They all felt better when the grim cargo had been jettisoned. Maggie particularly. She knew that she’d been justified in defending herself against Angus, but the authorities might not be so easy to convince. At least her new companions knew what questions not to ask. She felt relieved—just as long as they didn’t try any funny business. She’d had enough of that. Along with haggis. When the Marshal microwaved sloppy joes for lunch she almost wet her pants and ended up sufficiently relaxed to recount her short unhappy life, which had arisen out of the once famous case of the “Demon Cheerleaders of Tacoma.”
Nineteen years before, the so-called Fearleaders had been charged with dismembering their varsity football team, including the head coach Hunch Torbach, in revenge for the death of Blair Kane, the former head cheerleader, who’d become pregnant to quarterback Dow Cleary.
Abandoned by Dow and suffering from postnatal depression, Blair turned to food for succor, gaining 275 pounds. Classmates testified to witnessing her devour twenty-nine Sara Lee frozen cheesecakes in less than three minutes. McDonald’s was still in existence, and one outlet went so far as to seek an injunction against the teen mother because her behavior disgusted other customers. Blair vowed to eat the outlet out of business and in one day consumed more than 317 Happy Meals. By nightfall she was dead—a tragedy that prompted a controversial and ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit and new legislation regarding the legal liabilities of restaurants in “Responsible Retailing of Food” as well as a wave of training seminars for staff on “Sensitively Serving the Compulsive Eater.”
The pitiful metamorphosis of Blair Kane was the inciting factor in the butchering of Hunch Torbach and the varsity team—but the jury not so much hung as tangled, the judge had no choice but to declare an anti-climax and the girls were free. Disallowed from selling their stories to the media, they faded into obscurity, anorexia, and/or the fashion industry.
Things weren’t so simple for Blair’s baby, Magdalena. It wasn’t easy being raised in a rain-soaked shipyard suburb by stiff-necked Lutheran grandparents who’d become paranoid about the slightest morsel of junk food or after-school snack. She was teased about her “pig” of a mother from the moment she could remember that her mother wasn’t there to read her stories—and all the stories she ever heard seemed to have a moral about gluttony and the dangers of sex. By age fourteen her idea of a good time was three longshoremen, four Demerols, a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, six pepperoni pizzas, and a good spew. Eventually she made her way to the Now Frontier and started turning tricks.
“I met this black dude. Hee hepped git me clean—an’ I deecided it was time to git seerius ’bout my career. Thass whot led to this Sassy Lassy gig. My firss onnus job an’ look whot happens!”
CHAPTER 5
Must Be 42 Inches Tall to Ride
After seeing Clearfather in the crowd, Aretha Nightingale and Eartha tried to make their way to the restaurant where they were planning to meet Minson, but at the first sign of trouble Minson’s bodyguard Walpole had whisked him back to the Will Smith Hotel. But not even halfway there it became clear that the city was coming unglued, and Walpole urged them to head for the airport. Minson couldn’t bear the thought of leaving his mother to the monster robots and refused. Walpole insisted. Minson knocked him out and took the wheel of the limo himself, driving to the Sun Kingdom, where he hoped to catch his mother and Cousin Ernestine. He never made it. One of the huge stainless-steel treble clefs in the sculpture on the corner of Diana Ross and Paul McCartney fell down, forcing him to crash through the Gardens of Gucci to Steve Wynn Drive, where he had a four-car pileup and had to get out and run—only to find himself charging headlong into a throng of hungover but still rabid fans. And so he sprinted off searching for refuge.
Which is exactly what his parents had done when they reached the Reef and Beef and found that he wasn’t there. Faced with giant fighting machines, rioters, exploding gas mains, and stampeding animals, they took shelter in one of the abandoned Chinese salamander restaurants on Nicole Kidman. And it was there—in a flopping mass of the amphibians and the clutter of an interrupted game of Pai Gow—that they forgave each other for the past—and then on top of a lazy Susan, Ernestine took Eartha—or so it appeared to their son, Minson, who couldn’t decide if he was more afraid of his own fans or Big Oprah and had rushed inside—and in his shock at seeing an obscure female relative wielding a woody and Doing the Dooley with his mother while the city fell down around them—slipped on a giant salamander, hitting his head on a table.
