Beforelife

by Randal Graham

  Abe, of course, could handle it. He was talented. Gifted, even. He was capable. He was cool. His political power was practically boundless, and the power of his charisma had been known to bring wild kerrops to their knees and leave even the most ancient city councillors quavering in their boots. And then there’s the whole thing about Abe being able to reshape Detroit to suit his will. This came in handy for several reasons, not the least of which was that it allowed Abe to manifest matching socks whenever he liked, which saved time.

  The tricky bit — the bit you might not have been expecting — was that other people could do it too. Quite a number of them, really. Most of them didn’t realize they could, and that gave Abe a distinct advantage. Another of Abe’s advantages was that no one in Detroit could match Abe’s strength of will. And when it comes to reshaping Detroit, strength of will was all that mattered.

  When it came to strength of will — when it came to changing The Rules, bending reality and reshaping the afterlife — no one in history had been a match for Abe.

  Until now.

  Until the anomaly.

  But at present, the anomaly didn’t know this. The anomaly was still stuck in a pond behind the phone booth.

  The rain picked up slightly, ensuring that everyone in the pond was at least as wet from the waist up as they were in their intra-pondular regions. The anomaly, and every other non-habitual pond dweller currently in the pond, trudged soggily for the shore.

  The air was split with a sudden cry.

  “LEECHES!” yelped Rhinnick, followed by “leechesleechesleechesleechesleeches!” He contrived to leap about with a bit of up-tempo choreography. The squelchy state of the pond bed and the weight of his rain-soaked clothes prevented this. He managed a soggy convulsion.

  This sudden writhing caused Rhinnick to sink an extra inch or two into the pond bed, which seemed to calm him down.

  “There are leeches on my leg,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  “I gathered,” said Ian.

  “Big ones, too,” added Rhinnick.

  He hoiked his leg up over the waterline and presented it for inspection.

  Ian regarded it with interest.

  “Yuck,” said Ian.

  “I don’t like them,” said Rhinnick.

  “Fair enough,” said Ian. “How many are there?”

  “I didn’t stop to conduct a census,” said Rhinnick, “but it’s safe to say that they number somewhere between a throng and a great profusion.”

  “Eww,” said Nappy, having a look.

  “It’s all right,” said Zeus, wading toward the action through a tangle of lilypads before arriving at Rhinnick’s side and patting him gently on the shoulder. “We’ll be out of here in a second. I can carry you, if you like.”

  “But leeches, I say!” said Rhinnick.

  “I know,” said Zeus, maternally.

  “Where do we go now?” Ian asked.

  “Conron Hall,” said Tonto, striking out toward the shore. “I know the way.”

  Her public followed.

  After a certain amount of squelching, grumbling, and sputtering, they deponded. Zeus shook himself doggishly and smiled a broad, friendly smile that had “Arf Arf” written all over it. He shrugged his way out of the waterlogged, XXXL trenchcoat Vera had given him, and chivalrously draped it over Nappy, who sank an inch into the lawn under its weight. One result of Zeus’s de-coating was a display of more wet muscles than you’d find in a Belgian restaurant on all-you-can-eat moules night.56 Another was the exposure of an arsenal. There were several handguns, a bandolier of ammunition, a two-foot Vibro-Blade, and various other pieces of military hardware strapped about Zeus’s person.

  Zeus beamed in all directions. “I always wanted to go to university!” he said, surveying the grounds.

  “Put the coat back on,” said Tonto, flatly.

  “But why?” protested Zeus. “Nappy’s cold. She’s —”

  “You can’t walk around campus looking like that,” said Tonto, indicating the light artillery strapped to Zeus’s torso. “They’re called ‘concealed weapons’ for a reason. We don’t want to attract attention.”

  “Shouldn’t we leave the guns behind?” said Ian, chiming in. “There must be, well, rules,” said Ian. “Or, I dunno . . . school policies, or something. You can’t take weapons into a school. It stands to reason. It isn’t right. I mean. Weapons. In a school. You can’t just . . . I mean . . . you shouldn’t . . .”

  This received the complete lack of attention it deserved. Zeus put the coat back on.

