Coin of the Realm td-77

by Warren Murphy

  "That's right!" Shane Billiken said eagerly.

  "On the Donahue show. You're Shane Billiken."

  Shane Billiken's hairy chest puffed up. His mood amulet turned from orange to blue.

  "That's right."

  "The New Age guru?"

  "Exactly!" Shane Billiken said. He fairly shouted it.

  "The one who's always talking about Atlantis and Nirvana and other mythical places?"

  Shane's chest deflated. His face fell. He seemed to shrink.

  "That was different. Mu is real. Or it was."

  "But it sank."

  "Well, yes."

  "So there's no proof?"

  Shane pounded the glass counter. "The coins! The coiris are your proof. Some of them are thousands of years old. Probably. "

  "They look pretty new to me. Besides, why should I believe you now when I didn't believe in your Atlantean high priestess, what was her name again?"

  "Princess Shastra," Shane said in an injured tone. "She was my Soul Mate."

  "Is that so?" said the coin dealer. "But when I was in high school, she was my classmate. Only then she called herself Glinda Thirp and her tits were real."

  Shane Billiken's face slowly turned gray.

  "What will you give me for the metal content?" he asked in a small voice.

  "Oh, about six cents, depending on weight."

  "You robber. These are pure silver. Maybe platinum." The coin dealer shook his head soberly.

  "Tin," he said firmly. "Tin? It can't be."

  " 'Fraid so."

  "Tin," Shane BilIiken said dully. "Tin." Slowly, carefully he swept the coins back into a paper bag. His eyes were wounded. His lips moved soundlessly. His mood medallion slowly turned from blue to black.

  He walked out of the coin shop, his tread as heavy as a deep-sea diver's walking in lead boots.

  The coin dealer watched him go. He wondered what Shane Billiken meant as he went out the door. He kept muttering one thing over and over:

  "Tin. I don't believe it. I shipped tin again."

  When Shane Billiken returned home, the unpaid mortgage loomed suddenly larger than a mountain. It was all gone. He had no hope left. He couldn't summon up a positive affirmation to save his life.

  He noticed the stack of newspapers that had come while he was away, Woodenly he went through them one by one, page by page.

  His eyes bugged behind his sunglasses when he came to the entertainment section of the previous day's paper. The woods were full of Roy Orbison impersonators. There was a Roy Sorbison, a Roy Orb-Son, a Sun-Ray Orison, a Ray-Ban Bisonor and many others. Their similar puffy features, masked by identical sunglasses, stared out at him mockingly. Every ad had "Sold Out" printed over it in funeral-black letters. With a sick clutching in the pit of his stomach, Shane Billiken lifted his thumb and saw that there was even one thief who called himself Roy Orbit Sun. And he was playing in the Hollywood Bowl.

  "No! No! No!" Shane Billiken moaned, not noticing that he was making a negative affirmation. He tore through the stack of papers, looking for the item he had for years dreamed of reading, but which he now dreaded. He found it on page one of a week-old paper:

  POP BALLADEER ROY ORBISON, DEAD AT 52

  The great Orbison had passed away of a massive heart attack a week ago Tuesday; while Shane was at sea.

  As he collapsed in his beanbag chair, the terrible irony of it descended on Shane Billiken like an Egyptian curse. His window of opportunity was lost. He couldn't compete with all those other Roy Orbison clones. It was booming industry now.

  Desperately Shane closed his eyes. There was one last hope, one last shot to take. He would employ a technique he described in The Elbow of Enlightenment as "Uncreating the Reality."

  "It never happened, it never happened," he chanted, mantra-like. "Roy's alive, he really is. I never left home. I never left home. Everything is fine. Everything is cool. Everything is fine. Everything is cool."

  Shane's tense expression softened. He felt better already. Meditation had always worked for him. Soon, he would open his eyes and all would be well. Was there anything else he should wish for, he wondered, now that the Wheel of Destiny was under his control. Oh, yes.

  "Glinda's back, too," he murmured. "And she's naked. All is well, all is good. There's no place like home. There's no place like home," he added, thinking why not? It had worked for Judy Garland.

