“So you want me to go to Green Pastures or whatever. Then what happens?”
“You fulfill her prophecy but subvert her authority. She becomes obsolete and we maintain guidance. Maybe the religious vulnerability is a side effect of the implants—we need more data. In any case, as Pascal observed, we couldn’t have invented so many false religions unless there was a true one. We have to ensure that ours is the true one.”
“And you want me to come now?”
“Have a nice night with your girlfriend. You could even bring her along. Command said they could write her in. Or another woman—if you prefer.”
This last comment was made with a salacious glint in her eye, which would’ve been much more effective if the Osmonds hadn’t given her such a dousing.
“You’ve got till tomorrow morning,” Cyrilla huffed and klocked off on her stiletto heels to find a towel and a change of clothes.
Clearfather went back to the room. He knew the woman was lying but he didn’t know what to believe instead. He found Kokomo crying on the bed. All he wanted to do was love her and live what was left of whatever life he had now with her. Even if they couldn’t communicate very well, there was something they exchanged that was more important. He took her in his arms. They were two of the same kind. They were One. However she’d done it, she’d eased his pain before, and now it was his turn to help her.
“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together,” he whispered.
If only he’d known the truth or been able to believe what he suspected. Her pain was his pain. Deep inside his brain a firefight was under way, and the energy released was ringing a bell to attract the attention of an angel of death floating over America. He kissed her. Her rainwater and estuarine sex smell filled him with desire and assurance. Then he stripped up her shirt and saw the horror.
On her perfectly smooth young back, which had previously not had a single mark, were now the same malignant letters that he had cut and burned into his. He could see the agony and disruption in her eyes. “There are no llamas in the Bahamas,” she tried bravely through green tears—but he heard the words Om mani padme hum. He didn’t understand what they meant.
“No,” he said in answer, smiling, “but there are llamas here. Want to see them?”
She didn’t look like she understood. He took her hands in his and kissed them. She was running a high fever now—and then she began quivering with chills. He took off his clothes and helped her out of hers, cuddling her as the shaking became more intense. He didn’t know what else to do. What doctor could help them? What was happening to her? He feared any move would draw the fire of Vitessa, and he couldn’t face a struggle with her sick. He kissed her and clenched her, feeling her sweating body vibrate into him, not knowing it was the other way around.
Paranoia overcame him and he pressed himself deep into her, her heart beating like a bird. Then he was inside her. He wanted nothing between them now but love, not even skin. She became apoplectic. He thought at first it was an orgasm. But it was an horrendous metamorphosis. Her flesh became rubbery—then plastic. In his panic he thrust himself deeper inside her, holding on for dear life, the accursed writing that had appeared in her back glinting with a hot brass leer. Then she morphed—the breasts retreating into pectoral muscle. Her gorgeous ass condensed to angular meat—and then he knew. He saw! The nightmare was not upon him—he was inside it—expelled by the mutating flesh. Kokomo was transforming into him. They were indeed One. And just in time—for Azazel was targeting the signal in his brain. So close they nuzzled—then the realization of the form she’d taken—he cringed away—the surge of heart sickness lit up his brain and therefore hers. A shudder racked her body . . . the green of her eyes blurring . . . and in a single instant the transformation was complete. She was him and she was hit. A piece of lightning. An angel’s bullet.
Clearfather died in his own arms and was saved.
The second he felt the body go slack, the letters in his back burst alight and he heaved himself to the carpet to extinguish the flames. He tried to stand but couldn’t, clawing out for Kokomo, who lay on the heart-shaped bed—and then he did stand and felt flesh—but not hers. Not hers! He stared down at her body and saw that he had not been wrong. On the scalp, just as with her stim helmet, was a crater of crusted skin and black bruising, as if something inside had exploded, breaking through the atmosphere of the skull. He leapt upon the inert lump—the lingering scent of honeysuckle a vicious joke—for the body he held to his chest was a miserable replica of his own, down to the exact torture words embedded in his back and the mulish organ, detumescing as he watched. The terror and wonder of it filled him as the flopping weight could not and he sobbed—for he knew that she had saved him. She had taken his pain inside herself. Just as he’d entered her sweet darkness, she’d been inside his mind and had sacrificed herself. This was Vitessa’s ambush. Not out in the open—but in his own dark.
