Oh, Lukas, Malcolm thought, I wish you were real and your civilization really did exist 30,000 years ago and still did exist and was on its way to rescue me and take me out into space.
The ramp curved to the east and headed almost directly toward the sun. The redness was fading quickly, giving way to a normal, earthly daylight.
The two-lane highway they were now on was much lower, and all Malcolm could see through the window was a wall of trees to either side. Now and then, he caught glimpses of standing water between the trees. Great limbs stretched horizontally from immense trunks. In places, these branches met above the road, creating a tunnel. Grayish, fuzzy strands hung from the branches, sometimes reaching almost to the ground.
“I think I’ve seen this in a movie,” he said, speaking aloud, forgetting the rule about not addressing Shirley Weng.
She seemed willing to forget the rule, too. “I think you should start living real life for a change, Erskine,” she said.
He looked at her quickly, almost expecting to see that she had become transformed into Marlene. It was, after all, a very Marlene sort of line. He found himself unable to look away. The light had lost most of its redness by now, but even so the faint rosiness of it on Shirley Weng’s astonishing face rendered Malcolm as breathless as Mongo had been at the end. One way or another, he thought, she destroys men’s hearts.
“Put your eyes back,” Shirley told him. She leaned forward and looked through the front window. “Not much longer,” she added. “We’re getting close.”
“So, where are we going?” Malcom asked. “You haven’t told me yet.”
“To see the only man who values me for my brains,” Shirley said.
Must be a blind eunuch, Malcolm thought. Reflecting that Shirley’s low, strong voice was as erotic as the rest of her, he amended that to a blind, deaf eunuch.
* * * * *
The road began to rise. The car turned off onto a side road that climbed for a while and ended in a paved parking lot. Malcolm got out and stretched. He found himself near the edge of a dropoff looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. The parking lot was at the edge of a ridge stretching parallel to the beach below. The rest of the ridge, as far as he could see, was covered by thick lawns of deep green shaded by immense trees like those he had seen to either side of the road leading here, but even larger and not so close together. Their thick branches spread out horizontally, and the same gray, fuzzy strands he had seen earlier hung from them. From the parking lot, a white concrete pathway headed across the lawns in a ruler-straight line toward a low, white building mostly hidden by the trees.
Malcolm thought that he would have found it all quite charming if not for the thick, clammy air and the even heavier atmosphere of menace.
“Come on,” Shirley said. “Let’s get into the air conditioning.” She looked as uncomfortable as Malcolm was beginning to feel.
At least she’s not a complete superwoman, he thought.
She hurried along the pathway, Malcolm following, happy for the moment just to watch her walk. His happiness was tempered only by the fear that their destination might be a torture chamber.
Shirley led him to another low, white building adjacent to the one Malcolm had first seen through the trees. There appeared to be a series of such buildings stretching away in various directions, linked by paths and covered walkways. This place, whatever it was, was much bigger than he had at first realized, and Malcolm began to have the impression of a very large, very wealthy organization.
Shirley stopped before a wide, blank door and pressed her thumb against a small plate set in the wall. There was a soft buzz, and the door slid aside. She beckoned him in after her, and the door slid shut again behind them. It sounded heavy. Solid. Unbreakable.
The characterless hallway ahead of them, with doors set in it at regular intervals on each side, and with a row of fluorescent lights overhead bathing it in shadowless white light, could have been a hallway in any of the office buildings of Western Bell or any other giant corporation with too much money and too little taste or character. The overdressed office workers striding purposefully up and down the hallway and into and out of the various side offices could also have been Western Bell employees — although if they had been, they would have been strolling aimlessly.
Colossoverse, he reminded himself. Not Western Bell. Maybe they don’t stroll aimlessly now. Maybe all the aimless strollers have been cosmically outplaced since my day.
Shirley, like everyone else he saw, strode purposefully down the hallway. Malcolm, who had never learned to stride with or without purpose, panted behind her, trying to keep up.
