and raced up the wall, eager to continue its devouring dance. The curtain, all but devoured itself, fell away from Cage in a fiery heap. Cage brushed out a few burning embers on his denim pants and tossed his burning shirt into the nearest blaze. Then, without another hesitation, he rushed toward the front door.
"Help me, Angus." Cage heard the voice call to him from out of the flames as he reached the open door to the alley. "I don't want to die again."
He looked back into the burning room. Clemeta was standing about ten feet away, trapped inside the flame-filled maze. She was hidden in shadows, bent over as if in pain while fire burned all around her. Cage stepped toward her, but an intense blast of heat and fire held him at bay.
"Clemeta!" Cage called to her. He remembered watching one Clemeta die a horrible death. He did not think he could stand to watch another Clemeta go through such agony. "Clemeta, can you hear me?"
Cage felt hot smoke burn his lungs as he tried to reach her. "Clemeta, you have to help me," he called, hoping she could hear him over the crackling flames. "Can you reach out your hand? You have to try!"
At the sound of his voice, Clemeta's head jerked up. She straightened, though it seemed to take a great amount of effort. The flames were higher now, the smoke thicker, and Cage could barely make out Clemeta's shapely form within the inferno. He saw her reach toward him with one slender hand.
"Save me, Angus Cage," Clemeta cried. "I will be whoever you want me to be. Just save me."
Cage stretched out his own hand in return, reaching across the flames to take Clemeta's hand. "A little further, Clemeta," he coaxed, "I can just about feel your fingers." Then, as he brushed her fingers with his own, Cage saw Sutenhotep's Clemeta. This Clemeta was no longer outlined in Payne's proper lighting, however. She was spotlighted by the blaze of an inferno. In this light, Cage saw her as she really was.
Clemeta was nothing more than the withered remains of a three thousand year old corpse. Parts of her dusty flesh had decayed over the centuries, regardless of the care with which she had been preserved. Gaping holes exposed the white bone of her arm. Her high cheek bones stretched thin, cracking flesh into a skeletal mask. Her eyes were empty sockets, and her stomach was an open hollow of ribs. Inside the hollow, black eel-like shapes squirmed and wriggled among the remains of dried organs. Her voice, so soft and sexy, emerged from the eels and not from her dry, cracked lips.
"Help me, Angus," the eels cried in a chorus of Clemeta's voice. "I want to live."
"I'm sorry," Cage managed to choke out. He closed his hand and withdrew it. Her own hand, more bone and dried flesh than shapely appendage, closed upon hot licks of flame.
"What is the matter, Cage?" Quentin Payne sneered as he dropped onto Cage's back. He wasn't heavy, but he intertwined too many arms and legs around Cage's body to be anything close to a normal man. Cage recalled the hallucination he had experienced in the gin joint. He suddenly knew that the images he had seen were real, and that the real Payne was now wrapped around him, some horrible cross between a giant slug and a spider. He felt short, sharp hairs scratch his bare back and shoulders. He felt cold, sharp claws grab his head and turn it toward the flames.
"Is she not everything I promised?" Payne laughed. "Is she not a tempting morsel of flesh and blood? Can you really just stand here and watch her die again, Cage? Can you?"
Cage felt hot blood drip down his face as Payne's claws dug into his flesh. The showman was forcing him to look at Clemeta, to watch as the flames drew closer to her ancient, withered form.
"I can make her beautiful again, Cage," Payne assured him. "It all has to do with the way the light hits her. She has exquisite features, you know. Save her, Cage. Save her and she will be yours forever!"
"She's already dead, Payne," Cage shouted. "She died a very, very long time ago. The fire is simply finishing what nature started." Cage saw the flames finally find Clemeta's body. For a moment, he saw her features as they had been in life — dark, expressive eyes, an upturned nose, a pouting, wet mouth. Then he saw her as she was — a walking corpse. It was consumed in a burst of dust and fire.
Angus Cage turned, stumbling into the alley with Payne holding fast to his back. Already the fog was burning away, and he could feel the Cairo heat quickly replacing the cool dampness that once clogged the narrow alley. Most of the shadows were gone as well. The few that remained huddled at the far end of the alley like frightened mice.
"We had a done deal, Cage," Payne rasped. His carnival voice was dying. Cage imagined that it was being consumed in the same flames that devoured Clemeta and Sutenhotep. "You owe me, bounty hunter. You owe me."
Cage felt the spider limbs tighten around him, cutting off his air. Payne—whatever he was—meant to strangle him. Cage did not want to be strangled. He smashed the insect-thing into the wall of the nearest building, wincing as his own shoulder protested with biting pain. He smashed into it again. This time he was rewarded with Payne's squeal. A third time was the charm, and the Payne-thing released him. Cage sank to his knees, taking in great gulps of air as he crawled away. As he struggled to his feet, he remembered an old saying. It danced in his head the way the fire danced in the gutted remains of Oddities and Ends. "Let the buyer beware," he laughed. "Let the buyer beware, indeed."