  But when he opened his eyes, the repeating images of Roy Orbison impersonators stared back at him like a blind army, and Roy the Boy was still dead. He searched the house for Glinda, but she was nowhere to be found, either.

  Shane Billiken, high priest of positivity, felt very, very negative.

  And so Shane Billiken piled the coins of Moo into the reed boat which he had repaired with Krazy Glue and shoved it into the surf behind his home. He placed his favorite guitar in the bow next to a bottle of gasoline siphoned from his Ferrari. He pushed off.

  When the boat was afloat, he clambered aboard. The sun was setting, its twin reflection showed on his RayBans. It was a cool, sweet night. The stars were right.

  Shane had done his horoscope. It had assured him that it would be a good night to die. Either that, or he had cancer. It was hard to say. His tears dripped all over the chart, making the ink run.

  Shane waited until he was far out to sea before he shook the gasoline all throughout the boat. He poured the remainder over his head. Then he applied flame from his Zippo lighter to the stern. It caught slowly because the boat was already wet.

  Then, taking up his guitar, he began to sing what had become the theme song of his life in a pain-choked voice. "It's oooooovvvvvveeeeeerrrrrr," he wailed.

  He faced the setting sun, his back to the wavering yellow flames. Shane Billiken was going out like a Viking, a song on his lips. He wondered if he had been a Viking in a past life. Or maybe he would become a Viking in the next. Was it possible to be reincarnated into the past? Shane hadn't studied that, but he hoped all knowledge would soon be revealed to him. He had earned it.

  He wondered what was taking the flames so long to reach him. And why did his feet feel so wet? He looked down.

  The boat was sinking. Strange long fingernails were piercing the bottom. They withdrew.

  "Damn!" he said. The flames hissed as seawater quenched them. In seconds he was floating in a gasoline slick, clutching his Ovation guitar like a life preserver.

  A head popped up beside him. "Remember us?" Remo asked.

  "You have my treasure," Chiun said. He surfaced on the other side. His eyes were angry and narrow.

  "Hey, you can't do this. This is my funeral. I'm going to die. And you can't stop it. My horoscope foretold this."

  "Yes," Chiun said gravely. "You will die, but for your base temerity, you will not die the death you prefer, but the one I choose for you. For you have been the instrument of great tragedy."

  "You got me wrong. It wasn't me that wrecked that island. It was those mercenaries. Talk to them. I'm just a leaf in the karmic wind."

  "No," Chiun said. "You will talk to them for me. I wish you to deliver a message."

  "Yeah? And what's that?"

  "No one trifles with the possessions of the House of Sinanju."

  And suddenly the old Oriental's hand was in Shane's face, and he never heard his Ray-Bans crack and never felt the bone chip fly back from the bridge of his nose all the way through his brain and out the back of his skull. He just sank to the bottom, where he became one with the food chain.

  The Master of Sinanju emerged from the surf, his arms full of coins.

  "Going back for more'?" Remo asked, wringing seawater out of his pant legs.

  "No. This is the amount we earned. The remainder do not matter."

  "Be a shame to leave the rest out there with Billiken."

  "Pah!" Chiun spat. "They are worthless."

  "What do you mean, worthless? They're pure silver. Aren't they?"

  Chiun shook his wise head. "Impure tin. It is not the metal that
makes Moovian coins so valuable. It is that they are Moovian."

  "Then why bother with your share? And why kill Billiken over it?"

  "Because, worthless or not, these are the property of Sinanju. Just because others do not treasure it does not mean that we do not. Besides," Chiun added, "These have sentimental value. And as far as any know, they are the only Moovian coins left. The fewer there are, the more valuable they will be. Who knows, one day America might sink and take with it all its precious metal. Even tin might become valuable then."

  "Don't hold your breath," Remo said, plunging back into the surf.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To salvage a couple more coins," Remo called back. "I'm famished. Maybe I can convince some unsuspecting restaurant owner to take them in trade for an order of duck with orange sauce."

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