Meanwhile, back in New York, Finderz Keeperz was giddy with success. The moment the dwarf had zeroed in on the combined signal of the Corps of Discovery and the stealth probe Azazel, the satellite used to monitor implant prisoners and terminate them, if necessary, had launched its pulse weapon. The accuracy was deadly—but the system wasn’t designed to anticipate something as sophisticated as the empathy of Kokomo, who became one with the target, absorbing the fatal energy, protecting Clearfather from everything except his own grief and rage. To Keeperz, it was a direct hit. The Messiah Weapon, if that’s what Clearfather was, had been taken out. No more being on the losing team. Now it was his turn to kick booty.
It was this burst of confidence, his arrogant glee, that made him vulnerable. Ordinarily he’d have been bristling with suspicion if Natassia sauntered into the Information Station scantily clad and oozing friendliness. But he needed a way to celebrate and the bloodlust was upon him. And so he let himself be seduced, thinking that Nasty had finally seen the light. He was so engaged in his own fantasy he forgot how gifted the raunchy brunette was. She didn’t know what had happened to the drag queen and feared that maybe the twisted story Finderz had told was true—but the little Napoleon had moved too soon with too much enjoyment. He needed to be taken down a peg before he outgrew his britches—and that meant getting him out of his britches.
No one in Fort Thoreau ever found out all that she had to do to get him into position. They only knew that across the night came the swelling sound of amplified voices. At first people feared it was a Vitessa breach. Gradually the voices became recognizable and people emerged from their tents and listened, grinning. Soon the whole fit population of Fort Thoreau was gathered around the speakers, doubled over. For they could see in their minds that Finderz Keeperz was listening to his “Mommy” give a rude and suggestive reading of The Little Engine That Could.
The stifled hysterics were more than some could take. Framegrabber and Ten Pigeons had to seek shelter in the recreation train. Dr. Quail slipped a disc—and the normally restrained Heimdall broke wind when Finderz started chanting, “I think I can! I think I can!” with Nasty encouraging him heartily, “Come on, little engine!”
But the little engine that could—couldn’t. Or more precisely he could and did but failed to convince Natassia, who at last got to deliver the line she’d always wanted to . . . “For God’s sake, stick it in!”
“It is in, you bitch!”
“It can’t be—I can’t feel you! I need more! Your arm. Your head!”
“My head?”
The crowd erupted in one simultaneous orgasmic belly laugh. The next minute a hideously red-faced Finderz blasted out of Natassia’s tent wearing fuzzy baby-blue children’s sleepers. He stamped past the contorted community. He was going to contact Vitessa immediately, take claim for dispatching Clearfather, and summon the assault troops to surround Central Park. He would see his “colleagues” taken away in chains. But when he got back to IS, he found a note taped to the DataCube, which infuriated him further—and yet also frightened him. It said . . .
Must be 42 inches tall to ride.
He ripped off the paper and was so discomposed he hurtled up into the harness without changing out of the sleepers and slid forward into the normally reassuring blue cyberscape, ready to ride the whitewater all the way to the surround-wall screens of the Pantheon’s boardroom—when a familiar face filled his field of view.
“Hello, my friend. Off on another fishhhing t
rip perhapss?”
“Get out of here! Before I nullify you.”
“You can’t do that. And you can’t get through without the passsword.”
“What password? Get out of my Cube!”
The veins in the dwarf’s huge forehead throbbed, and he shook the harness from side to side.
“Can’t you guess the passsword. Suchh a ssmart little man like you!”
“Give me the password—you!” the dwarf screamed.
THE ENTOMOLOGIST chuckled, the round hint of the metal-rimmed glasses glinting. “Rumplestiltskin. Don’t you think that’ss amuussing?”
“I’m going to personally cancel you!” Keeperz vowed. “File by file.”
But even as he threatened, he entered the password, so eager to shoot the rapids and reveal himself to the Pantheon. A loyal new ally!