Cage looked around the alley for Payne. He spotted him huddled among the remaining shadows, watching the fire burn through the ruined shop. Payne's form was unstable, constantly shifting between human and shadow slug. Two bullet wounds in his chest leaked dark ichor, and a few of his spider limbs were bent and broken. He glared at Angus Cage with malevolent eyes. No matter what shape his form took, Payne's eyes remained the same.
Cage turned his back, and started to walk away.
"Going somewhere, Cage?" Payne asked, but his carnival voice was almost gone, used up in one too many illusions. "You must want a better look at me. Hur-ree, hur-ree! Step right up! But the show will cost you. It always does. You cannot just walk away!"
But Angus Cage could do anything he pleased now, and he had had enough of carnivals and exhibits and dark memories. He wanted to get his shoulder fixed up and his cuts looked at. He wanted a shower and a hot meal. He even wanted another crack at Mobius, criminal mastermind from Terra turned Pharaoh of Earth. He wa
nted to get back to the real world, and that was far from this narrow alley.
"Cage! Please!" Payne stammered, his carnival voice winding down like a tired music box. "I do not want to die. You do not know how horrible death is where I come from. Please ..."
If Quentin Payne—whatever he was—had anything more to say, Cage didn't hear it. For Cairo had its own sounds, and they were loud and fresh and alive. They were the best sounds he ever heard, and they filled his senses with light and life. Angus Cage pulled his beat-up Fedora down over his eyes and, without a glance back, walked into the harsh, wonderful Cairo sunshine.
The Scarab's Sting
Greg Farshtey
The dawn was coming up over Cairo, washing the city in a pale yellow light that drove the rats back into their holes and the drunks back into the gin joints for one more round. My head was pounding and my tongue felt as if it had grown fur — my usual reaction to bad bathtub booze. But the private eye business doesn't always allow you to choose what you drink, or who you drink it with.
The traders were setting up their wares as I moved down what someone had laughingly dubbed "the Mobius Strip": a string of cheap massage parlors, seedy gambling joints, and "private clubs" where you checked your heater at the door before getting clipped. Places like that attracted a ritzier clientele, and the dealers lived a lot longer, too.
Up ahead, a beggar was asking for alms from the wrong guy. Sam "The Vulture" Burke was a Terran enforcer now working for Ali Bejjar, one of Cairo's big guns, and he didn't take kindly to bums looking for handouts. He was about to kick the poor sap for the third time when I clapped a hand on his shoulder.
"Kind of early in the morning for so much exercise, isn't it, Vulture?" I said, knowing full well the only thing Burke hated worse than beggars was wise guys. He grunted and swung a meaty paw at me, which I easily ducked. I came up and connected with my right on his lantern jaw and he folded like an accordion. He would be out for an hour at least, but I lifted his rod just to be on the safe side.
The bum I'd saved was giving me a gratitude number. He was in a bad way — one of those French stormers who had come to Cairo to make a few bucks, but something went sour. Now he was sitting on a street corner with two useless metal legs that wouldn't be walking anywhere anytime soon. I handed him my card and a little spare change and was about to get going when I saw his eyes widen.
He was looking past me and his mouth was moving frantically, but no words were coming out. You don't last long on Terra or here by being slow on the uptake, so I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into the alley. Just then, a Tommy gun chewed up the wall where we'd been a second ago. Somebody had a chip on their shoulder, and had decided to drop it on me.
"Legs" was crying, and I told him to shut up while I pulled out my .45. When the shooting stopped, I spotted three hoods in a black sedan across the street, all of them armed. I recognized them as lieutenants in "Nails" Nash's mob, a group I'd done a bad turn to now and then. But "Nails" had never gone in for daylight hits before, let alone with shooters dumb enough to stop their car and make themselves targets. Then again, I thought, as the chatter-guns went off in my direction, maybe he's trying to break out of his rut.
The Frenchman was trying to crawl away on his useless legs, and I shoved him behind a dumpster and told him in broken French to stay there. The last thing I wanted was the guy catching a bullet meant for me. The rest of the locals had already followed the Nile's first law of survival: when lead starts flying, be someplace else.
The tallest of the three gunmen was trying unsuccessfully to hunch down behind the hood of the car. I aimed for his head and made sure he'd get a closed coffin funeral. His two pals weren't happy about that, and made their point by turning the trash cans at the alley's mouth into so much scrap metal. The noise woke up a lady down the block. She leaned out her window and yelled at us to knock it off.
I fired off a few more rounds and shattered some of the windows in the sedan. In the old days, I could have counted on the cops arriving right about now, although there'd be no way to know whose side they'd take. But not here — Mobius kept his hands off Cairo, and the only shocktroopers in town were sleeping it off in the local whorehouses. As the bullets shattered more bricks into dust, I began to wish I hadn't junked my Mystery Man signal ring before coming to Earth.