She entered an office, beside the door of which was a plaque reading
COG
SECURITY DIVISION
Malcolm paused to read this plaque and try to deduce its meaning.
“Come on, come on!” Shirley snapped.
He followed her down another hallway, this one lined with photographs of smiling men and women. Above each photograph was the title “Employee of the Month: January,” “Employee of the Month: February,” and so on. Below each photograph was the employee’s name: John Smith, Harold Smith, Jane Smith, Mary Smith, and so on down the line.
Malcolm stopped suddenly in front of one of them. The employee’s name was Tracy Smith. The smiling face was the very familiar face of that Tracy who had exerted herself in his seminar and then in his bed, which exertion had occurred during the month she was named employee of the month for.
“Come on, come on!”
Shirley was unlocking a door. On it was painted
REVEREND’S RIGHT HAND
SHIRLEY WENG
Malcolm cleared his throat. “I think I’d like to go home now.”
Shirley laughed. “Not bad. Try to keep your sense of humor. It’ll probably help.”
“Oh, I’m quite serious.” He turned around and found himself staring at the stomach of a very large man, so large that both Zip Muchley and Mongo would have looked small beside him. Two more of the same size stood to either side. Malcolm had not even heard them coming up behind him.
“Maybe later,” he muttered and entered Shirley’s office.
It was small and contained only a desk and two chairs, one behind the desk and the other facing it. Both had arms, which seemed unusual to Malcolm, since he knew that it’s a standard office intimidation technique for the interviewer to have a chair with arms and the interviewee not to.
Shirley sat in the chair behind the desk and pointed toward the other chair. Malcolm sat in it, telling himself that, as soon as he gathered his wits and strength, he would think further about what to do instead of following her orders.
The three giants had entered behind him. They produced a leather strap apiece, two short and one long. The two with the short straps used them to tie Malcolm’s arms to the arms of his chair, and the one with the long strap passed it around his chest, pulling him tight against the chair back.
Oh, I see the reason for the chair having arms, thought Malcolm. This is certainly much more intimidating.
Shirley waved the giants away and came around the desk to check the straps. “Good,” she said. “Well done, kids.”
The three giants stood around anxiously while she checked their work. At her praise, they all blushed and giggled and shuffled their feet around. “Thank you, Miss Weng!” they said in unison.
“Relax, Malcolm,” she told him. “Come on, kids.”
Malcolm heard the office door close. He twisted around as far he could to the left and the right. He could see the whole room, that way. He was alone.
Sort of alone.
The only other presence was a large photograph, on the wall to his left, of a jowly man trying to beam down beatifically but managing only a mitigation of his more normal scowl. Malcolm knew that face well. It was that of the Reverend Jimmy Earl, founder and owner of the Children of God. Malcolm had thought he was already frightened, but now real fear, real panic possessed him.
He had been well aware of Reverend Jimmy Earl’s malice hiding behind his beneficent manner that day the two had confronted each other on Johnny Aggressive’s television show. He had seen then that this was not a man into whose power he ever wanted to fall. And now he had done just that. Moreover, Tracy’s picture outside Shirley’s office had made it clear that the Children of God had been watching him, in some sense perhaps manipulating him, for quite a while. Malcolm felt powerless and doomed.
Surviving Mongo should have inured him to anything. Perhaps it would have, were it not for the memory of the dreaded Mongo dispatched so easily and gruesomely by the petite Shirley. What were the truly large Children of God capable of?
The sound of the door opening interrupted these thoughts. Malcolm twisted around to see the Very Reverend Jimmy Earl himself entering the room, with Shirley right behind him.
She closed the door.
“What, no Goliaths this time?” Malcolm asked.
Shirley smiled. “I don’t really need them, do I? Just used them for convenience before. I knew you wouldn’t struggle against them, so you wouldn’t get hurt. If I’d been the one tying you up, you might have struggled.”