He submitted the last of the code letters and entered. There was a whish like a leaf breaking free of rocks, flowing downstream, and then a fiendish zang that wrenched him back in the harness and neither THE ENTOMOLOGIST nor the cyberblue estuary that led to the deeper system could be seen. Instead he saw a field of stars. Gleaming dots against an infinite black background.
“It’ss sso hard to sstep in the ssame datastream twicce,” THE ENTOMOLOGIST hissed. “But thiss looks more like . . . a pit.”
“Shit! Those—are eyes.”
“Yess. And they’re moving. Toward you.”
“What . . . are you doing? What’s going on?”
“I think the password has triggered a trap.”
“You can’t trap me!” the dwarf menaced. “You’re nothing I can’t unplug.”
“Are you so sure?” the voice asked—and it was no longer the wheedling voice of the Bug Man—it was a woman’s voice, calm and authoritative.
Keeperz was frozen in the harness now, sweat beading on his massive brow. The eyes were moving, the darkness taking the shape of a pit, with him at the bottom.
“Do you see what the eyes belong to now?”
“Y-es,” the dwarf stammered, seeing the bodies—just barely distinguishable from the black walls of the pit.
“You’ve heard of the black widow and the brown recluse—deadly spiders—but solitary and shy by nature. In the East Kalimantan jungle of Borneo is a different kind of spider. The native name means ‘Crawling Star.’ You can see they’re not as large or fierce looking as tarantulas—and yet there is something terribly frightening about them, isn’t there?”
“Y-ess,” whimpered the dwarf.
“Perhaps it’s because there are so many.”
“P-please . . . ,” mumbled Finderz.
“The Klingtang people were masters of poisons, and they worshiped this spider. Its venom is a powerful neurotoxin that stimulates the release of adrenaline while simultaneously cramping all muscles. The victim cannot even twitch, and yet is filled with a nauseous electric fear. The time it takes you to die is a matter of how long your heart can endure a self-manufactured and extremely pure form of terror.”
Keeperz screeched, “Please! I’ll do anything!”
“I see that now. I see you clearly.”
The creeping spider dark was gone and the face of THE ENTOMOLOGIST again filled the Cube.
“You betrayed us, Finderz. And yourself. I put my faith in you.”
“I had no choice!” the little schemer wept, sweat thickening around his wristwatches. “We can’t win!”
“Oh,” said the voice. “An ideological decision. No question of personal gain. Well, this has been your test, and you have failed your new masters as completely as you have failed us. Look at this . . . this is what’s happening in LosVegas. You think your assassination plot was successful? Judge for yourself!”
Keeperz had been so busy congratulating himself and then succumbing to Natassia, he hadn’t been monitoring the news out of the West. Where the images were coming from he couldn’t say—but the devastation was unbelievable—airplanes and sky towers smashed like toys—canals burning.
“Not quite what you planned, is it? Imagine how grateful Vitessa will be when they learn of your involvement.”
“Oh, my God!” Finderz gasped, trembling in the harness so that it squeaked.
“Better the verdict of the spiders, hm?”
“N-no! You can’t! You can’t do this to me. Who . . . are you . . . really?”
“Haven’t you guessed?”
The veil fell away from THE ENTOMOLOGIST’s helmet. The round metal-rimmed glasses came off.
“My God! You? You’re—”
“Appearances can be perceptive, yesss? Time to board the Crawling Star. Must be 42 inches tall.”
“NO!” the dwarf screamed as the face faded into the field of stars, which turned again into the eyes of the spiders.
The dwarf’s cry was heard all the way to the HIV Lounge but everyone was still having such a good time imitating the Stomp of Shame, it was a few moments before anyone thought to be worried. By then Heimdall had started picking up Pirate Radio reports about the madness in LosVegas.
Lila Crashcart made the hard visit the next morning—and found Keeperz—fingernails squeezed through his fists, jaws locked—the clenching force having driven several teeth through his lips. A sharp aluminum odor of fear and piss filled the Cube. The three-dimensional screen was blank.