The quest was doomed from the beginning, he realized. I was carrying some kind of bomb inside me. Kokomo gave her life to save me. How she did it, I don’t know—but she did. One flesh. One flesh!
“God!” he yelled through scalding tears. “I followed the map but it was all a lie—it was just a trap. All I found was the hurt and horror of the past. For whatever I was, why did Kokomo have to pay? She was all that I had! I loved her. I loved her! And—I hate you!” he ranted, beating at the body—the pathetic clone—and then a wave of desperate yearning overwhelmed him—and he realized that the body he was attacking was what she’d become to save him. It was her—transformed—for him. The meat he hated was his own. He smashed his head into the mirror and it refreshed him like cold water. He battered his hand against the wall and felt the warm reassurance of broken bones. He stabbed his legs with the ice tongs and writhed off the bed, pounding himself, tearing at his flesh. He longed to destroy himself. But the wounds healed almost as fast as he could inflict them. He was a mass of silver nerve fire—the ice-burn of accelerated self-repair. “I have powers!” he laughed sickeningly. “But not enough! There is nothing left!” And he looked down at the jigsaw pieces of shattered mirror—and the shining wreckage of reflections mocked him. I’m like Cubby and Van Brocklin, he thought. A freak. A mutant. Like the Nourisher.
He dove among the shards of bloody glass, raking the ragged edges against his skin—weeping for Kokomo—weeping for death. He contorted his body like the boys in the spheres, jackknifing—becoming fetal—until he could take his own penis into his mouth—deep into his gagging throat—and he bit down as hard as his jaws could crush. He meant to strangle on it, his mouth filled with blood—and then his body convulsed and disgorged the organ. It lay before him—an intermediate life-form. The pain was unthinkable. Slick with gore, he cradled his severed penis to his breast. He thought of the deaf girls beneath the ground in Dustdevil with their deformed offspring—and Ernst Brand’s ex-wife with the limp-necked peacock. Already the blood was clotting, crusting away like paint. His desecrated loins had sealed over. The ripped tubes and flapping skin were turning into a stump of angry scar tissue. Tenderly he wrapped the organ in Kokomo’s jacket, no longer weeping. Beyond tears. He looked back at the body prostrate on the bed. The light had left. All that remained was plastic flesh, stiffening with absence.
My quest is over, he thought. I have been baptized in my own blood. I have given birth to a new monster of myself. Now it’s time to bury the dead child of my past. In honor of my lost love I will give the gifts of vengeance and destruction. I summon the violence, I call forth the fears, I command the dreams. My kingdom gone, my will be done. As it is in my mind, so will it be in the outer night.
CHAPTER 15
Painting the Town Red
It began with trouble with the giant Russell Crowe. It was first believed that the robot went rogue due to a programming error that confused its field response system, leading to an attack on the control blimp, which was forced to make an emergency landing on Harrison Ford Parade, killing a gro
up of Goldenagers from Madison, Minnesota, the Lutefisk Capital of America. Crowe then went on to pick a fight with the Hasami Totem but the building’s defense system torched him in his tracks. Case closed—or so Vitessa thought. But almost as soon as the ambulance and fire crews had finished cleaning up, Combatron Control noticed that the giant Liberace was kicking the crap out of Elton John. The problem was, neither machine was in use—they’d simply come alive. Within minutes emergency alarms were ringing as one by one the giant battle robots animated and left the hangar on the shore of Lake Mead or disengaged from their duels and began marching en masse for the city.
Fire-breathing Tom Jones got Wayne Newton in a headlock and flung him into the MusicaLand dome. He then went on a spree, stomping stretch limos and sushi bars, boiling a couple of white elephants in the reflecting pool of the Taj Mahal before breaking off at the knees. The giant Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis hissy-fitted into the spinning lights of the Chunder Wheel. Giant Frankenstein and Dracula caved in the bubble of FairytaleWorld, and Big Michael Jackson, with huge glinting dark glasses, and Big Woody Allen, with huge glinting normal glasses, chased hysterical children into the Grand Canal as terror gripped the megalopolis.
Giant Arnold Schwarzenegger strangled Sylvester Stallone as Charlie Chaplin had his derby crushed and cane broken by an enormous Shirley Temple wielding a lollipop. Big Elvis tore the head off Colonel Parker and began pulling apart planes at Hillary Rodham Clinton Interdenominational Airport. Then he headed for downtown. Raptors and maxicopters began filling the sky—as did furry clouds of spooked fruit bats, which smashed through cockpits and windscreens on the Tom Cruiseway.