And I would have gotten badly hurt. Malcolm got the message. Remembering Mongo, he was sure she was right. Would there have been pleasure in the pain, if it had come from so exquisitely beautiful a source? Mongo had seemed to think so, but Mongo had not been normal.
Jimmy Earl took the chair behind the desk, and Shirley perched on the edge of the desk, facing Malcolm and watching him intently. Oddly enough, she was still his dream girl and Malcolm still felt his heart melting when he looked at her. Sick, sick, sick, he told himself, but the lecture had no effect on his feelings.
Jimmy Earl sat down heavily, the chair creaking beneath him. He sighed in relief as the weight left his feet. “A biblical reference, Erskine? I’m surprised.”
“Goliath, you mean?” Malcolm said. “Everyone knows that one.”
“Still, I’m surprised that you know it. To Hellspawn like you, the Bible is a forbidden book.”
I need to get on this guy’s good side, Malcolm thought. He must have one. I know what’ll work. I’ll be informal and friendly. Let’s see, he’s obviously Southern, and he’s got one of those compound names, just like Jimmy Carter — James Earl Carter. And everyone uses that familiar approach: even the TV people call him “Reverend Jimmy Earl.” Yeah, worth a try. “You have a lot to learn about us Hellspawn, Jimmy Earl.”
Jimmy Earl’s naturally red face turned redder. He shook his finger at Malcolm. “Don’t you dare call me that! You call me ‘Reverend,’ you hear?”
That good side might be very hard to find. “Oh. So, read any good books lately, Reverend?”
Jimmy Earl calmed down and leaned back. “Only the Good Book, young man. Something you should do, too. Now, I’m glad you brought up the matter of good books. That’s why I’ve asked you to come here to talk to me.”
“Asked me?” Malcolm repeated in amazement.
“Looked voluntary to me,” Shirley told him.
Beyond denying, Malcolm realized. And he would still follow her anywhere she asked him to.
“What I wanted,” Jimmy Earl went on, “was to explain to you what you’re going to write next. I’ve got very specific plans for your next book.”
“I think I’ve had this conversation before,” Malcolm said. “With Jimmy Flicker, in fact.” And even before that — before he’d become famous but after he’d had some books published — with people who were convinced they had wonderful ideas for bestselling books and wanted a professional writer, like Malcolm Erskine, to do the trivial part, the actual writing of the book, in exchange for half the book’s earnings. In pre-Flicker days, though, there had been no implied threat in those conversations — no Mongos, no Shirleys.
“Irrelevant,” Jimmy Earl said with a negligent wave of his hand. “I understand that Flicker’s gone to his judgment. Anyway, I’m having a detailed outline prepared, and then you’ll write the book to those specifications.”
“Rewrite what I’ve done?” Malcolm cried in despair. “Rewrite the damned thing? Without even a signed contract? I’ve already written half the book one way, and now you expect a rewrite?”
Jimmy Earl raised his eyebrows. “You think this is your old life and I’m just some worldly publisher?”
Malcolm looked from Jimmy Earl to Shirley and back again. No, this man was much scarier than any worldly publisher, and this was an even more unmanning experience than having a conversation with a hostile editor.
“You got a title yet?” Jimmy Earl asked.
Malcolm sighed. Title, pages already written... What did it matter? He was scarcely a free agent. He wondered if he’d ever be a free agent again — or, for that matter, a live one. “Yes. Business Dangers from the Stars.”
Jimmy Earl smiled. “I like that! What’s the story line and subtext?”
“Subtext!” Malcolm had never in his career written subtext. He was convinced that no one ever did. “Well, I guess the subtext is how to make bunches of money, just like the first book. Basically, it’s about protecting your company from attack by business enemies, as communicated by Lukas of Aldebaran based on the experience of the Merskeenians in fighting various interstellar enemies.”