Broadband was of the opinion that Finderz, in his anger at Natassia’s prank, had overreached his Cubing ability and had tried to negotiate a mammoth wave of oblique data. But Dr. Quail, who arranged for an autopsy, took the view that something much odder had befallen the dwarf, noting that all his Canal Street wristwatches had stopped. The remains of the stunted body were disposed of according to Fort Thoreau custom, and a crab apple tree was planted—which was soon covered in mistletoe. The Strategists agreed that decisions would be made according to majority vote until Parousia Head appointed a new leader.
CHAPTER 6
Over the Rainbow
Clearfather adjusted the cruising speed to seventy-two miles per hour as the Billy Connolly sailed over the Promised Land of the Mormons, home of the Great Salt Lake and thousands of acres of chemical weapons stockpiles. For a while he was able to tune in a Pirate Radio broadcast. Dooley Duck and Ubba Dubba had been crowned the homecoming king and queen in what was being called the Soul Carnival, a world celebration that was even more ecstatic than the earlier outbreaks of “Doing the Dooley.” Prominent Voyants were ordering their chips removed and their portals sealed. The giant metro monitors, access terminals, and private Mind Theaters were boycotted. Robotic factories started dismantling themselves. Millions of doses of psychoactive medication were burned in bonfires while hundreds of psychologists and neurological researchers were publicly experimented with.
The only other news that Clearfather could pick up concerned Professor Chicken. The company had just appointed Wyatt T. Dove, the once famous business author and inventor of Diagonal Thinking, as head of customer relations and creative product development. According to a press release from Brand’s office, “The Professor Chicken family takes pride in reinstating an American innovator. We have acquired a very special ally in Mr. Dove, and his expertise and vision are already having an influence.”
The news cheered Clearfather. Professor Chicken was turning the tables on Chu’s and McTavish’s—and Dooley Duck’s Surprise Party was taking the battle to Vitessa around the world. Back aboard the Haggis, Maggie continued to relax. With the disposal of the bodies and the sky clearing as they got farther away from LosVegas, the trauma of the giant celebrity tantrums began to fade. Clearfather was grateful. To think that such anger and annihilation could’ve arisen from inside him. If there was an explanation or a resolution, he felt it lay in South Dakota—the only place he seemed to have any connection with that he hadn’t visited. Even if there was tragic news waiting for him there . . . secrets . . . or worse. He had to go. He had to find an answer to the mystery, whatever it was.
When he’d found himself on the bus to Pittsburgh, he
thought that he’d lost his memory. Now he had to face the possibility that he really had come back from the dead—and not only that he’d come back—that he’d been brought back. There was an agency behind his return and therefore a purpose—a meaning—if only he could discover what it was.
He had but pieces of the puzzle. Stinky Wiggler. A stolen penis and a frightful scar. A place in Texas where at two different points in history communities that practiced open sexual communion had been attacked and disbanded—and then fragments of memories—as of crimes he’d committed—contrasted with happy morsels of childhood. Holding these elements together was the shadow of Vitessa, the recurring image of a tornado, and the ghost of Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd. He recalled what the Marshal had said about lighting out after inspiration with a club—how, even if you failed, you would find something very much like it. But what if you set out for South Dakota in a Flying Haggis—what would you find then?
“He’s a deep thinker, our expedition leader,” he heard the Marshal say, and he broke from his reverie to see puffs of clouds.
The Marshal and Maggie were becoming quite chummy. The old man matched her accounts of unusual anatomical features and special requests of sex clients with his thoughts on mental institutions, the roller coaster as metaphor for the journey of the soul—and a steady intermixing of facts about the Old and the Imaginary West. (Clearfather wondered if Dr. Tadd knew that Jesse James’s wife was named Zerelda Mimms or that Britt Reid, the Green Hornet, was the Lone Ranger’s grandnephew.)
So the daylight drifted like the Billy Connolly. As they neared the Colorado border, with the Yampa Plateau and Dinosaur National Monument to the north, Clearfather noticed the fortifications of a Time Haven. The peculiar thing was that there was a small school of fishing boats mounted on hydraulic platforms, and several people aboard were involved in some sort of simulated fishing activity.
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