Vitessa sent platoons of drones to try to wrest control of the streets but nothing could stop the giant celebrity machines. Big Elvis reached the center of the city. Repelled by the defensive shields of both the Hasami Totem and the Vitessalith, he took on the Sony Cone and began to climb the outside, strike planes drilling him with Dark Rain projectiles. He made it to the top as Predation rockets shot wide—inciting a chain reaction of interbuilding defensive lasering.
Frat boys at the Camelot ravaged the hunchbacks and the wenches (in that order)—then stole the Holy Grail, which was later found in a mud bath at the Stardust Bunny Run in Boulder City. Women began plundering the boutiques like schools of Winona Ryders. Gamblers started behaving like corporate CEOs, stuffing their pockets with cash. The carcasses of the buffet tables were picked clean, and Donald Trump impersonators were running wild. Meanwhile, every one of the eidolons in the Museum of Notorious Americans walked off the job, blending into the mayhem.
In HolyLand all hell broke loose as Mel Gibson and Charlton Heston pushed the Wall of Jericho over onto a group of Camp Fire Girls from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. There were exploding beasts and angels—loaves and fishes everywhere. The Snake in the Garden roller coaster catapulted off its track and slammed into Mount Sinai, sending all the passengers to Heaven—but not being designed to hold so many all at once, the flooring gave way, making the occupants plummet into the lion dens, which triggered a riot that left a crucified Jesus alone to face a giant Britney Spears, who plucked out the cross and thumped off to use it as a stake to plant in the heart of Big Madonna—only to run headlong into Skinny Oprah, who stabbed her in the back with it then dragged the blonde to the Goblin ponds and threw her into the digesting algae.
Waterspouts on Lake Fonda flung houseboats as far as the Lucille Ball Civic Center. The Leno Bridge snapped apart like LEGO blocks as tons of basalt and extruded websteel hurtled through the panels of VictorianLand, showering St. Paul’s and the Old Bailey, burying wigged barristers and tourists from Manchester, England. Gas jets and carbide lamps ignited as the dome imploded. The flames jumped, catching Icarus, whose hang glider flared and then plunged into the Natalie Wood Lagoon as MythologyLand and FairytaleWorld went up in cyclones of unraveling circuitry—fusing into a mushroom cloud over the Grand Canyon. Later a photogrammer clicked an award-winning picture of a tortured Little Red Riding Hood fleeing down Hualapai Street like a napalmed villager during the Vietnam War.
Through the tumult of roving jaguars and squashed conquistadores, Clearfather came—telcom lines crackling in his wake. Thousands of people lay tangled and suffocating in revolving doors or trapped in cooking elevators. Tapirs stampeded, dancing stallions drowned in singing fountains, and spider monkeys screeched across abandoned cars.
Aretha (dressed again as Ernestine) and Eartha had been on their way to meet Minson for dinner when the turmoil began. At first Aretha thought it was just a local malfunction—but he suspected Clearfather’s involvement—and then he saw Clearfather on the corner of Jerry Seinfeld and Robin Williams, naked and on fire. My God! he thought. Clearfather’s a doomsday weapon sent into the heart of IMAGINE-NATION!
“We’ve got to find cover!” his wife shouted as giant Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan began kicking the shit out of each other over their heads.
“No!” hollered Aretha, tugging off his wig. “We’ve got to find Minson. I’m going to tell him the truth!”
“What about Monroe?” Eartha called.
“He’s on his own!” Aretha cried—as they heard the triple-action telescoping gas-filled shock absorbers in the mammoth knees.
He pulled Eartha out from under the giant feet and both of them flipped away their high heels for a dash to the Reef and Beef as colonnades crashed and hobbits and Daleks collided.
Just at that moment Monroe Hicks, wide receiver for the Newark Neutrons, felt very much on his own. Following the encounter in the Jacuzzi room, he’d broken training with several mango daiquiris and a line of uncut Dr. Phil—and then found himself not just participating, but starring in a gay orgy at the Delphi. After that things became a little blurry—until he woke up naked in the yin-and-yang-shaped sandtrap of the seventeenth hole of the Silverado Golf Club with giant Oprah bearing down. Calling on that 9.7 hundred-meter speed that had made him a Pro Bowl starter three years running, he headed south for Needles and was never seen again.