Jimmy Earl looked thoughtful. “That’s not bad. I know I’ve got enemies.” He chuckled suddenly. “One less, now that that turd Brother Harry’s out of the way. Thanks be to Jesus and whoever planted those bombs. Boy, what a fire! Roasted hippie Jesus freak saucer nuts, I tell ya!” He shook, his laughter coming in violent gusts. His face glowed a rosy purple. Tears streamed from his eyes. Shirley yanked a tissue from a box on her desk and handed it to him. He wiped his eyes, blew his nose, thanked her, and said to Malcolm, “Okay. Now. I’ve got enemies, but the Great Enemy, the Great Opponent — that’s the one we’ve got to worry about.”
He leaned forward and transfixed Malcolm with an intense stare. “I guess maybe you won’t have to do too much rewriting. Just make it clear that the interstellar enemies your Merskeenians were fighting were really just minions of the Evil One, and it was through the help of Jesus that they won.”
“I don’t get the point of all this,” Malcolm said. “Why do you care what I write?”
“Because you’re taking business away from me!” Jimmy Earl roared, half rising from the chair, his face reddening again.
“Reverend.”
“Thanks, Shirley.” He sat down and gave himself a moment to calm down, then continued. “I tried getting rid of you before by preaching that the voice you’ve been hearing is actually the Devil’s voice and you need to be eliminated for the good of Christianity. Well, that didn’t work out. I’m glad it didn’t. I realize now that you’re more useful alive. I don’t just want to stop losing members of my flock to your New Age crap. I want to keep my flock and add your marks to it. That’s what all this is about.
“See, I could preach a sermon claiming that you’re just misunderstanding the messages you’re getting. Oh, I could say something like, um... Yeah, okay, here it is.” His voice became larger, more resonant, more suited to a great cathedral or a great television audience. “The voice you’re hearing in your head is really an angel speaking to you, trying to tell you about something that happened long ago out in space, but you’re such a secular, worldly man, so misled by the godless ideas rife in our society today, that you misinterpreted that voice as belonging to some kind of spirit being. Then some shit about channeling, New Age, danger to family values and what made America great. Then I’d say, the angel’s really trying to turn you around, bring you back to Jesus, to the faith of your fathers, and show you how God and the Devil were fighting for souls even back then. You just thought it was all about saving a big corporation.
“But if I do say all of that, the people who listen to me will be the ones who always listen to me. I can’t reach your audience, and they’re the ones with the real money. You can reach them. You can
bring them to Jesus and the Reverend Jimmy Earl.”
“But if God was fighting the Devil through the medium of the Merskeenians 30,000 years ago,” Malcolm pointed out, “then that was 25,000 years before the earth and mankind were created, right? So God created some other human race long before he created us. That sounds like someone else’s theology, not yours.”
Jimmy Earl grinned at him. “Good boy, Erskine. But you know that that kind of shit only matters with my usual audience, not with yours. Gotta tailor the message to the audience, right? You obviously have that technique down pat. And of course so do I. Trouble is, my technique doesn’t work for your audience, and what I’m afraid of is, some time in the not very distant future, my audience is going to start diminishing, but yours is going to keep growing.”
“So what this amounts to,” Malcolm said, “is that you want to take over my business because it has more, uh, growth potential than yours.”
“Yes!” Jimmy Earl smacked the desk, making pens and pencils dance and making Malcolm jerk in his seat. He would have jumped out of it if not for the straps holding him firmly in place.
“But I want you to do the actual writing,” Jimmy Earl continued, “because you’ve got a real skill with it. Maybe you need better production and marketing, but we’ve got the capability for that right here, in our headquarters.”
For the first time in a long time, Malcolm felt he had some bargaining strength. “Well, now, JE, let’s talk about this. First tell the most beautiful killer in the world to untie me.”
Shirley laughed. “What a silver tongue!” she said in a mocking tone. “What woman can resist you?”
Without waiting for orders from Jimmy Earl, she slipped off the desk and stepped over to Malcolm’s chair and began untying him. The message was twofold and clear: First, there’s at least one woman — Shirley Weng — you cannot have, and she’s the one you obviously want the most. Second, the straps were for initial intimidation. By now, you realize that they’re not really necessary.
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