I was about to make a run for a nearby auto when the two surviving triggermen piled into their wheels and took off. Just like that. They left their buddy bleeding all over the street, and left me wondering what in hell this had all been about. I told "Legs" it was all over and helped him back out on to the sidewalk.
People were breaking their liplocks with the concrete, dusting themselves off, and going on about their business. Nobody took any notice of me or the stiff. I holstered my cannon and went to check out the body.
There wasn't any face left to know, but his suit was good material. I steeled myself and reached inside his jacket for his wallet. I came out with a wad of dough that would have kept this mug in gin and skirts for a few months. I pocketed it. His wallet held a battered driver's license and a card with the address of Nash's nightspot, The Oasis Club.
I heard sirens in the distance, probably a meat wagon coming for Moneybags. I didn't have any answers to give them, so I decided to try to reach the office again. Since walking was apparently bad for my health, I hailed a nice, safe cab.
* * *
The hack let me off around the corner from the Nabib Building, just in case any more nasty surprises were waiting for me. They weren't, so I went inside and headed for the staircase leading to the second floor and the Living Truth Agency.
I was met halfway up by Fasoud, the apothecary, who was fighting a losing battle against perspiration with only a small perfumed handkerchief. "Praise Allah you have returned, McMasters," he sputtered. "I had begun to fear for my very life. I was certain those men would come back and wreck the entire building in their rage."
He wasn't making any sense, but he was certainly upset about something. He had sweated right through his best white linen suit, the one that always looked two sizes too large on him. "Calm down, pal," I said. "Tell the story from the beginning."
"I will do better than tell you, McMasters," he said, nodding. "I will show you."
Panting and wheezing, Fasoud led the way up to the landing. I didn't need a road map to see what he was talking about — the floor of the hallway was covered with glass, and it literally had my name on it. Somebody had shattered the window of my office door.
Leaving Fasoud wringing out his handkerchief, I ran down the hall and skidded into my office. It looked like a dust devil had been through it — chairs overturned, stuffing ripped out of cushions, papers scattered all over.
I like to think I'm a man who has his priorities straight. My first thought as I waded into the office, glass pulverizing under my shoes, was of Sadi, my partner/secretary/confidant. She could hold her own in just about any situation, but what had attacked this office looked to be a force of nature, and an angry one at that. I checked the inner office — which was just as bad, if not worse, than the reception area — but she wasn't there.
I went back to the hallway and found Fasoud. "Has Sadi been here this morning?"
"No, no, McMasters," he assured me. "Miss Bel-Adda has not yet arrived. Surely you do not think — ?"
"I don't know what to think, Fasoud," I said grimly, remembering the three hoods who had tried to ventilate me on my way here. "Do me a favor and call her apartment, will you? Somebody tossed my phone against a wall two or three times."
"As you wish," he answered, hurrying into his shop.
It was only then that I thought about the little secret I keep in my office. When I was just a struggling gumshoe on Terra, I used to watch the police haul in drunks every day, while the bootleggers who peddled the poison drove around in fancy cars and laughed at the law. Then one night, a friend of mine, Anthony Tortino, told a few of these big shots that he wouldn't let them use the back
of his paint store for a speakeasy. He'd call the law, he said.
That was the last stand Tony would ever take. The rum-runners shot him down in cold blood, and then they murdered his wife and two little girls for good measure. The cops never made an arrest in the case — too many palms had been greased, I guess.
Tony's murder made me realize I should be doing more than snapping photos in divorce cases and nabbing jaywalkers. The world was full of Jacks and Janes putting on funny costumes and giving the underworld hell — "Mystery Men," the papers called them. With the help of Sadi, I designed a silver and red costume and joined them, as the Silver Scarab. Right after that, Dr. Alexus Frest (the big brain behind a lot of the heroes) gave me a zap gun he jokingly referred to as "the Scarab's Sting."
When I came to Earth and rented this place, I built a concealed closet in my inner office. It was there I kept my costume and my weapon, safe and sound until I needed them.
And it only took a second for me to see that my secret wasn't a secret any longer.
Sadi showed up just in time to see me staring at an empty closet with a stupid look on my face. To describe her in a few words, Sadi is the vision guys see when they're lost in the desert and dreaming of someday seeing a woman again. She was working undercover as a "hostess" in a Chicago speakeasy when I met her, entertaining the customers by telling their fortunes. It turned out we were both on the same case, so we brought down the bad guys together. I discovered she had a genuine talent for sensing things about people and objects — but today wasn't one of her more perceptive days.
"What has happened here?" she said, looking around at the devastation. "McMasters, are you hurt?"
"Could be," I answered. "It remains to be seen just how badly." I told her about the morning's events and saw a light dawn in her beautiful dark eyes. Some big bruiser had tried to lean on her right after she left her apartment — she had made short work of him, of course, but he delayed her long enough for all this to have happened.
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