  They started back toward Conron Hall. Ian sulked. No one minded.

  “Isn’t this exciting?!?” said Zeus, radiating keen and slapping Ian on the shoulder. “You’re going to figure it all out! The rules! The rules for everything. That’s what Vera said. You’ll learn The Rules that run Detroit. I wonder what they are,” he added, brightly.

  “Probably obvious” said Rhinnick. “Something trivial and pedantic, along the lines of ‘everyone gets what they deserve,’ or ‘no matter where you go, there you are.’”

  “Crêpes Suzette!” cursed Nappy. “Regard l—”

  “Kindly cheese the heathen lingo, Madame Napoleon,” said Rhinnick. “The men are talking. Why, one can barely —”

  “Mais regarde l’horlage!” cried Nappy, whose Napoleonic symptoms seemed to intensify in times of strong emotion.

  “Zeus,” said Rhinnick, “please assist your consort in putting a sock or two in it, as the expression is. A man can scarcely get a word in edgeways with all this Napoleonic gabble filling the airwaves. Now, does anyone have a spare umbrella?”

  “Ze time!” shouted Nappy. “Look at ze time!”

  She pointed skyward.

  Old Clanger, the university’s ancient tower clock, had its big hand (which is the short one) pointing almost directly at the number five, and its little hand (the long one) pointing squarely at the nine.

  “Shit!” said Tonto.

  “But it’s only quarter to three,” said Ian, checking his watch. He shook it, gave it a tap, and held it to his ear — the traditional three-step process for assessing a watch’s vitals. It seemed to be in robust health.

  “Your watch is wrong,” said Tonto, staring fixedly at Old Clanger. She may have intended to make a face that registered anger, frustration, or disappointment, but “glamorous” and “alluring” won by a nose.

  “Dammit,” she said. “I’m an idiot. It was quarter to three at Vera’s. Now it’s quarter to five.”

  “I thought that IPT was instantaneous,” said Ian, wiping mud from his forehead.

  “It is,” said Rhinnick. “Instantaneous Personal Transport. The clue is very much in the title.”

  “But how —”

  “Time zones,” said Tonto, flatly. “Vera’s shop is in the Central TZ. DU is in Central West.”

  “Time zones?” said Ian, amazed.

  “Time zones,” said Rhinnick.

  “How big is this city?” said Ian.

  “Big,” said Tonto.

  “But if we’re two hours ahead of Vera’s time —”

  “That means the conference ends in fifteen minutes!!” said Tonto, throwing in an exclamation point or two for good measure.

  There was an exchange of alarmed looks drawn from the “OMG” and “WTF” collections.

  Running happened.

  They ran as quickly as rain-slicked cobblestones and soggy trousers allowed.

  They puddle-jumped their way across Philosopher’s Walk, and crashed wetly through the flowering bushes of Scholar’s Contemplation. They took a brief detour to retrieve Zeus (who had gone off course to run down a squirrel), and steeplechased their way across the Under-Chancellor’s Lower Quadrangle for the Furtherance of Topiaric Studies.

  As they were haring across the DU Arboretum, Ian skidded t
o a halt. He gulped air and massaged a stitch in his side.

  “Wha . . . what are we doing?” he panted.

  “Something north of fifteen M-P-H, if I’m any judge,” said Rhinnick, also panting. “We’ll crack the three-minute mile if your bally bodyguard has her way.”

  “But why are we running ?” Ian managed. “What’s the point?”

  “The conference!” beamed Zeus, enthusiastically. “Remember? You’re here to learn The Rules!” He was barely winded, and still radiated the excitement of an apartment dog set loose in Central Park.

  Ian panted at him.

  “The rules that make Detroit work,” Zeus added, helpfully.

  “At ze conference,” supplied Nappy.

  “But we’ve missed it,” puffed Ian.

  He was right, of course. Old Clanger confirmed it. In the time it had taken to cross the campus, the clock’s little hand had migrated to the twelve. Five o’clock had come and gone. Existenzia’s final speaker had taken her bows, acknowledged the final smattering of academic applause, and received the standard-issue Gift Bag of Thanks.