Sirens howled and smoke billowed as spotlights and tracer fire rent the night sky. Clearfather finally reached the Amazonia, wanting to protect Dr. Tadd and Mr. Meese—but the building had armored itself and begun retreating underground after Julia Roberts had put a fist through the atrium, which an overzealous designer had stocked with killer bees. Clearfather stepped onto the bamboo bridge and released his penis from Kokomo’s jacket. It fell into the water as one of the resident catfish rose to engulf it. He laid the satin coat over the face of a bee sting victim and noticed that he still had in his hand the little white ball he’d found in his pocket. He gripped it tight. It was all he had left, all that he wanted to take with him into the final dark. Everywhere he turned horns honked, guns blazed—and odd intersections of characters kept occurring.
Dr. Tadd, as horrified and afraid as he was, couldn’t help feeling perversely grateful. To actually see J. Edgar Hoover and Walt Disney mingle for a moment! This is a psychotic episode that has penetrated our collective unconscious, he said to himself. Thank God I’m here to witness it!
Dr. Tadd and Mr. Meese would’ve been at the Amazonia to face the combined assault of giant Julia Roberts and the killer bees had it not been for Tadd’s obsession with getting his father on the Sidewinder. Of course the drone attendants insisted that all passengers had to be 42 inches tall—which caused a furor in the tank. So they weren’t aboard when the roller coaster shut down at the top of the S-bend, leaving the frenzied passengers at the mercy of Big Jim Carrey, who whipped the chain of cars off the rails—snapping the spires of Dreamland and bashing in the Bank of New Delhi.
But they were still almost compressed into mush because there was no one around to help Dr. Tadd lift the tank back into the Wienermobile, everyone thundering by like Gadarene swine. Even the Good Samaritan from HolyLand raced past. Thank God, Harry Potter and Princess Diana stopped, and together they got Mr. Meese inside as the swarm of killer bees stormed through, stinging the McTavish’s Bagpipers, creati
ng an impenetrable knot. Then they heard a terrible sound. Dum, dum, dum.
Clearfather picked out the highest nearby point still standing—the Holy Roller.
Dum, dum, dum. The threatening sound grew louder as Dr. Tadd urged the Wienermobile through the debris—Harry and Di crammed in the back with the tank.
“Dad,” he called into the speakerphone. “I know I don’t say it very often . . . but I love you.”
“I know you do, son,” Mr. Meese splashed over the tank’s intercom. “We’ll get through this.”
Dum, dum, dum. It was the Goblin-chewed remains of Britney Spears creeping along on hands and knees! The devouring algae were doing their dreadful work but she dragged on, driving a frantic herd before her down Nicholson. Of all the last visions, Dr. Tadd thought—the Three Wise Men and the Three Little Pigs running from a giant decomposing Britney Spears with the cross embedded in her back like a windup key!
Big Britney stretched out to capture the Wienermobile but the eidolon of a baseball player distracted her.
“Holy shit!” bubbled Mr. Meese. “It’s—Denny McLain!”
At that exact same moment—Dr. Hugh Wieviel, in town for the convention on intelligence-enhancing drugs, stepped through the smoke and stopped cold. The entrepreneurial medical man had been with the big-breasted neurologist from Philly. They’d been trying out new fantasyware based on an Adam and Eve scenario and were amazed to find that all was not right in the outer world. In fact, he was so amazed he left his playmate in the middle of Dick Clark Avenue—intent on carjacking his way to the airport if need be. Now he was looking up the barrel of Big Britney.
The eidolon of Denny McLain caught her one functioning eye just as she was about to scrunch the Wienermobile. Then the specter of the disgraced pitcher vanished as Dr. Wieviel suddenly fell in the shadow of giant Janet Jackson, her famous pierced right breast bared. The sight proved too much for the disintegrating Britney robot, who lost her alga-eaten face panel and toppled into the street—but not before she’d managed to yank the embedded cross from her back and walloped the gothic-looking Ms. Jackson. The blow struck the exposed enormous boob with its sunburst steel nipple piercing—which had once been a chandelier at the Rainbow Chicken Ranch in Henderson—and the breast malfunctioned, springing forward with a foam-injected flop onto the pavement, where it struck and suffocated Dr. Wieviel, whose last thought was that he’d always been a tit man.
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