  It was while Ian was explaining this that a pair of campus security officers turned a corner just in time to step directly in front of Zeus. As luck would have it, the larger and pimplier of the two was holding a Wanted poster showing the faces of four escaped mental patients and a pin-up girl. The faces looked familiar.

  “Oy!” said the pimplier guard.

  “Hey!” said his less-pimply colleague.

  “It’s —” began the pimplier one, before he was interrupted by a substantial, meaty sound — like the noise you get a little while after a parachute fails to open. This is also the sound you get when Zeus punches two patrolmen in the face. He’d managed to hit both of them at once, with one huge fist.

  This was impressive, but messy.

  “Eww,” said Ian.

  “Eurgh,” said Rhinnick.

  “Nice work,” said Tonto, surveying the wreckage.

  “Mon ’ero!” beamed Nappy.

  “They had our pictures,” gulped Ian. He gingerly retrieved the soggy poster, which the pimplier guard had dropped into a puddle at the sight of an incoming Zeus.

  “I noticed,” said Tonto, grimly. “We’re halfway across the city, two time zones away from the hospice, and campus security is already patrolling with our pictures. It’s a safe bet that the City Solicitor knows we’re here. That means —”

  “Socrates is coming,” said Zeus. This would have been the perfect moment for a peal or two of thunder, but the weather didn’t co-operate.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Rhinnick began.

  “We’re not,” said Tonto. “The guards had our pictures. No one else’s. They’re expecting us. And if they know we’re here, you can bet that the police, the City Council, and the Solicitor know it, too. If Vera was right, and the City Solicitor really is obsessed with stopping Ian, you can bet that he’ll send Socrates.”

  “But Vera said she’d try to stop him,” said Rhinnick, pausing briefly to make way for an undramatic peal of thunder that interrupted him.

  “You can’t stop him,” said Tonto. “Vera knew that.”

  Ian shuddered.

  “Will we be safe at ze conférence?” said Nappy, unconsciously patting the part of her jacket that concealed a tri-modular Kirium blaster. “I mean, ze guards ’ad our photographs. Ze delegates will recognize us if zey have seen ze photo, too, zey will —”

  “Unlikely,” said Rhinnick. “We’re dealing here with some of Detroit’s finest minds. Academics, I mean to say. Keenly devoted to their specialist subjects, but wouldn’t know a current event if it bit them under the robes.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ian. “I told you — the conference is over. We’ve missed it. They’ll have left the —”

  “Ian, my poor fish,” said Rhinnick, smiling indulgently. “For a man charged with the weighty duties of recovering wives, learning rules, and foiling the sinister aims and projects of unpleasant City Solicitors, you really are a consummate goof. You wouldn’t recognize reason if it were served to you on a platter with watercress and tomato slices. You don’t suppose, do you, that at the conclusion of this academic tête-à-tête that the principal têtes suddenly vanish in a puff, like those fakirs and shamen you sometimes see charming snakes and dispensing wisdom on the peaks of lonely mountains? Well if you do, your assumptions prove you to be a fathead. No, no, the so-called end of the conference simply serves as prelude to the real feast of reason and flow of soul — the event which every academic worthy of the robe and mortarboard will descend upon like sharks on a bucket of chum, chum.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Ian. He might have added the words “if anything,” but that would have been impolite, and Ian still thought of himself as Canadian.

  “You’ve never been to one of these academic shindigs, have you?” said Rhinnick.

  “No,” admitted Ian.

  “Nor have you been an academic?”

  “No.”

  “And are you familiar with the peculiar fauna that infests one of these academic thingummies? Faculty, students, research fellows, postdoctoral whathaveyous, that sort of thing?”

  “Sure,” said Ian. “I’ve met loads of —”

  “But have you encountered a single academic — even one — who felt that a professorial stipend was sufficient recompense for the Mighty Thoughts that he or she was paid to think?”

  “I dunno,” shrugged Ian. “I suppose I’ve —”

  “No you haven’t,” said Rhinnick, prodding Ian’s left clavicle. “And the same goes for postdoctoral fellows, deans, adjunct professors, associate lecturers, graduate students, and the meanest of lab assistants. These academic coves display innumerable traits that, but for the fact that they’re kept closeted with others of their species, would frequently see them socked directly on the mazzard with blunt instruments. Chief among these quirks, my ill-informed minnow, is a healthy strain of whaddoyoucallit.”

  Ian blinked.

  “You know,” prompted Rhinnick, “that thing that people have. Ends with an m.”

  “Narcissism?” hazarded Zeus.

  “Precisely!” said Rhinnick. “Narcissism. An extra helping or two of self-regard. Academics ooze the stuff. And one result of this marked surplus of whaddoyoucallit is the sense that, however healthily funded they are by means of the public purse or donor dollars, these university coves consider themselves dashed undervalued. Taken for granted. Underappreciated and vastly underpaid. Marked by this peculiar psychological thingummy, they strive endlessly to make up the perceived chasm between their self-assessed value and the sum in their weekly envelopes by latching onto whatever perquisite-dripping teat — if you’ll pardon the expression — they can find. Why, you could pore over a university directory from A to Z without finding a named scholar who wouldn’t greedily pounce on an unsuspecting travel grant, a commemorative gold pen, or even a temporary parking pass with all the avarice of a bear who’s just cheesed his hibernation and found an overweight salmon taking a nap in a shallow pool. Of course you see where this is headed,” he added.

  Ian didn’t.

  “My stymied ass!” cried Rhinnick, “I refer of course to the post-conference banquet! Do you think there exists a scholar who’d snub a brace of cocktails, a free pig in a blanket, or even a free slab of fish on a dried-out bun? Well let me tell you: there isn’t. Faced with the spreading prospect of a complimentary post-conference binge with open bar, does the undervalued scholar say to himself, ‘Perhaps another time,’ or possibly, ‘I’ll just pop off and buy a sandwich,’ or even, ‘I couldn’t possibly — I’m still stuffed from the morning muffin?’ Egad, no! He rallies ’round the festive board. These perk-coveting stiffs, face-to-face with the proverbial free lunch, can be counted on to cram napkins into their collars, loose
n their belts a notch or three, and tuck enthusiastically into the donor-funded après-conference spread, where the wine floweth like the babbling brook and the food — er . . . What is it the food does, Zeus?”

  “It feedeth the mind and spirit,” said Zeus, to his own surprise.

  “Thank you, Jeeves,” said Rhinnick.

  “Zeus,” said Zeus.

  “Zeus?” said Rhinnick.

  “My name,” said Zeus. “It’s Zeus. You called me Jeeves.”

  “No I didn’t,” said Rhinnick.

  “I think you did,” said Zeus, corrugating his brow.

  “You did,” said Tonto, cocking her head.

  “Perhaps a typo,” said Rhinnick, waving a hand dismissively. “Or quite possibly one of those last-minute, editorial thingummies. It’s like I always say: the Author moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. But in any case, the point I wish to make, if the lot of you are finished checking the footnotes about ruddy Zeuses and Jeeveses, is this: the formal proceedings of Existenzia, while behind us, have merely given way to an after-conference binge where we’ll doubtless find the full slate of experts tucking into the fare like wild piranha. Mark my words, where drink tickets and all-you-can-swallow, lamp-warmed dishes gather, there you will find the professoriate, forks poised and napkins pleated. It would take a legion of Zeuses to pry a cluster of scholars from the post-conference binge. Though the lecture hall be silent, though the lectern lay bare, the feast of reason and flow of soul shall carry on.”

  “Gosh,” said Zeus.

  “Zat was beautiful,” said Nappy.

  “What’s that from?” said Ian.

  “From me,” said Rhinnick. “We Feynmen have the nicest way of putting things. But back to the point at issue, viz, our plan of action. Weigh the options. Option A — we stand around and moot the issues, courting ruin and desolation, while the City Solicitor’s forces, both Socratic and otherwise, descend upon us on all sides, like those fellows who sacked Old Rome. Option B, we hobnob with a room full of Detroit’s finest minds, all of whom — or is it which? — have just been primed for detailed discussions about the nature of the world — the bally Rules you’re supposed to learn. And only one of these options, I might add, raises the likelihood of complimentary cocktails and free food.”